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I gasped.
My eyes stung with tears.
With a shaking hand, I covered the thin white scar on his throat. “Zeno…”
“Yves was having a meeting in the pub with some of his associates. They stepped out when they heard screams and he found me in the alleyway, lying in a pool of my own blood.” No longer here, Zeno’s eyes harboured a distant touch as he relived this terrible memory. “I saw Yves through a blurry vision, grabbing my hands and telling me it was going to be okay. I think he was reciting a prayer. People on the streets approached when they saw the commotion, and there was a doctor amongst them who saved my life. Yves said I kept calling himpapaand begging for him to take the pain away. I don’t remember how I got from lying on the dirty ground to a hospital room, but I woke up to stitches and Yvesstillholding my hand.”
A tear slipped out of my eye and Zeno kissed it. “I’m okay, Darla. You don’t have to cry for me.”
“I hurt for you. I can’t believe you went through all of that at such a young age. You didn’t deserve it, Zeno. You were a child. It pains me to know that you almost died and experienced such a vivid horror.”
I couldn’t imagine a world where this man didn’t exist. Knowing he barely survived was gut-wrenching.
Zeno hugged me tighter and continued with his story. “Yves showed me patience and kindness when no one in my life ever had. He was gracious enough to bring me to his home—an orphan he knew absolutely nothing about—until I recovered from my injury. I spent a week with Yves, Céline, and Ben, who were in France to visit their family. They must have seen me as a kindred spirit and chose to adopt me. Before I knew it, the paperwork was complete and I officially became Zeno Gianni De la Croix. Two weeks later, I hopped on their private jet and began my new life, right here in Montardor.” Zeno sighed and glanced skyward. “I’m indebted to the De la Croixes forever. They gave me affection, protection, and showed me that family is not defined by blood. It is defined by the people who love and accept you despite all your flaws.”
“I’m so happy you found your family, Zeno,” I said, wishing I had more words to express what I was feeling. “But God, I am still so sorry for everything you went through.”
“Don’t be. Everything happens for a reason. After almost dying, I learned to appreciate life to the fullest. I lived through the pain, let it shape me into who I am today, but it does not define me. I am more than the image I portray to the world and I will never be less than the man who will do everything in his power to protect the people he loves.”
With those words, Zeno bloomed into an even better version of himself in my eyes.
A small part of me was conflicted, though. I wanted to hate him for the blackmail, but a bigger part of me understood that my husband would not harm me or my family.
Because it would hurt me…and he cared for me.
“Thank you for trusting me enough to talk about this.” I framed his face. “I would never judge you for your past.”
“Yet you would for my present?”
If it boiled down to one thing, we were all sinners.
The volume and the depth of our sins differed, but at the end of the day, we all made mistakes.
No one in this world was faultless.
I made many mistakes in the past and my family’s wealth and status ensured I remained untouchable.
The De la Croixes had undoubtedly amassed many skeletons over the years and while Zeno may be regarded as a bad man, he was good to me.
That was all that mattered.
So I told him the truth.
“I will never judge you, Zeno.”
He knifed up with me in his lap and fused our lips together in a searing kiss. “I’d take an infinite amount of knives to the throat if it meant changing the course of my destiny so I could find you.” His mouth glided down my neck with franticness, stamping over my pulse. “Ask me for anything and it’s yours, Darla.”
Turbulent emotions coalesced together in the centre of my being. Time was measured by the kisses he planted over my delicate skin, creating a constellation of fevered promises. I was his altar and he was a man in the middle of worship.
“Tell me what you would do if something ever happened to me.”
He felt the heaviness of the statement.
And when he spoke, his words heated and tortured, everything the fortune teller said suddenly made sense.
“I’d burn the whole world to the fucking ground.”
CHAPTER 29
