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Slowly, Constantine lifted his head and looked down at me, his eyes full of some complicated emotion I couldn’t read.
‘That night in the garden, when you found me, I’d had a call from a source informing me that he was alive, that he hadn’t died in a car crash after all.’
I stared at him in shock. ‘I don’t understand. If he’s not dead, then what happened to him?’
‘It looks like he spent a few years in hiding—my sources weren’t able to tell me where—before appearing suddenly as the head of a multi-million-dollar security firm.’ He reached for one of my curls, winding it slowly around one finger. ‘You wanted to know why the power went out that night in the mansion last week? It was Valentin. He created a...disturbance. He kidnapped Olivia.’
More shock pulsed through me. The lights had gone out as I’d waited for Constantine in that room. And then he’d appeared, telling me he was going to marry me. That he’d changed his mind about Olivia.
But he hadn’t changed his mind. He’d decided to marry me because his twin brother had come back from the dead and taken Olivia.
‘Oh, my God...’ I breathed, struggling suddenly to sit up. ‘He kidnapped her...? Then what are you doing—?’
‘Be still,’ Con said quietly, not moving an inch, holding me down on the couch with the weight of his body. ‘Valentin won’t hurt her, though she might very well hurt him. He’s told me he’s going to take the company from me, but I don’t think it’s Silver Inc he actually wants. I think it’s Olivia.’
I was still trying to process what he’d said, my heartbeat racing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He let go of the lock of hair he’d been playing with, brushing his fingers carefully over my collarbone, his touch making me shiver. ‘I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. Not until I’d decided how I was going to deal with the situation.’ His gaze flicked to mine. ‘He’s in the Maldives at present, with Olivia.’
It was...a lot. Everything he’d just told me was a lot. Firstly that his father had been an abusive monster, and then that the twin brother he’d thought dead was very much alive and now with his erstwhile fiancée. Not to mention the fact that he’d kept all of this secret from me.
I wasn’t sure of what to say. ‘Have you...spoken to him?’
Con shook his head. ‘He keeps leaving messages for me, but I haven’t responded.’
‘Why not? Aren’t you pleased that he’s not dead?’
His stroking fingers descended lower, tracing the curve of my breast, his attention on what he was doing. ‘That’s an interesting question,’ he murmured.
I shoved away the delicious prickle over my skin that his touch drew, concentrating instead on his beautiful face, trying to read him. There were emotions there, deep and strong, but untangling them was difficult. Then again, I’d had years of watching his face. Years of seeing beneath his cold detachment—which I understood the reason for now—to the volcanic heart of him. And I could hear the thread that ran through his voice, that coloured every word.
‘You’re angry with him,’ I said softly. ‘You’re furious.’
He flashed me one hot black look and, yes, I was right. The fury that I’d seen before, that had been in his every movement as he’d taken me on the couch, was there, starkly burning in every line of his perfect features.
‘He let me think he was dead,’ Con said, his lilting Spanish accent turning every word into angry poetry. ‘He left me alone with that monster for fifteen years. And he never contacted me, not once.’ His mouth was hard. ‘He made our lives a misery, Jenny. His constant rebellions, his resistance to our father’s rules, made everything worse. If he’d only done what Papa had said, even once. If he’d—’ Con broke off, glancing back down at his fingers, still stroking the curve of my breast. ‘I had a plastic toy soldier, given to me by a housekeeper. It was the only toy I’d ever had and I loved it. Valentin told me I had to be careful with it, that I couldn’t let our father see me with it. But I didn’t listen. Papa found out and he was angry. He tried to make me burn it in the fire, but Valentin took it and threw it on the roof so Papa couldn’t get it.’
I lay there very still, my gaze fixed on his face, not daring to breathe in case he stopped talking.
‘That enraged Domingo. He beat Valentin badly for disobeying him.’ Con let out a breath. ‘Valentin took the beating intended for me and... Papa broke his ribs.’
An anguished sound escaped before I could stop it, the horror of it settling inside me. But Con didn’t look up, too lost in his terrible memories.
‘I shouldn’t be angry with him,’ he went on after a moment. ‘Not when all of it was my fault. I should not have accepted the toy and I should have listened to Valentin when he told me to be careful with it. I should not have let my father see it.’ He paused. ‘I should have put it in the fire. If I had it would have been one less beating Valentin took for me. But...’
He didn’t need to go on. I could already see why he hadn’t wanted to give up his toy. He’d had nothing, so a plastic toy soldier must have seemed worth the risk. Yet it had ended up with his brother being beaten.
I ached for him. He was a man who felt deeply, I already knew that, and I suspected that as boy he must have been the same. A loving boy who’d had to protect himself in any way he could. And he’d cut himself off from his emotions so completely he didn’t feel anything at all.
Yet that boy was still there, beneath all that ice. He’d looked after a nest of chicks for an eleven-year-old girl and had always remembered to send her postcards from all the countries he’d been to. He’d given her a birthday card when everyone else had forgotten and he’d listened to her chatter inanely, and he’d always taken her seriously. He’d never judged her, and he’d never criticised her. He’d made her feel that she wasn’t alone.
But that loving boy had lost the only person he’d ever loved and who’d ever loved him. The brother who’d left him alone with a father who’d twisted him into something he never should have been.
No wonder he was so lonely.
I’d never developed the hard callus my mother had. I’d never been able to hide my own loneliness away. My mother had channelled hers into an endless succession of men who didn’t love her and whom she didn’t love. But I couldn’t do that. Just as I couldn’t do what Con had done, cutting himself off from his emotions completely.
I’d always thought that feeling so deeply was a weakness in me somehow, a flaw. Yet it didn’t feel like a flaw now. Now, looking at Con and the anguish I saw deep inside him, it felt like a gift I could give him. He’d forgotten how to feel, how to process emotions, so they were harsh and jagged and painful inside him. But I could help. Whether he wanted my friendship or not, he needed it.
