Then she talked again, as if in a fugue. “As soon as I was well enough, I started acquiring this new face and a new identity. I came back here believing I’d have the painful pleasure of seeing you from afar without any danger of you recognizing me. But you did recognize me, and now you’ve even found out everything I thought would forever remain hidden.”
Long minutes after she fell silent again, agonized beyond endurance, he choked out, “Why didn’t you tell me all this when you met me again? When there was no more danger to me? Why did you let me think the worst of you?”
Suddenly her eyes looked exactly as they had in the photo Numair had showed him. Lifeless, hopeless. “Because there was no point. I came here thinking you’d long forgotten me. Then you recognized me and offered me this arrangement, and I knew I was just passing through your life. I only wanted to have this time with you before I moved on. I knew you’d go on to have the life you worked so hard to establish and you’d never think of me again. And I didn’t want you to. I wanted to give you the closure I deprived you of the first time.”
“I didn’t want closure, Scarlett.” He gripped her face, his hands shaking, needing her to know every single thing he’d felt all these years. “I lived all these years going insane for an explanation, this explanation. I was unable to come to terms with the discrepancy between what I felt with you, from you, and what it had seemed to be. I’ve been unable to have any kind of intimacy again.”
“You mean you didn’t...?” A tiny flame leaped in her eyes before it was immediately extinguished.
He crushed her in his arms, his heart convulsing at the despondence in her eyes. She’d never even considered it was possible for him to feel the same for her as she felt for him.
Needing to make her believe he’d always been hers, to erase every terrible moment she’d ever lived, he raised her face to his and held her eyes. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was yearning for the only woman I ever wanted, and it was excruciating because I thought you were a lie. But not only have you always been real and everything I ever craved and more, you protected me and my brothers from exposure. You saved our lives. And it almost cost you your own.”
* * *
It cost me something more precious to me than my life.
Scarlett barely caught back the cry.
She couldn’t let him know that. Not that. But she couldn’t let him make it sound as if what she’d done had been a sacrifice. Giving him up had been that. Protecting him with her life had been a privilege.
She tried to wave his gratitude away, but he persisted.
“You must accept your dues. And you will have the gratitude and lifelong allegiance of my brothers, too. Yes, my partners in Black Castle Enterprises are all The Organization’s escapees. We formed a brotherhood within our prison, swore a blood oath to escape, become unstoppable and bring down The Organization and anyone associated with it. We’re going through the list from the outside in, and from bottom to top in such convoluted ways, they wouldn’t know what hit them before they’re destroyed.” Suddenly he frowned, as if remembering something. “What happened to the people you wanted to help?”
She remembered the friends who’d held her together all these years, before and after Raiden. They were now safe in their new lives, which made her aching lips spread in a smile of relief and thankfulness. “I got them out, built them new identities, too. I told you I put your money to the best use.”
His gorgeous eyes poured what looked like pride over her, making her heart flutter like a hummingbird.