Oh, Jesus Christ.
“Tell your men to stand down,” my father is saying. “We’re not here to make trouble, I’m here only to take my daughter back.” His eyes are fierce and cold. I have never seen him like that. He looks like a stranger. My great-grandmother on my mother’s side was Chinese, and she used to teach me a lot of proverbs when I was small. One of them was: human beings are full of secrets. You can eat salt with a person for seven years and never know them. That is what I felt watching my father at that moment.
Brand laughs. “You mean you’re not here for revenge. You don’t want to see me dead. I kidnapped your daughter. I made a fool of the great Jake Eden.”
I rush into the room. “Dad,” I call.
My father looks at me and I see a flash of something I recognize. It is what I have seen all my life. Love. “Get out, Liliana” he says.
“No,” I say coming further into the room. “I’m not a child. I want to have my say in this.”
“Get out, Liliana,” Brand says.
“No.” I take another step closer to Brand. I know Brand will never fire on my dad, but I saw it in my dad’s eyes that he would be more than willing to kill Brand.
“Liliana,” my father calls, his voice is harsh. “This is an order and not up for discussion. Go back out. Now. This is between Brand and me.”
“No, Dad, this is not between just you and Brand. This involves me too. Brand is John the gardener’s son, Dad. Remember him? I got him fired. It was my fault. It was just an innocent kiss. I should never have come crying to you. I made it sound worse than what it was. Because of us something terrible happened to Brand after that, Dad.”
My father keeps his aim steady on Brand.
“Dad, if you hurt Brand, I will never be able to live normally again. I will feel guilty for ever. Is that what you want for me? Please, Dad. I’ve forgiven him for kidnapping me. You just have to forgive him too. He didn’t mistreat me. He wasn’t cruel or anything like that. He just made a mistake the same way I made a mistake. Just look at me, Dad.”
Then, before my dad can respond, a freaky thing happens, one of Brand’s men bursts through the door with a gun in his hand. He comes through with such momentum, he slams into the kitchen table, and dislodges a bullet. It should have just made a hole in the ceiling, but it ricochets off a metal pipe and tears into the flesh of my stomach.
The sensation of being shot is like having a white-hot poker in your flesh. The pain is unimaginable. I scream and the impact of the bullet throws me to the ground.
After that everything seems to happen in slow motion. Other men run in. The panic and confusion is surreal. Brand forgets my dad, flings his gun to the ground and runs towards me. His face is stricken and white as a sheet. He lifts my upper body on to his lap. He is so shocked he can’t even speak. My Dad on the other hand does not come to him. He is on the phone straight away to call the helicopter to get to the farmhouse. As soon as that call is over he contacts the best surgeon in London whom he has apparently already flown down in his private jet to be on standby. He even seems to know which hospital I will be taken to.
I start to feel woozy. I call my Dad. Ignoring Brand, he crouches in front of me. “Help is on its way. You’re going to be just fine,” he says calmly.
I can feel the blood pouring out of me. “Am I going to die?”
Brand tightens his hold on me. “No, you’re not going to die. I won’t let you die.”
“Dad, you know how much I hate to see blood, right?”
He touches my hair. “Don’t look down, darling. Just don’t look down. Everything is going to be fine.” When he presses his lips together I see the skin around his mouth is white.
I look into my father’s eyes. “When I’m out, don’t hurt him, Dad. I love him. I’ve always loved him.”
My father’s eyes widen with shock. “He’s a criminal, Liliana.”
“He can change,” I whisper. I can feel the pain receding.
“Criminals don’t change their spots,” he says harshly.
I start to feel woozy. “Dad, remember when you told me the story of the prostitute and the monk?”
He stares at me. “I didn’t think you actually listened to any of my stories.”
“I did. Am I the monk or the prostitute?”
Tears come into his eyes. “Okay, Liliana. Okay. I trust you.”
“I’m just going to sleep for bit. Don’t you two fight now.”
“No, no sleeping,” Dad booms. “You must stay awake, darling.”
“Talk to me, babe,” Brand says. I look into his eyes. The edges of my vision are getting blurred, but they never completely blur because between Brand and my dad, I never get to sleep until we arrive at the hospital.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Brand
I feel like a man broken. I can see Liliana’s father striding up and down the small waiting room floor making calls, arranging things, reassuring his family, talking to other professionals in their field about Liliana’s subsequent care, but I can’t even move. For the first time in my life I feel completely helpless. I look again at my hands in surprise. They are still shaking. Her blood is still on them.
I know she will make it, but the shock of seeing her being shot still makes me feel nauseous. My God, she could have died. My God, I could have lost her. I swallow hard and stand. Jake Eden immediately turns his head in my direction. For the longest time we stare at each other.
“What do you want?” I growl finally. I’m not giving Liliana up. Not for him. Not for anyone.
His expression is hard. “You have something of mine. Where is it?”
