“So, you told him?”
“One night, yeah.” His voice turns tight and strained. “He confronted her, and she denied everything. Made me look like I was exaggerating, or lying, or unstable.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.” His eyes darken. “She exposed herself.”
“How?”
His throat flexes. “My father caught her hitting me. With a baseball bat.”
“Oh my God.” My stomach flips.
“I’d just stumbled over her darkest secret and found out she was having an affair and pregnant with another man’s child. They got divorced shortly after. It was ugly. My father sent us to England to live with my grandparents to escape it, but we stayed there longer for the break.”
The breath leaves my lungs in a staggered rush. I don’t even realize my hand is shaking until he glances at it.
“I’m so sorry.” My voice breaks. “I can’t believe she did that to you. And you protected your brothers through all of it.”
“I had to.” His gaze drops, and for a moment, I see it—the fracture beneath all that steel and the wound that never healed right. “All the rage I used when I played football… that was me unleashing. It felt good when they christened me the Monster. It gave me control I never had as a kid, and I wore it like armor. I was the same, probably worse, when I started at Vale Global.”
A dull thud echoes through my chest, and my fingers curl in on themselves as a shard of truth pierces my heart. My father broke that cool edge of control. He and the scandal.
Knox must read every thought racing across my face, because he steps forward, his movement slow and careful, like he’s approaching something fragile he’s terrified of damaging.
His hands close firmly around mine, grounding me. “Hey,” he murmurs, voice low but steady. “Don’t go there.”
I blink up at him. “Go where?”
“I know what you’re thinking.” His thumbs sweep gently over my knuckles, rough and soft all at once. “Your father… what happened with him… none of that touches this.” He holds up our hands to the light.
My throat tightens. “Doesn’t it?”
“No, love. The past is the past. Mine. Yours. All of it.” He gives my hands one more reassuring squeeze and a small, mischievous smile tugs at his mouth. “Right now, we should keep walking. I’m sure we have a lot more to talk about. I could tell you about the time I got drunk in college and woke up in the back of a truck full of chickens enroute to Budapest.”
A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it, cutting straight through the heaviness in my chest. Only Knox could casually drop something like that after revealing the darkest part of his past. He smiles at me, like he enjoys the sound of my laughter.
“How on earth did that happen?”
“I’ll tell you the parts I remember. And what happened after.” He slides an arm around my waist, gently steering me forward down the moonlit path.
The night wraps around us, and as we walk and he talks, I feel like maybe wecouldleave the past behind us.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Knox
Italy lingersin my head like a dream I’m not ready to wake from.
Every morning since Isla and I got back to New York, I’ve clung to the memories of our time together.
I didn’t want to leave the life we slipped into so easily. But mostly, I didn’t want to leave the version of us we created there.
For two weeks, Isla was mine in a way that felt outside the rules of who I’m supposed to be.
It was just us. No boardrooms. No meetings. No expectations. Just her laughter, her body tangled with mine, and her stubborn heart softening every time she curled into me at night.
Now we’re back, and I have to step into the shoes of the Knox Vale everyone knows. The businessman who carries the weight of a billion-dollar empire like it’s part of his anatomy.
