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“How did you…when did…”
“When did I find out? This morning, when I went to your office wanting to feel you close to me, without others hovering. I found your files, the ones on Demetrius and Nikolas, then the one of me that spans the majority of the last seven years!”
“Hailey, please calm down,” Stefano stated moving slowly to her side.
“How am I supposed to calm down knowing everything has been a lie from the very start? Why Stefano? Why do all of this? Why come and force me to pretend to be engaged to you…to then marry you? Was it all a game?”
“No, my sweet, darling Hailey, no,” he said gently taking her arm to keep her from walking away as she tried to put space between them. “I know you are confused and hurting but please let me explain. I did not want you to find out this way.”
“You never wanted me to find out at all did you?” she demanded, and he lowered his head slightly shaking it no. “So why do it? Why have someone follow me, reporting to you about everything I’m doing, then come here and make me marry you? It wasn’t about Demetrius at all because if you were truly worried about Olympia and him you wouldn’t have brought him here in the first place not unless you wanted a definite reason to trick me into all of this. So why do it?”
“Because I have…”
“Wanted to sleep with me for years?” she guessed overriding him in her anger. “You just wanted to lay claim on me, right?”
“No, Hailey,agape mou…”
“Don’tcall me that. It means nothing to you,” she cried, and he wrapped his arms around her holding her tightly to stop her hysteria from rising higher.
“If you want answers then you have to let me speak!” he said loudly, his voice forceful but without anger. “Now, yes, I have had someone watching out for you for the last several years. Yes, he’s sent me reports about what you were doing, who was in your life, and made sure you were safe. I can understand you being angry about that, but I have a reason for it all.”
“What? To ensure I didn’t sleep with Demetrius? Do you think you didn’t humiliate me enough that night that you then had to watch and see if I made the same stupid mistake over and over?”
“No, no, my darling, I watched to ensure no one hurt you. I watched to ensure that you were safe because I love you,pethi mou. You own my heart and are my very breath. You have been for longer than you know.”
“You’re lying…you’ve lied to me this entire time. Even after I asked you to not, you still continued to lie to me.” Hailey cried out with her pain, shaking her head at him not wanting to believe his words and face the agony when it turned out to be false.
“Come and sit,” Stefano said softly easing her down into a chair. He lowered himself so he was in front of her, lifting her chin so she could see him clearly. “I love you; I have loved you for seven long years,agape mou. My anger the night I found you in Demetrius’ bed was reprehensible, but it was not directed at you, but myself. I found myself overcome with lust for you, desiring what I saw, and I hated myself for that. Not because you weren’t deserving of my desires, but because you were more deserving of my honor. You were a dear family friend, a sixteen-year-old innocent, and I was lusting after you as though you were my age, and you did not deserve that.”
“So what? You wait a few years and then decide to play the wickedest possible game to take what your brother didn’t get that night?” she asked, her eyes hard as they stared at him.
“No,pethi mou, I did my best to stay away but you kept pulling me back to you. Then the night of Kyra’s eighteenth birthday arrived, and you walked in wearingthatdress. I hated that dress because every other male there could see what you were blossoming into and I wanted it for myself, was still telling myself that it was just lust. You were still seventeen, so I put an ocean between us, but you still controlled my every thought. Kyra sent some photos of the New Year’s party and in one of them…you were kissing a boy your age and Kyra mention that he was your boyfriend. Suddenly I felt a jealousy that I’d never before known, and I knew why I did not want any man to see you the way you were at that party. If I just lusted for you, desired to have your body, I would not care what others thought or saw of it. My jealousy came from loving you Hailey, and with that came the knowledge that I could not push you into loving me. I wanted to come back from Greece and see you, hold you, but I knew I couldn’t. If I did and pressured you, I would lose all respect for myself, but I wanted to know you were safe, so I hired Artemis to watch over you, never to step in unless absolutely necessary…”
“And how often was that?” she asked as her chin quivered. “How many people did you ‘get rid of’ from my life? How many people did you stop me from potentially loving? You took away my choice Stefano! Even when our mothers were pushing for us to set a date you took away my choice there.”
“You could have said no, said to slow down the wedding and our mothers would have listened, they would not have wanted you upset. As for taking away your choice, I gave you six years my darling. I ached and longed for you for six years and in all that time, you did not let anyone close enough to begin to love them. Had you fallen for someone, I would have come to you, shown you that I loved you more, knew you better…”
“Because you’ve spied on me! You don’t know what love is, Stefano…but it’s not this…”
“Damn it, Hailey, I am sorry I’ve upset you by this, but I am Greek, and I was not about to let you be hurt. When we love, we love with our whole selves, so I did what I had to in order to keep you safe, sometimes from yourself, as was the case the night I found you in Demetrius’ bed and again in Paris when you were seeing that fool Jean-Marc. How do you think you discovered his wife, my darling? I ensured you met her so that you would not regret where you were headed.”
“I was not going to sleep with him! I wasn’t going to sleep with anyone until I married…but that’s why you pushed for the wedding, isn’t it? You knew that then and decided why not own me properly, right?”
“Yes, I own you, but it is because you own me! You are not nearly as upset over this as you are over the fact that I did not tell you before now. Your true anger is coming from the fact that you thought I knew of my imminent death and my last words to you were goodbye, that even knowing I would not see another day I could not bring myself to tell you the words you’ve surely known were true. Look me in the eyes and tell me you did not once think I might love you before all of this happened,” Stefano stated feeling her body shake further. “You can’t because you did and you did not leave or push because you feel the same, don’t you, my darling? Your greatest hurt right now is the pain that came when you did not get the words ‘I love you’ on that message, that thinking we would never see one another I could not say it even once.”
“Stop it. You just wanted what no one else had…I asked you before how you knew about Elliot and you lied to my face Stefano. You lied to me…”
“Because I did not want to argue with you over this, you are my every thought and need my darling angel. I wanted to kill that bastard for daring to show his face near you after Artemis’ threat that if he were to come after you, he would be no more. If I were in town when that happened, he would be dead. My sweet Hailey, you know I love you. You knew it when you thought I was dying but didn’t tell you and that is the pain that fills you now. You know what family means to me, yet I was prepared to murder my own brother, flesh, and blood of my beloved mother, for daring to touch you, hurt you. You are the most important part of me. I have done everything in life for you,agape mou.”
“Because you wanted to sleep with me…”
“Desperately,pethi mou, but because I loved you so deeply that you are the only woman for me. From the night of Kyra’s party, until our wedding night, I was celibate. I swear on my father’s life that I am being truthful, my darling. Other women do not interest me, yet one look at your sweet face ignites my need to madness. If I truly only wanted your sweet body I would have returned when you were eighteen or nineteen and taken you, talked you into my arms and bed. But I did not. I spent six years controlling my need, and three months using every bit of that control to wait until our wedding night. The times I nearly pushed too hard, I was thankful for another being near, because I would not trade our wedding night for anything. Be upset and angry if you must but know that I have and always will love you. You are my wife,agape mou, that makes you my world, but you have been the center of it for the longest time.”
“You can’t…”
“Can’t what? Love you? I do my darling angel. Be telling the truth about not sleeping with other women? Why do you think I pressed our mothers to set a quick wedding date? Made it so Grandfather would oversee the barn construction so that we could have it? Why would I buy the perfect house and remodel it to please you, if it were not because I loved you,yineka mou?”
“I…”
