I felt the color drain from my face. My fingers went numb, and the bouquet fell to the floor, the binding bursting open andflowers spilling everywhere. Peruvian lilies, white hydrangea, red roses, and eucalyptus spread on the floor.
“What are you doing? You ruined my bouquet! I won’t pay you a cent. And believe me when I tell you I’m leaving a scathing review. Because of you, I won’t have a gift for my mother-in-law.”
I was barely listening. I had trouble breathing. Everything around me seemed to still as I watched a familiar, impossibly tall form fill the entranceway. Was this reality? Or a daydream?
Nestore Romano stood in the flower shop, flanked by two muscled men dressed in all black. He was even more beautiful than I remembered. I didn’t have a photo of him, but my memory hadn’t done him justice. He was far more terrifying than I remembered, too. He towered over the two men flanking his sides.
He wore a long-sleeved black linen shirt, black pants, and black combat boots. His shoulders had broadened, and his muscles now defined his body. His face had sharpened and lost any boyish trace even though he had gained weight and no longer looked emaciated. He looked like a man who carried power, a man who wielded it without hesitation or mercy.
I swallowed thickly when his furious eyes met mine. Nestore had always gazed upon me with reverence and love. Now there was only triumph and fury. He had found me.
The woman followed my gaze, her brows furrowing. “It’s my turn.”
Nestore’s rageful gaze landed on her, and his lips curled with disdain. “Leave. Before I see if your blood is the same color as the roses on the floor.”
He stepped farther into the shop, opening up the doorway for her to leave.
The woman blinked, glanced at me, then she grabbed her purse from the counter and rushed outside, leaving me alone with Nestore. His men had stepped out and closed the door.
“Eight hundred and one days, Amelia,” he murmured in a voice that made the little hairs at the nape of my neck stand on edge. He took a couple of steps closer. I was frozen, barely able to breathe, overcome with fear. Nestore looked like a man out for revenge.
“Did you read my letter? I explained everything,” I whispered.
He bared his teeth. “I read it and tore it apart. You betrayed me.”
“I needed to leave. That house and your obsession with revenge were unbearable for me. I had constant panic attacks. The dark was swallowing me whole.”
His rage burned brighter. My words were making it worse, and I wasn’t sure what to say to make him understand. He bridged the distance between us, and the full force of his wrath washed over me in a wave of almost unbridled aggression. “Another Lamorgese who betrayed me.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t—” He took a step closer, and I backed away until my back hit the wall and Nestore towered over me like a wrathful Greek god.
“Don’t insult me by lying.”
I shivered. I wasn’t lying. I never meant to betray him. I simply couldn’t watch what he had become. It pained me to see him now when I remembered who he was. He grabbed my chin between his forefinger and thumb, tilting it up so I was forced to meet his gaze. My skin tingled from the contact, as if whatever bond we’d shared was awakened by the simple touch. “Eight hundred and one days. Did you ever think of me?”
“Every day,” I rasped, tears springing into my eyes.
“Every day,” he echoed in a low, dark voice. His gaze traced my face, every line, as if he were trying to memorize it. “I didn’t have a single photo of you. The only thing left of you was my memories. You have become so much more beautiful than what I remember.”
“Did you think of me?” My voice shook with hope. What was I doing?
He grabbed my hands and pressed them against his temples, his gaze almost feverish with emotion. “Every fucking second of my existence. You are in here so deeply that even a drill couldn’t get you out. Fuck, I’ve thought about drilling a hole into my head just to bleed out my obsession with you!”
He touched my palms to his chest over his heart. It pounded against my hand. “And you’re in there, and the only reason it’s still beating. You are a part of me, and I’ve come to realize that cutting you out of me would mean cutting out my heart and brain. You are and will always be my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. You are the reason for everything, and because you are like a part of myself, you are and will always be mine.”
Words crowded my throat. I didn’t know what to say. He cradled my palms in his bigger hands and leaned down until we were at eye level, and the amber specks in his dark green irises became impossible to miss.
“Have you been with anyone else?”
I shook my head. “No, never.” Even though I’d run from him, I hadn’t really shaken off his shadow. Nestore had been with me all along. I had always hoped to return to him one day, even as my hope had diminished little by little over time, especially after the glimpse of his cage fight. When a man tried to flirt with me, Nestore’s face had always popped to the forefront of my mind, a warning and a reminder of a promise I never wanted to break.
He bent low. “So your every first will be mine.”
I swallowed at the raw possession in his voice. In the past, when we’d talked about sharing all of our firsts, he’d said it reverently, sweetly even, not like I was a prize to claim. “What about you?” I asked, my heart in my throat.
It was stupid of me to even ask. Nestore was a man of power. An angry and vengeful man with power.
Nestore’s lips pulled into a cruel smile. “I fucked as many women as I could, fucked them in every way I could think of, always hoping that one of them would make me forget the sweetness of your kiss, Amelia. They couldn’t, and here I stand, still the slave of one Lamorgese.”
