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And that’s exactly what I can’t let happen. I can’t be that person again—I can’t be with someone. Especially not a client.
I have a career to focus on. I have a past to get away from. Luc made me feel like I was nothing. He let me believe that what I did didn’t matter, and I was only good for one thing—creating a home for Luc to come back to every night.
I’m not here to be defined by a man, to be the side character when this ismystory. Sleeping with Blake will not only be cliché; I’ll also betray myself, give away the one thing I’ve been fighting for, for so long.
Madame Dorota’s words echo in my mind as if she’s speaking to me again.
Love and light and success…. And babies!
What could that have meant? I like to think that one day, I could have both success and a romantic relationship with children. But I don’t know how to juggle the two. And if I sleep with Blake, it won’t mean that it’s meant to be. Will it? He’s a client. I can’t afford to jeopardize my future that way.
She completes you.
Wasn’t that was Madame Dorota said to Blake when we were all there together? She mistook us for being a couple, but what if it wasn’t a mistake at all?
I shake my head when the elevator doors open in the lobby and leave the building to walk to my car. I can’t let a fortune teller throw me off. I don’t know if what she said was true. I don’t know how real she is. A part of me wants to believe in destiny and fate, in the stars aligning just so, to bring me my happy ending.
But a part of me doesn’t want to give up my independence and my focus on my career.
Which part do I listen to?
Chapter 9
Blake
“And you’re sure you can find her?” I ask Howe when he sits in front of me in my office, looking full of himself and casual and nothing like a Private Investigator.
“I can do anything you ask me to do,” he says.
Austin Howe is one of the best PIs in the city. He comes highly recommended—my banker suggested him when I started asking around.
Now that he’s here, I’m not sure I like him. He’s very young, and he seems to think more about himself than his surroundings. He’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with bright blue eyes. His hair sticks up at all angles as if he couldn’t be bothered to comb it before he came for the meeting.
“Where did you see her last?” he asks.
I hesitate before I tell him. “Texas. I have an address for you.” I hand him a piece of paper with the address of the last house I lived in with my father before we fled.
My parents are from Eastern Europe, and we came to the States when I was very young. I don’t remember living in Europe, only the years in Texas. My dad took a job as a ranch manager, and we lived in a small wooden house at the back of the property so he could be at the owner’s beck and call day and night.
The ranch lay outside a small town, which housed a pub, and my dad drank enough that he single-handedly kept that pub in business.
His drinking wasn’t so much a problem as how he hit my mom, and me, afterward.
“I don’t know if this is still a lead,” I admitted. “It’s been a couple of years.”
“With a name and an address, I can figure it out,” Howe says and stands. “Thank you for your business.” He holds out a hand to me and I shake it.
When he leaves, I sit down again and let out a breath, billowing my cheeks.
I don’t know what I’ll do when Howe finds my mom. I don’t know why I’m looking for her at all—she made her choice all those years ago. Technically, I don’t owe her anything.
But lately, I think about my mom a lot.
“You don’t have to do anything, Blake,” Mom says, tears streaming over her cheeks. Her eye is already blue and starting to swell.
“You can’t keep letting him do this,” I say. I ball my hands into fists. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hate my dad for what he’s doing to us. “It’s not right.”
“It’s not his fault,” Mom says but her voice cracks. She winces when tears run over her cheeks again. It hurts to cry when he’s done that to her. It’s not the first time.