I know instantly he is talking about his ring. “It’s in England. At my home.”
“I’m sending someone to your house now. Will you arrange for it to be handed to them?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“Sit down. We might as well get this over with.”
I immediately become defensive. Every sinew in my body hardens. I know he is going to try to convince me to give up Liliana. “What?”
He sits down. “I want to apologize.”
Suspicious of his real intentions I take a seat opposite him and cross my arms over my chest. “You do?”
“Yes, my apology to you is long overdue. However, over the years I have ensured that I continually made up for the losses that I cost you.”
My eyes widen. “What?”
He shrugs. “You’re twenty-four and insanely wealthy. Do you think that it is all by your own doing? The business you are in was how I began my career. I know it like the back of my hand. Have you never wondered why it was so easy for you to break in, or did you just think it was pure luck?”
“I …”
“It is also a bloody path, and yet you seem to have been shielded from most of the turf wars that you should have fought by now. There are numerous times you should have even lost your life. Have you never wondered why it has been so easy for you?”
The truth in his words begins to dawn on me. My path has been rocky, but not as bloody as it should have been. “What the fuck are you really saying?”
His next words shock the life out of me. My head starts pounding. I stare at him in astonishment.
He leans his wide frame back on the back of the chair. “I am that person you were always so keen to meet, Brand. I am Victor Maeterlinck.”
“What the …? You are Victor Maeterlinck?” I repeat in disbelief. Victor Maeterlinck was a legend and a mystery. No one had ever met him. He was rumored to be a Belgian living in Monaco. Some said he was a fat, round thing who incessantly smoked cigars, others said he was six foot six. He was also my boss. Over the years he had passed a lot of big jobs to me through intermediaries.
He nods.
I shake my head in disbelief. “All these years I’ve actually been working for you.”
“Yes, life is a funny old thing. After I got married I knew things had to change and I’d always liked the idea of running an invi
sible empire. So much harder to unravel and deniability is such a good thing.”
I stare at him. The irony was not lost on me. All these years I’ve spent hating Jake Eden and I was working for him! “Does Liliana know?”
“Of course not. No one knows.” He moves closer to me. “It’s a secret, Brand. And now you’re in on it too.”
I feel a flare of pride. Jake had trusted me his big secret. “Why did you do all this for me?”
He shrugs again. “It was my way of saying sorry. I fired your Dad in a fit of temper, but when I cooled down I knew I had done the wrong thing. Especially when news of your mother’s death filtered back to me. Your father was a good man and a good employee so I looked for him, but he died in prison exactly a week after he went in. What else was I to do but take over the job of being your father? Remember that first offer you had to go straight. To have your education paid for. That was me. But you refused.”
“Yes,” I look into his eyes. “I wanted to be like you.”
“After that I made it my business to protect you,” he says, “and connected you. Remember Marcus? He met you in Leicester and he introduced you to this world. It wasn’t an accident. I sent him to you too. He nurtured you on my behalf. However, from now on and based on what you have done to my daughter, I consider us both even. My daughter thinks she is in love with you, but we will see. I am hoping it is an infatuation.”
At that moment, a doctor enters the room and Jake immediately walks up to him. “How is she?” he asks.
The doctor smiles. It is clear they are old friends. “She’ll be just fine, Jake.” He turns to me. “Are you Brand?”
I nod.
“She’s called your name a couple of times.”
Tears fill my eyes. Never have I been so overwhelmed and confused all at once, but if there are any lessons I have learned from life is that everything happens for a reason. Fate put her in front of me to tempt me. And now Fate has brought her back to me. I would do it all again for her.
All I want to do now is to put my arms around her and hold on to her until we become old and decrepit and even after we are dead I want us to be buried in the same grave. Our flesh disintegrating, our bones entwined.
Chapter Fifty
Liliana
I touch my father’s hand. “How did you find me so fast?”
“Fast? Hell, Liliana, do you know what one and a half weeks of hell feels like?”
“I’m so sorry, Dad. I never meant to hurt you. I thought I came up with a believable story. I thought I could protect Mum.”
“Believable?” He snorts.
“Don’t make me laugh. It hurts when I laugh.”
His cellphone rings. He looks at it and smiles. “Your mother just touched down in France. Shane and Dom are with her and they’ll be here in half an hour.”
I smile back. “Good. How did Mum take it?”
He frowns. “Terribly. I was scared for her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. Everything will be all right now that we’ve found you.”
“How did you find me?”
“When it comes to the underworld no one has better connections than I do. One of Brand’s men boasted about the kidnap to a prostitute. She wanted the reward and I wanted the information.”
“Dad, why was my story not believable? You did go behind my back and get me that internship and I had every right to be angry and go off on a sulking trip to Spain.”
“You called me Daddy. You haven’t called me Daddy since you were five years old, honey.”
“Oh.” I bite my bottom lip. “Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to forgive Brand one day? Maybe?”
