AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It is a big world,” he’d said coldly. Hoping he could turn them both to ice so neither one of them could feel a thing. “All I ask is that you choose a place to live that is within reach of one of the Betancur Corporation offices.”
“So you can monitor my every move, I presume?”
“So that if the child or you are ever in need, help can arrive swiftly,” he’d replied. Through his teeth. “I am trying very hard not to be the monster here, Susannah.”
But he’d felt like one. His scars had felt like convictions, pressed into his flesh for all the world to see.
“I want to live in Sydney,” she’d told him, her voice a rough sort of whisper. “I not only wish to be on a different continent from you, but across the international dateline whenever possible. So we won’t even have a day in common.”
He hadn’t responded to that the way he’d have liked to, either. Instead, he’d sent her on her way and had a plane meet her in Athens for the flight to Sydney. She’d been as far out of his life as it was possible for her to get without him retreating back to the compound in Idaho.
And now he had exactly what he’d wanted.
Leonidas reminded himself of that as he stood at the window in his immaculately furnished, quietly intimidating office, where he could look out over Rome and feel like a king instead of a monstrous wild man who’d thrived in the wilderness for years. Centuries of rich, powerful men had stood in positions much like this one, looking out at the same view. Rome had been breeding emperors since the dawn of time, and what was he but one more?
An empty king on an empty throne, he thought with more than a little bitterness today. But that was what he’d asked for.
He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that he always, always got what he wanted. It was only that it had never really occurred to him what a pyrrhic victory that could be, and the truth was, the world without her felt entirely too much like bitter ash.
It will fade in time, he told himself now. Everything does.
Leonidas realized he wasn’t paying attention to the conference call he was meant to be on, the way he hadn’t been paying attention to much these last days. His memory was as good as it was going to get, he’d decided. Too good, since all it seemed to want to do was play out every moment of every interaction he’d had with Susannah since she’d found him in the compound. On an endless, vivid loop.
“I want this settled,” he interjected into the heated conversation between several vice presidents scattered around the world, because he had no patience left. Not when he had to spend his every waking moment not flying to Sydney. The call went quiet. “Quickly.”
Someone cleared his throat. He heard the shuffle of papers, echoing down the line, and what sounded like traffic noise in some or other distant city.
“Of course,” the Philippines vice president began carefully. “But it will take a little more time to really—”
“I want the matter dealt with,” Leonidas said again, more brusquely this time. “I don’t want any more discussion. If you cannot do it, I will find someone who can.”
He ended the call with perhaps a bit more force than necessary, and when he turned around to look out through the glass at the rest of the executive floor, he froze.
He thought he was hallucinating.
On some level, he welcomed it.
Leonidas was already starting to think of his time in Idaho as an extended hallucination. It already seemed more like a dream than a reality he’d known for four years—the only reality he’d known at all while he was in it. He’d decided that perhaps he needed to simply accept that he was the sort of person for whom reality was malleable. So it made perfect sense that he should see Susannah marching down the central corridor of the executive floor of the Betancourt Corporation dressed in her trademark inky black.
His widow had been resurrected. And was headed straight for him.
And Leonidas told himself that what he felt as he watched her stride toward him in impossible shoes with an unreadable expression on her lovely face was fury.
The way his pulse rocketed. The way his heart kicked at his ribs. That pounding thing in his head, his gut, his sex.
Fury. He told himself it had to be fury that she had dared contradict his wishes and show up here.
Because he wouldn’t let it be anything else.
Susannah nodded imperiously at his secretary, but didn’t slow. She swept past the outer desk, then pushed her way into his office as if he’d issued her an engraved invitation to do just that.
And then she was here. Right here. And it had been only a week since he’d last seen her on that island. A week since he’d said the words he knew would hurt her, and so they had. A week since she’d stood before him, her mouth moving in a way that told him she was working her hardest to keep her tears inside. She hadn’t let one fall. Not a single one.
