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“We found it!” shouted Maggy from afar. “The tunnel, we found it! We’ve made it all the way to the docks!”
"No? Really?" We stared at the two of them in disbelief. Maggy joined us and held one of the papers under our noses, showing the discovered underground routes under New York's street grid. With her finger, she followed a red line leading from the lower fifth of Central Park to just before the Hudson River between West 45thand West 46thStreet.
Cheers broke out in our hiding place. It was the first step in the right direction. Everyone laughed. Emma and Aspasia were in each other’s arms. Kissed each other and were happy about this success.
Jack stood next to me and grinned at me meaningfully. Maggy apparently trusted him so much that she had brought him here. The escaped women didn't seem to notice him.
“We did it,” he announced proudly.
"Well, accomplished might be the wrong word, Jack." I laughed. "But we're a little closer to our goal than yesterday."
Suddenly, his face became quite serious, and he moved closer to me.
“I’m sorry for what you had to witness at the gala,” he whispered, watching me.
I nodded, not wanting to think about it again, let alone discuss it.
“But believe me, Myrina. We will free all the abducted women. I promise you,” he swore.
“Thank you, Jack,” I returned as quietly as possible, and the faith in our mission strengthened in me. We really could do it!
CHAPTER 34
It’s just for tonight,” his voice echoed darkly and harshly through my being, filling me with an unquenchable fire that flowed crackling through my veins and made me burn inside.
The darkness that enveloped me flooded me with memories of the scent of rosemary, lemons, red roses, and something, even now, I could not interpret. Waltzing sounds carried me as if on clouds, and a starry sky appeared above me.
"That was not reality! You're not real!" I shouted towards the music, pressed my hands over my ears, and closed my eyes. I didn't want to hear it anymore than I wanted to hear him. It had only been a hallucination, and even now, it was only a dream created to torment me.
“You know very well that’s not true,” he contradicted softly in my head. “Don’t lie to yourself, Myrina.”
But it was so much easier to believe my family and friends that I had imagined the garden and everything that had happened there. That it was a protective mechanism of my body, set up to protect me from what had really happened, what was supposed to hurt me. The witnessed murder of another woman and the loss of Charly and Anne.
It didn't matter which one of these experiences corresponded to reality. Both caused me unbelievable suffering. Because his rejection, coldness, and ultimate indifference toward me literally tore me apart and left my heart in ruins.
To dismiss the intimate moment on the roof terrace as a hallucination had been the only way to declare my heart as whole again, to deny the pain as irrelevant. I had come to this conclusion this morning before I went to bed and tried not to think about him anymore.
But apparently, my subconscious saw it differently and challenged me as well as my mind anew.
“It’s not me who’s lying. It’s you,” I hissed angrily. I would not give in so easily to these seductions again. I would not make that mistake a second time.
“Myrina,” he breathed softly against my ear. “Open your eyes, Haye.”
Confused, I let the last word resonate within me. That was what Mr. Baldur had called me when he had saved me from the two men. Haye.
Tentatively, I lifted my eyelids and looked into liquid gold that held so many emotions. Tenderness, relief, happiness, fear, anger, and sadness. The sight was so overwhelming that I had to reach out and gently place my hand on his cheek.
Surprise glowed in his features, only briefly closing his eyelids and leaning warmly into my touch.
“What on earth are you doing to me?” he sighed softly, only to open his eyes again afterward, which now held another feeling: Desire. Startled, I sucked in the air, reflecting exactly what I was feeling. Ever since I had first seen him in his black tuxedo at the first gala, it was this desire, the lust, that nearly drove me out of my mind. An endless longing for him.
Knowingly, he smiled at me hesitantly. He could read the same in my eyes as I could in his. Dismayed by this realization, I hastily pulled my hand away and stepped back. No, this could not be. I was engaged to Alex. I had sworn allegiance to him and couldn't forgive myself if I broke that vow. For what? For a man who was either not real or already taken?
“We can’t!” I stammered. “We’re not allowed to feel this. We’re bound. You to Zuri and me to Alex.”
My words put a dark veil over his shining eyes, dimming their golden color and hurting me more than my own unfulfilled longing.
"Do you love him?" he asked, almost as if he didn't want to hear the answer.
