“Because I love you,” he blurted and my lips parted. A tear ran down his cheek and he shook his head. “I love you and as you saw, I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t do anything to stop him from threatening you and I couldn’t kill the fucker because he would have killed you first. Yesterday I told you I had someone I was going to marry. He killed her. Right in front of me, he killed her. I can’t let that happen to you.”
Shock flew through me.
Pure shock.
My head was already spinning from hearing him tell me he loved me, but hearing that too was unreal. It filled the gaps of what Balthazar had said earlier. I understood now what he meant.
Xander reached out and touched my face.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “But, I love you too, and I can’t just sit back and do nothing.”
“Jia, you have to. This is best. You were the innocent, never supposed to be caught in the tangled mess. Never. You need to get out of it. I love you, so I have to let you go.”
“No… I love you too.” The tears came again. The other day I cursed myself for always crying. I couldn’t control them today.
“Then let me go... Let me go, Jia.”
My hands were on his shirt. He meant for me to let go physically, andemotionally.
Let him go.
“Please…bellezza,” He whispered. It was the first time he’d ever called me that.
My shoulders shook and something inside me shattered.
My fingers loosened, coming free of his shirt and …I let him go.
I let him go and it felt like he slipped from my grasp.
He turned away from me and went back into the elevator.
He pressed the button and the doors closed shut.
Sealing him in, sealing him away from me.
Gone…
He was gone.
Just like he never existed.
Chapter 16
Xander
Five years ago…
“We go in and out. Like we were never there,” Claire ordered pointing to the map of the factory like facility on the mountainous range.
She’d placed it up against the stone wall of the bomb shelter we were hiding out in.
I looked over the area she’d pointed to and got that tense feeling I’d had all day.
Everyone looked tense. They looked like how I’d felt.
I felt lumbered with their tension and my own. Tension for the mission we were about to go on and why.
It was the first time that any of us had been taken. Captured.