He keeps his face expressionless. “Maybe. One day.”
“He’s been through a terrible time, Dad. They did unimaginably horrible things to him after he left our house.” I start to sob.
My Dad strokes my head gently. “Hey, stop that. I will forgive him one day, but it will take time. He kidnapped my baby. If anything had happened to you …” He stops, takes a deep breath, and forces a smile. “Believe me, if he had been anybody else I would have torn his fucking throat out.”
“I really love him, Dad.”
“Are you sure? Don’t rush into anything. You have been through an ordeal. You think you’re in love with your captor, but things might look different in time. You just need a bit of time to heal.”
I reach up and touch my father’s face. “Dad. You know how you feel about, Mum? Do you think you will ever change your mind?”
“It’s different.”
“No, it’s not. Remember when you told me you don’t choose love it chooses you. That’s exactly what happened to both of us. All these years I was waiting for him and he was waiting for me. We are perfect together. You’ll see.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Brand
I come into the room and her whole face lights up in a bright smile, but I feel sick to my stomach. She looks so damn pale. She lifts her arm in a beckoning gesture. I walk up to the side of the bed.
“I’m so sorry, Liliana. Somehow I managed to get you hurt again.”
“Don’t be silly. It had nothing to do with you. It all started when a boy called Pierre told me the best way to a man’s heart is to get helpless. He suggested breaking an arm or a leg. So of course, I thought I’d go one better and get myself shot in the stomach.”
I try to smile, but I can’t.
“Come on, Brand.”
“That Pierre should mind his own damn business and watch his mouth while he’s at it. Giving crap advice to other men’s girlfriends.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, my goodness. You just called me your girlfriend. I think I like that very much.”
“Think you like that better than wife?”
Her eyes nearly pop out of their sockets. “What? You’re going to make an honest woman out of me, Brand Vaughan.”
I shuffle my feet. “Yeah, I’m going to make an honest woman out of you, Liliana Eden.”
She grins. “You’re going to get an engagement ring for me and everything?”
“Um …I got one already.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Really? When did you do that?”
“I bought it seven years ago. I was passing a shop and I saw this ring and it was the exact same color as your eyes so I bought it and kept it. I told myself I was just doing it because it was beautiful, but I guess my heart always knew.”
She entwines her fingers with mine. “You know, I’m almost afraid this is a dream and I’ll wake up.”
“This is no dream, Princess.”
“Then I swear I am the luckiest person alive.”
“Nah, you’re going to have to fight me for that title. Because nobody is luckier than me. I got the woman of my dreams.”
She looks up at me saucily. “Yes, I have to agree with you. You are very, very lucky to have me. I’m a bit of a catch, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are. Hey, I wanted to ask you something. What was that reference you made to the story of the Monk and the prostitute?”
She pats the space next to her. “Come on. Make yourself comfortable. It’s a good story. I have to warn you though that in this story you are playing the part of the prostitute.”
I gingerly perch next to her and she begins her story.
“In ancient India, monks were not allowed to hang around in any area for too long. The reason for this being that they lived by begging for food and didn’t want to become a burden on the poor villagers. The only time they would double down in one area was during the monsoon season which lasted for about three months. At that time the mountain passes were impossible to cross so they had no choice but to stay with one household.
“Before the season started all the monks would go to the head monk’s hut and tell him who they were planning to stay with. That was when one of the monks announced he had been invited to stay with the local prostitute
.
“All the other monks were suitably scandalized. How can a monk stay with a prostitute in a one room house? She would be a bad influence on him. There would be too many temptations in his path. Her ways were godless. Even the head monk wondered if it was a good idea.
“But the monk who had been invited remained calm. He said he didn’t see what the fuss was all about. He was a monk because he believed his way was the best way to live in this world, but if the prostitute’s way was better then there was no reason for him to be a monk. In the end the head monk agreed to let him stay with the prostitute.
“For three months the monk lived with the prostitute. During this time she plied her trade. Men came. She danced. There was music and alcohol and fine food served. All the other monks were worried about the state of the monk.
“Once the three months were up, the monk went to see the head monk and with him he had a new recruit. The prostitute had decided to become a monk.”
“Your father told you this story?”
“Mmm…”
I nod. “It’s a good story.”
“You’re only a criminal because you don’t know a better way, Brand. There is a better way for us and we’ll find it together.”
I look at her in awe. At this amazing woman who agreed to be mine.
“What does a woman have to do around here to get kissed?”
I bend my head and kiss her. She smells of medicine and chemicals, but the magic is still all there and it makes me burn with desire. “I love you,” I whisper into her sweet mouth.
“I love you much, much more,” she says, tightening her grip on my hand. “Even right now as I speak to you … my heart feels like it’s melting. Even my feet, they feel like they’re not really on the mattress. It’s like I’m floating … in this … in this bubble of ridiculously delicious heat and joy and … magic.”
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