“Have you ever believed something so completely that you live your life according to that belief? You think, act, make decisions, and speak as though that belief is the absolute truth—nothing else could possibly be right?”
She furrowed her brows thoughtfully. Humming, she replied, “Like a religion?”
Gideon smirked, then nodded. “Yes, but without the ordinances and holiness—more like a deep knowing of what is right and what is wrong, and living according to it.”
“Who doesn’t have something like that? The world is full of people who live by their beliefs, and no one can change their minds. Football fanatics, romance readers, religious zealots—heck, people who believe the Earth is flat.”
He chuckled at that, and she smiled.
“Exactly—their belief cannot be shaken, and there’s nothing that can take that from them, they live and breathe that belief.”
She arched a brow, uncertain where he was going with all this.
“That was me, Kendra,” Gideon confessed, planting his elbows on his knees to cradle his head in his hands.
In that moment, his shoulders hunched, his back bowed, his head cast down…he looked…human.
Chapter Twenty
Rubbing the back of his neck, Gideon let out a sigh so heavy it gave weight to the room.
“I spent thirty-seven years believing that I was untouchable, impenetrable, that nothing could reach me, that I had no flaws, no weaknesses, no vulnerabilities. I was in complete control; nothing could make me deviate from my plans—in business or my personal life…and then I saw you.”
Kendra gasped, eyes wide.
“You can’t be serious,” she blurted. “I’m a nobody!”
Dropping his hands, he turned his head to look at her, and what she saw in his eyes ripped every ounce of defense from her body.
Love.
Pure, unadulterated love.
It filled her to bursting until it poured from her eyes as tears.
“You’re everything to me, wife…” Gideon rasped, his voice like a physical ache.
“Gideon,” she rasped, reaching for him.
Without hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her, and buried his face in her neck, breathing her in.
Into the heated flesh of her neck, he whispered, “I saw you, and everything I ever believed about myself shattered in an instant—and it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know what to do other than push on with my plan—that fucking ridiculous plan—to find a wife and have an heir. All I could think was…this woman…she could so easily defeat me, so I can never let her know just how much control she has over me.”
Kendra sniffed, patting his back. “Oh no, poor Gideon, has to learn to be a grown man with feelings,” she snarked.
He stiffened, pulling away to narrow his eyes at her teasingly. “And it was fucking agonizing!” he grumped. “I know how cliché it all sounds, but that’s the way it was. I didn’t know what any of what I was feeling meant, I only knew that if I couldn’t understand it, I had to hide it, and so I did. I married you but I kept what I felt for you buried beneath prescription sex, long absences, and neglect. And I hated watching that light that first attracted me to you start to dim—but I couldn’t stop myself. It was like a runaway car, flying downhill, headed toward a brick wall, but there wasn’t any way to stop it. Then…it crashed.”
“Because I left you?” she inquired, the bits and pieces of his words beginning to make a smidgeon of sense.
“No, it crashed when Isabella and Adolfo Mancini gave me an ultimatum,” he drawled, rage and predatory lethality burning in his gaze. “Somehow Isabella learned about the prenup, though that wasn’t the smoking gun; she’s cleverer than she looks, and because I’m an asshole and made it my mission to spend as little time as possible with you outside of the house, she caught on to the fact that things weren’t as wholesome as we portrayed to the media. With that information, they set me up to fail with an AI photo scheme, thinking that if they could control me, they could get what they wanted out of me.”
“And what did they want?”
Gideon growled, “Isabella wanted me to divorce you and marry her. She wanted access to my power, my money, and the prestige that came with being the matriarch of the Maddox family.”
So that’s what that bitch meant when she spat venom about divorce at the gala.
“And her father wanted the gravitas and connections that would come with being the father-in-law of Gideon Maddox.”
