Confused, she stares at me for a few seconds before she drops her towel and slips my shirt over her head. When she’s dressed, I sit on the bed and lean against the headboard. I then take her hand and pull her onto my lap so she’s facing me.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Trying to talk to you about something I’ve been avoiding.” My hands fall to her thighs, gripping them gently. “And I need to . . . I need to hold you when I tell you.”
“What’s going on?” she asks, now looking scared. “Does this have to do with the threats we received before the wedding? Is that why you left? To distract them? Make them think that the wedding was off so they didn’t hurt us?”
I shake my head.
“So then you just left . . . no reason other than what you wrote? You really couldn’t handle being with me?” Her eyes well up, and I smooth my hands over her thighs.
“No, Lilly. I wanted to marry you. I was dead set on watching you walk down that aisle toward me.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
I take a deep breath. Here goes . . .
“That night, I went to get in bed, when . . . when something struck me from behind.”
“What?” she asks.
“I was tased. The electric shock brought me down to my goddamn knees. Then a few men came up behind me, one held a gun to my head, and they forced me to write that letter to you.”
“Wait.” She sits back, her expression trying to make sense of this. “But we had guards at your room. Ottar was watching over you. How could a bunch of guys sneak in? That makes no sense.”
Fear creeps up my spine because she’s right. It makes no goddamn sense, yet it still happened.
I want her to believe me.
I need her to believe me, so in a controlled voice, I continue, “There are secret passageways throughout Strombly. There was an inside source working on the job who must have told them about the passageways because they came through one in the sapphire room and dragged me out of it.”
She sits still on my lap, staring at my chest, her brows pinched together as she tries to comprehend all of this. “You didn’t leave me because you weren’t ready to marry me?”
“No,” I say, cupping her cheek, but she pushes my hand away and gets off my lap. Fuck . . . “Lilly.”
Seething now, she stands in front of me, her chest heaving.
I can’t tell if she believes me.
All I can see is the raging anger pumping through her as she stares at me, her hands clenched at her side. Finally, she says, “Then why thefuckdidn’t you say that the minute you saw me?”
“Because I thought you were with someone else. I thought you moved on.”
“Then you don’t fucking know me at all.” She pounds her hand against her chest, tears forming in her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Keller. I thought I wasn’t worthy enough to give up everything.” She shoots her arm out to the side. “I thought that the love of my goddamn life just walked out on me because I wasn’t worth the time and aggravation and complications. I withered away into nothing on my bed because of it. I had to be brought back to life by Runa, and you bring me here and make me believe that you were on some fishing trip or just living the good life down here on the island. You should have told me immediately. The minute I opened my eyes, you should have told me.”
“I didn’t want your sympathy,” I yell at her as I stand as well. “I was fucking taken, Lilly. I lived in a stone-walled cell, chained to a goddamn wall. I was whipped, beaten, and burned for the hell of it.” Her eyes widen as her hand covers her mouth. “I was tortured every goddamn day knowing that you were left behind, that you thought I didn’t want to marry you. And to top it off, I had newspaper clippings dropped off in front of me to read about how you were with another fucking man. So yeah, I didn’t tell you right away because I wanted you to want to be with me for no other reason than you wanted me.”
Her lip trembles as tears spill over her eyes and onto her delicate face. “I’ve always wanted you, Keller. Always.” She wipes away the tears with the pads of her fingers, and without another word, she walks out of the bedroom and out to the back patio, shutting the door behind her.
ChapterThirty-One
“What do you want?” I ask Pickering when he comes into my office.
“King Magnus is on the phone, and he’s not happy.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Where’s my brother?”
Pickering shrugs. “Last I saw him, he was smoking a cigar on the balcony.”
