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I shake my head, my eyes filling with tears. "That wasn't Raphael!" I raise my voice in desperation.
"Ask your brother," Leo says and lets go of my shoulders. "He knows what he's done."
Tears are now flowing down my cheeks, and I can do nothing to stop them.
He must be wrong. He is wrong. Raphael would never...
Then why does he always want to use fake identities? Why did we move to different regions so many times?
I wipe my tears with my palms. "Does that mean...?" I can't finish this sentence. I can't believe everything ended before it even started.
"Yes," he answers. He knows perfectly well what I'm talking about.
"But I...we..." I begin but stop. I can't possibly expect Leonardo to sacrifice his family over me.
"You have to go," he says, looking directly at me. "Before the coronation starts. If Darius sees us together, he'll know. You have to run and never look back. And change your address. Move to another country."
He leans closer and kisses me. I didn't expect that, but my body responds right away. I open my mouth and let him in. I feel my salty tears as we kiss.
And then he pulls away. Without saying anything else, he opens the door and gestures me to leave.
I walk away in silence without looking back.
CHAPTER TEN
LEONARDO
"How the hell could this happen?" Darius yells at me angrily, walking across his office. His body shakes with fury. "You told me we'd found her! You said she was going to be here!"
"Well, she probably didn't come," I say as calmly as I can. I should probably express anger, defend myself and yell in response, as I usually do when we argue, but I can't. I just can't.
The last few days have been a real-life nightmare, to say the least. I was pretty happy with my life a week ago—or I thought I was. But now, my life has turned from colorful to black and white, mostly black.
I miss Beatrice so much. I thought my body would stop feeling the pain when she left. I had never experienced a burning inside of me before I saw her at the ball that night.
But the pain didn't leave me; it increased. With every second that I'm not with her, that I'm not claiming her, I become weaker and weaker, in more and more pain.
"She probably skipped the bachelorettes' dinner because her brother told her to!" Darius keeps yelling, waving his arms in different directions and continuing to walk back and forth.
"She wasn't at the ball!" I raise my voice.
"How would you know?!" He comes closer to me. "You weren't there either! I was looking for you, and you disappeared! And that's after I've told you to stay close and search for her!"
"I'm not your fucking toy!" I yell, looking directly into his eyes, clenching my fists angrily. "I didn't have to talk to every single woman and ask her name! That wasn't the plan!"
"Oh? And what was the plan? To fuck some chick during the coronation?" He scoffs, talking calmer this time, but takes a step to confront me. "Because that's exactly what you did! I know that! And that's the reason we lost her! When will you finally grow up?"
"If you don't stop humiliating me, I'll show you how grown I already am," I groan through my clenched teeth, and Darius takes a step back.
I am ready to start a fight with my brother to prove my point, even though I’m perfectly aware of how wrong I am.
"We'll follow her trail," he says after a long pause. "We'll take our best fighters with us. We'll leave him no way to escape this time."
I knew this was coming. I knew Raphael wouldn't stop. Under no circumstances, even if he finds out that I'm in love with Beatrice, that she's my soul mate, he won't stop until he kills Raphael. Even if I tell him the truth—that she didn't know any of it—he probably won't believe it. Because he’s built up this anger in himself for centuries, and he won't calm down until he gets revenge.
"I know where she is," I say, and my brother looks at me again with interest. "I was the one who traced her through one of the book clubs she's attending. I can find out her address. I'll bring her back."
I can't believe what I just said.
