“For what? The way you look on your knees? You’re not the kind of woman who marries a man like Liam, Ana. You have nothing to offer him except a pretty face and what I’m sure is a lovely, talented body, but that won’t help him keep his spot at the head of the table. It could well make him lose it—if not his own head entirely.” Saoirse pauses, her bright green eyes fixed on mine keenly. “What can you do for him, Ana, other than tear him apart?”
The silence that fills the room is poignant. In a way, I know she’s right. Everything I have to offer him—pleasure, love, devotion—is nothing when it comes to the other part of his life that involves the Kings. There, I’m only hurting him, not helping him. But I feel, deep down, that I spoke the truth when I said I can’t and shouldn’t make those decisions for Liam. He’s capable of making his own choices, of choosing what’s most important to him, and telling me.
“True love, Ana, would be walking away from this and letting Liam live the life he was meant to have.” Saoirse’s voice floats across the room towards me, and I meet her gaze, refusing to let the tears that I can feel shimmering in my eyes fall.
“The life he was meant to have.” I let the words slip off my tongue, considering them. “With you.”
“Yes,” Saoirse says, and I think I detect the slightest thread of sympathy in her voice. “With me.”
There’s silence again, one that stretches out, and then Saoirse takes a deep breath. “Think about it,” she says quietly as she passes me. “Liam says he rescued you. It might be time for you to rescuehim—from himself. Before he tears everything down.”
And then she’s gone, slipping out of the front door almost as quickly as she showed up. The clock says she was here less than twenty minutes, but it feels like it was a lifetime. I sink into the armchair, my hands shaking, squeezing my eyes tightly shut against the tears.
I don’t want to cry. Iwon’t. I swallow hard, trying to force the swirling emotions down. Still, they’re bubbling up too strongly, making Liam’s huge luxurious penthouse feel small and claustrophobic. Without thinking too clearly about it, I grab my phone and shove my feet into a pair of flats, heading out of the front door and to the elevator still in my sweaty messy bun, yoga pants, and baggy t-shirt, too upset to think about how I’ll look walking down the street. I just need to get outside, to get some air—
The fresh, warm air in my face, sucked into my lungs when I step outside, helps calm me a little. I breathe in deeply a few times as I go out to the sidewalk, turning left for no particular reason and starting to walk. I just need some space, some time to think—
My feet start hurting barely a block in, but I force myself not to think about it. I’m not ready to go back in yet, into a space that’s more Liam’s than mine, where I’m made to think about the life he had before I suddenly appeared in it. Saoirse had said he was happy with the direction of his life before I showed up, and I have no reason to think that’s not true. If he hadn’t met me, he would probably have married her, no questions asked. Maybe she would even have made him happy—she seems nice enough, objectively, someone who fits into his world. Whatever happens, because Liam and I love each other, it’s my fault because he met me.
Saoirse said that the consequences of that could be very bad, and I’m not convinced that she’s not telling the truth about that, too.
My thoughts are a mess, so much so that I don’t even hear the footsteps behind me until it’s too late. I barely register the hand gripping my elbow and dragging me sideways until I’m nearly in the car. By then, I’m so off balance that when I stumble and fall, the hands on me take advantage of it to pull me into the waiting car idling at the curb, some nondescript sedan with a cloth interior that smells like upholstery cleaner.
I know it’s Alexandre before I register his face. I know his touch, his scent, the way he feels next to me. For a brief time, we were that close. I haven’t forgotten, even if I want to put it behind me.
But there’s another scent in the car, too, one that makes my heart nearly stop with shock. Cigarettes and lipstick, a scent mingled together, take me back to a feeling of a sick pit in my stomach, a posh French accent insulting me, a sharp nail against my nipple, a gun to my head. I know who’s in the front seat of the car, taking us wherever Alexandre has decided we need to go.
Yvette.
For a moment, the world is entirely out of focus. The only things I see swirling colors, making me dizzy and nauseous, my senses swamped with the scents of Alexandre’s skin and Yvette’s cigarettes and her lipstick and his warm, chocolate-scented breath. And then it all snaps back in, and I sink dizzily against the back of the seat, Alexandre’s hand still firmly holding my elbow as if I might throw myself from the moving car.
I dare to look at the driver’s seat, not wanting confirmation of what my senses are telling me but still needing it. I see her, Yvette, her dark hair still in that stylish bob, her ubiquitous red lipstick perfectly applied, but with a new feature to her pretty sharp face.
A half-healed wound on the corner of her forehead, creeping into her hairline, the healing scar where she likely had stitches ugly and red. It mars her beauty and adds to it in a way. Still, I remember all too well where that’s from—Liam pistol-whipping her to the floor as he tried to get me out of Alexandre’s apartment.
I might have hated what he had to do to Alexandre to get me out of there, but I’ve never for a moment wished he did less to Yvette.
She doesn’t so much as look in the rear view mirror at me. Her presence makes my heart beat erratically in my chest—if she’s here, it can’t be good. I’d thought she was dead, and just the knowledge that she’s not makes me feel sick to my stomach, mingled with a steadily growing panic over what she and Alexandre have planned for me.Did my rejection last night hurt him that much? Is he just going to get rid of me now, once and for all? If he can’t have me, no one can?
“Alexandre—” I try to speak up as we drive, but he shushes me, his grip on my arm tightening as he does so. He doesn’t allow me to speak until we’re out of the car and headed up to the hotel room, Yvette leading the way like some kind of angry bodyguard, her huge dark sunglasses obscuring a good bit of her face.
“Be quiet, Ana,” he says again when I try to protest as he pulls me into the elevator. “Don’t think of screaming for help, either. You and your Irish lover will regret it. We’ll talk in the room.”
I know I should fight back, try to prevent him from taking me up there, where there’s no one to see, hear, or save me. But I feel panicked, frozen, and unable to decide what to do or what course of action might get someone to come to my aid instead of pretending to look the other way.
“Alexandre, please—” I beg when we’re in the room, the door shutting with a finality that sends a shudder down my spine. “I’m sorry I upset you last night, but you have to be reasonable. I don’t want—”
“I am being reasonable,” he says coldly. “I stopped when you asked me to last night, didn’t I? Let you run off as if you don’t belong to me.”
“Bought and paid for,” Yvette says archly. “A naughty pet. A very bad girl. I wish you’d let me teach her some manners, Alexandre—”
“Enough,” he says curtly. “Anastasia, that goes for you as well. I’ve been patient, let you gallivant around Boston with this Irishman, and trusted you’d come to your senses, but it’s clear that you need a firmer hand, someone to guide you. You’ve done nothing but play games with me, lead me on, and toy with the emotions I have for you—”
“No!” I exclaim pleadingly, shaking my head. “Alexandre, I’m not playing games, I swear. I care for you. I do. I have since Paris. I’m grateful to you for everything you did for me.”
I can see a look cross Yvette’s face at that, as if she smelled something bad, but I ignore it, plowing ahead. “I meant everything I said to you in Paris, I swear. But things have changed—”
Something in Alexandre’s angry expression falters, but Yvette takes a step forward, her pretty face twisted with irritation. “So flighty,” she hisses. “So capricious. Her feelings justchanged. This is why you can’t get attached to pets, Alexandre. Their emotions are so all over the place. I’m glad you called me, so that I could help you come to your senses about this. We’ll get her back to Paris together, and then—”