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Alex paused, his heart pounding, his body shaking. He’d never told anyone about this. Had never spoken these words out loud. He hated this memory. Hated this moment in his life. Hated this truth.
“He told me how he had cared for me. How he had forbidden any of the men in the house from touching me, both when I was a boy and when I was older. How he made sure I got fed. I always thought it was her. But it wasn’t. It was never her.” He took a deep breath, afraid he might throw up. “I ran out of his office. I wanted nothing to do with him. With all of it. She was so angry with me. She told me...I’d ruined everything. She never wanted me. It was all for him. Everything she’d done for me had always been for him. I told her I would take care of her. I told her it would be all right.” Everything turned cold inside of him.
“What happened?”
“She killed herself. In front of me. Because that future, the end of everything, was preferable to a life spent with me.”
Rachel’s eyes widened with horror, her view of life already darker because of him. Because of his truth. He was ruining her already. “Alex...I don’t... She had problems, Alex, it wasn’t you.”
“It wasn’t me? She loved Nikola Kouklakis, and she couldn’t love me. Everyone loves Ajax. He came out of it...fine, just fine. I’m broken. Everything in me is...I am his son. All of the bad things are in me. I cause...destruction just by breathing.”
“Based on what? The actions of a woman who was too broken to know real love when she saw it?”
“It’s more than that. It was what my father did—he broke people. And I do it without even trying.”
“That’s not true. I don’t care who your father is. I don’t care who your brother is. What your last name is, where you came from. If your mother was a prostitute or if you were a prostitute. I don’t care. I know who you are now. I love who you are now.”
Her words burned in him, a sharp, almost refreshing sting. Antiseptic on an infection. He couldn’t accept it.
“You can’t.”
“I do. Alex, I love you. Your mother had a lot of things going wrong inside of her, and they weren’t your fault. She couldn’t love you, but that was because of her own heart, not yours. There’s nothing broken in you. You’re a good man, and I love you more than anything.”
He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t. All he could see was his mother’s face, so haunted and broken at the thought of life away from the compound. Life with him. And then lifeless and blank as she lay there dying.
He thought of Ajax, who’d transcended it all. Who’d found love and a life away from all of that while it all seemed to cling to Alex like creeping slime.
It would never come clean. Ever. He would only poison her, too.
“Don’t be so naive,” he said. “It was always going to happen this way. I didn’t want Holt. I never did. I wanted nothing less than your and Ajax’s utter humiliation. His leaving is part of what triggered my mother’s suicide. He escaped with no consequences, and it was my job to give them to him. Now he has married your sister, the second-choice bride, because he couldn’t have you. And then, I’ll make you available to him now that it’s too late. Now that you’re having my child and he’s married to someone else. Don’t you see how well you were played? Don’t bore me with any more of your declarations of love. They mean nothing, because you don’t know who I am. You can’t love me,” he said, the words choked. Because he knew they were true. She couldn’t love him. “You can’t love someone you’ve never truly met.”
