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To lift you from the gutter.
Her chest heaved with building disappointment, and she turned away from him to try and keep him from noticing. To try and disguise what was undeniably a sob.
“When will she be here?” she asked, pretending to be busy with papers on his desk. But her eyes were blurry and she couldn’t see anything.
“Soon, I imagine. Javier said that she was not...amenable to the situation.”
“What?”
“Oh, she didn’t know, apparently. Which is the fault of her father...”
“So then... What?”
“Javier is bringing her here.”
“Against her will?”
“Well, I don’t know about all that.”
“I think you do.”
“Her will is not my concern.”
“You...” She rarely fought with Matteo. She challenged him, but she did not yell at him, for he was the King, after all, and engaging in something like that was not proper. But, here she was. About to completely and utterly lose it. No, not about to. She had lost it.
“You arrogant bastard. You uprooted this woman from her home, from her country and dragged her here?”
“Is it really any different than what I did for you?”
That was like a knife straight through her heart.
“Yes. You brought me here and hired me as a maid. I had nothing, and you remind me of it constantly. You act like you saved me. But you know, the virtue of your presence doesn’t save anyone, Matteo. The people in this country were saved, not simply by your hand, but the fact that you declined to bring it down upon them the way that your father did. And what they have chosen to do with their lives is what will save them. They have lifted themselves up with their own hands. Your father prevented it, more than you have ever aided it. Violet is a billionaire, of her own authority and her own hand. Not yours. And you are uprooting her out of a life that she built for what?”
“Her father promised her to me.”
“This is not the twelfth century. What about her choice? What about what she wants?” And suddenly, she did not feel that she was talking about Violet. “You don’t care about any of that, do you? You just want to assign roles to the people in your life. And all the better that your Queen be a woman who didn’t even know that she was engaged to you. Who has no choice. You don’t know her, you can’t simply slot her into the position that you see her filling. It doesn’t matter who she is...”
“She is well-liked throughout the world. I have seen her photographs. She is very modern. She is the kind of person who will bring the image of rehabilitation to the country that—”
“Kidnapping an American girl is hardly going to rehabilitate the image of Monte Blanco. Or your image. I thought... All these years I thought maybe I had done something in... Not just teaching you to smile, but teaching you to feel it. Not just teaching you how to pretend to connect with people, but to actually... But I didn’t, did I? I taught you nothing. You... You don’t feel anything, do you? You’re a monster.”
“I never claimed to be anything but a monster,” he said, reaching out and gripping her arm, turning her to face him. “Did I? I just claimed that I was going to do my best not to continue the harm that my father caused. But I told you, all those years ago, you know.”
“About your scars? Yes. I know. I know all about your scars, Matteo. You’ve shown them to me. But what does it matter if you’ve done nothing to try to heal from them?”
“They do not heal. It has been years, and there they remain.” He tapped his forefinger against his temple. “And the pain stays there. And I feel it here.” He touched his chest. And she knew that he was indicating the knife wounds there, but she wondered if he actually meant somewhere deeper. Though he would never admit it. “I am what he made me. Do you think I would not like to be? Why do you think that I debased myself to go and see a psychologist about the pain?”
His pain echoed inside her. Along with the gutting realization that perhaps she had not done a thing to make him...better.
She’d hoped.
She really had.
But it was possible he wanted too much. Demanded too much.
“It pains you that you’re just a man, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You wish to be immortal, but you aren’t. You are just a man. And you have to contend with the failings, the limits of your body the same as the rest of us do.”
“It should not be.”
