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Still, he said, “Matsuyama-san, Ms. Delacroix, your presence at our wedding isn’t only our privilege, it’s a necessity.”
His deferential words didn’t seem to appease Hiro. The man’s response was perplexing, since Hiro had not only insisted on holding this ball, but had brought to his attention the very woman he was visually wrestling him over.
Thankfully, the stilted meeting came to an end shortly afterward, and Hiro and Scarlett moved on. Raiden forced himself not to watch them walk away. Not to watch her. But he could no longer bear having Megumi by his side.
Looking down at her, he tried to smile, failing this time. “If it’s okay with you, Megumi, I’ll now take advantage of your kind offer to go make the rounds.”
“Of course.” Megumi stepped back, looking as relieved as he felt to finally separate.
Walking away, he forced himself to stop by a few congratulators. As soon as he saw an opening to get out of the ballroom, he took it. On his way out, he again saw Scarlett. She was heading out, too. Even from the back, and from a distance, the sense of familiarity swamped him all over again. The same intensity he’d experienced when he’d first seen her.
Her. That was how he’d always thought of the woman he’d known by the name of Hannah McPherson.
He’d met her in New York one bright summer afternoon five years ago, when she’d swerved her car to avoid hitting a reckless biker and crashed into his car instead.
From the moment she’d stepped out of her car, everything else had ceased to matter to him. The inexorable attraction he’d felt toward her had been something he’d never thought he could experience. He’d always told her she’d literally crashed into his life, and pulverized all his preconceptions and rules.
Ignoring his usual precautions, he hadn’t even performed the most basic investigation on her. It had been through her that he’d known her to be a kindergarten teacher by morning, and a florist who ran an inherited shop by afternoon.
When he’d taken her out that first night, she’d made it clear it wouldn’t go any further because he inhabited a world alien to hers. She hadn’t budged when he’d insisted that attraction like theirs bridged all differences. It had taken their first kiss for her to capitulate, concede that what had sprung between them had been unstoppable. And from that first night, he’d plunged with her into an incendiary affair.
Then after five delirious months, a single inexplicable discrepancy had led him to unravel an ingeniously spun web of fraud. And to an appalling verdict. That her identity had been manufactured just prior to meeting him.
It had all been a setup. Starting with the accident that had brought them together. She must have been sent by some rival to spy on him. And in their intimacy, he’d left himself wide-open. Whatever she’d been after, she could have found it.
But since no one had used privileged information against him yet, either she hadn’t found what she’d been looking for or she was waiting for the right time to leverage her intel from her recruiters. Or him. Or both.
Pretending to be oblivious until he’d decided how to deal with her, he’d called her. She’d been her usual bright, eager self at first, then as if hearing through his act, her voice had changed, becoming a stranger’s. Then she’d asked if he preferred she called him Lightning, or if he’d left that name behind when he’d escaped The Organization. And he’d realized it had been far worse than his worst fears.
It hadn’t been corporate espionage material she’d managed to get her hands on, but his most lethal secret. His previous identity. And she’d known its value, its danger. That its exposure would bring The Organization to his and his brothers’ doors. The Organization that needed them all dead.
His blood had frozen and boiled at once as she’d said it was just as well he’d brought the charade to an end so she could make her demands. Some money in exchange for her silence.
“Some money” had turned out to be fifty million dollars.
Enraged, he’d assured her he didn’t negotiate with blackmailers. He took them out. So it was in her best interest to keep what she knew to herself.
Unfazed by his threat, she’d said he’d never find her to carry it out, but that she’d had no wish to expose him, just needed the money. It was pocket change to him, so he should just pay without involving payback or pride. He also shouldn’t fear she’d ever ask for more or hold her knowledge over him in any other way. Once the transaction was complete, he could consider that she’d never existed. As she’d never truly had.
Though bitterness and fury had consumed him, cold logic had said that while he couldn’t trust his instincts or her, he could trust her sense of self-preservation. She’d already known how lethal he could be, and she wouldn’t risk extorting
him again. This would be a one-off thing. It would end this catastrophic breach to his and his brothers’ security.
But he’d found himself wondering. If she really needed the money, he’d gladly help her, if only she’d tell him she’d been forced to spy on him, and that it hadn’t been all a lie.
His need to look the other way in return for such a reassurance had made him even angrier. At himself. Deciding to end the sordid interlude, he’d transferred the money to the offshore account she’d provided, what had been untraceable even to his formidable resources. As per her declaration, he’d never found any trace of her again. It had been as if she’d never existed. It had been truly over.
But it hadn’t ended. Not for him.
His obsession with her continued to torment him. It sank its talons the deepest when he was at his lowest ebb. It was at such times he yearned to turn to her, the only woman who’d touched his innermost being, to feel her vitality filling his arms, her empathy touching his soul, her passion igniting his cravings. Every time, he’d cursed her even more, for needing her still.
But his anger remained mostly directed at himself—the master of stealth who’d failed to detect the least trace of duplicity in her. And who, even after it had been proved, had remained inextricably under her spell.
Shaking himself out of the bitter musings, he now exited the ballroom in pursuit of that other woman who had wrung the same reactions from him.
Scarlett Delacroix was gracefully gliding across the mansion’s expansive terrace, descending the stairs to the traditional tea garden. In the light of a gibbous moon, her red tresses were the only splash of color and heat in the scene’s monotone coldness. The layered skirt of her black dress trailed after her like a piece of night that worshipped her lush figure.
Noting that Hiro’s bodyguards were monitoring her progress, he waited as she crossed the wooden bridge to the garden house, then set off in the opposite direction.
