by Maisey Yates
This was what he had meant when he had talked about feeling the texture on the walls. About having a greater sense of the space than he did in a room composed of modern architecture. His home in London had more space, and she imagined that made things easier in some regards.
Nothing for him to trip over, everything set out just so. But there was a richness here, a sense of place that she could not deny.
She would rather deny it. Because she would rather go ahead and just think he was crazy. That he was lost to her completely, and there was nothing of the man she cared for remaining.
Sadly, she didn’t think that was the case. This was Rafe. The man, rather than the near boy she had known. He was successful. He was wealthy. She had read all about how power corrupted, and she had seen it firsthand over the course of her childhood.
She was only sorry to know that Rafe had not been immune.
She shook her head. She should have left him in the realm of fantasy. It would’ve been so much kinder to her poor heart. A heart that already felt so tender due to years of abuse and neglect.
She could have imagined Rafe forever as she wanted to think of him. But no. She had gone to find him. To have one blistering night with him, which had resulted in permanent consequences.
And him proving to be a controlling kidnapper.
The woman paused, then stepped to the side, opening up one of the ornate blue double doors, revealing a study, and Rafe, who was sitting in a wingback chair in front of the fireplace.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, turning to the woman, who had already vanished back into the gloom.
Charlotte sighed, then stepped into the study.
“Nice of you to join me,” Rafe said.
Her heart began to speed up, then, as he looked in her direction, she felt it stall out completely. The way the flames highlighted his face was...intoxicating. Arresting.
His eyes looked black, fathomless. The stubble on his square jaw would be rough to the touch, as she already knew. And then there were his lips... Lips that she knew from experience would soften beneath her own, and then would get firm again as he assumed control. As he parted her lips and slipped his tongue into her mouth...
She felt her face heat, and she bit her cheek, doing her best to keep from making an idiot out of herself by betraying the fact that even now, when he had proven himself to be an undesirable louse, she still desired him.
“Well, much like my joining you here in this castle, I was left with very little choice.”
“Still. It is very nice to put the veneer of civility over all of it, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure why you would care. It certainly isn’t for my benefit. I don’t have very much experience with civilized men. And you...you’re no different. You’re cut from the same cloth as my father, who thought nothing of physically moving me from one place to the other to do his bidding. Congratulations.”
His face went hard as granite. “I am not like your father.”
“Well, you could have fooled me. Dragging me off to a castle...intending to force me into marriage.”
Rafe chuckled, pushing himself up from the armrests so that he was standing. He stepped to the side of the chair, held out his hand in front of the fire, then took a step closer, keeping his hand extended.
“I said nothing about marriage, cara mia.”
She blinked, feeling incredibly stupid. Because he hadn’t. “Well. As you’re currently carrying me off like a marauder because I’m carrying your child—children—I assumed that you had designs on making them legitimate or something.”
He shrugged, a casual and careless gesture. “I’m not legitimate. Why should I care if my children are?”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Obviously, she had assumed that since he had kidnapped her, he wanted to keep her.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with me, does it?”
She felt stupid. So stupid asking that question. And so very uncovered. Like he could see into her soul. See everything that she hoped way down at the bottom of her crushed heart. Because there were things she knew logically. Things she knew about him, about their situation, and about why it wasn’t healthy in any way.
“This has everything to do with power,” he said, his voice hard. It echoed what she had been thinking in the hallway. What she feared more than anything else.
That he wanted control. Whatever that might mean.
“And somehow, you had to take me back to a castle in order to feel like you had any? Honestly, Rafe, if I had not seen the contents of your underwear I would have thought that this had to do with some kind of inferiority complex.”
He laughed at that, which surprised her. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I really hadn’t dealt with any of it mentally or emotionally. I still haven’t.”
“We do not know each other very well,” he said, his dark brows locking together, lines appearing between them.
“I know you better than I know anyone else.” She felt her face getting hot. “You have seen me naked, after all.”
“You can see a great many women naked and never know them—on that you can trust me. You were certainly not the first woman I saw naked.” His lips tipped up, his smile rueful. “You were the last woman I saw naked, though.”
Charlotte didn’t know what to make of that statement. She wasn’t clear on when his accident had happened in relation to their parting. But it must’ve been soon after. Because she couldn’t imagine him pining for her after he had believed that she had...
“Rafe,” she said. “Did you really think that I went off and married somebody else without giving you a thought? Did you really think that I was just amusing myself with you?”
“That’s what rich people do,” he said, his voice hard. “They use those without power as pawns in games that only they know the rules to.”
“And you thought that I...you thought that I was doing that with you. That’s really what you believed?”
“I didn’t believe it. I didn’t until I went to your room and was met by your stepmother. Clearly, she knew about us. Which meant your father did too.”
“And she told you that I...that I betrayed you.”
Pain gripped Charlotte by the throat, squeezing it tight. Of all the things she had imagined as she had spent those years away from him. When she had begun to see articles about his success, it had never occurred to her that he had been led to believe she had not only abandoned him but had told her father about them.
She frowned, icy cold gripping her. “Rafe, how did you escape? My father’s not a forgiving man. And we both knew...being together was risky. I can’t imagine that he would have let you...”
“He did not let me escape,” Rafe said, his tone dark. He turned away from the fire and began to walk toward her. “The only reason I got away from your father’s estate alive is that he thought he had killed me, and by the time he discovered the truth...it was too late for him to do anything about it. It was his intention that I leave in a body bag. And in truth, I essentially did.”
* * *
Rafe hadn’t intended to tell Charlotte the story so quickly. But then, there was no reason not to. Here they were, holed up in this castle for the foreseeable future. He intended to keep them both here until she was ready to give birth. He already had a doctor lined up, and he had paid her a very decent sum to attend to Charlotte and to look the other way if Charlotte were to mention that she was being held captive.
Oh, the power that came with money.
But power aside, they had time. And there was no reason to keep the story secret from her. It was true; the world did not know. But Charlotte might as well. She might as well understand exactly what had happened to him as a result of their assignation.
Yes, she had been in hiding for five years. Yes, it had certainly been difficult for her. But he had suffered greatly. He had lost greatly.
And then, she had been con
sidering keeping his children from him. Another thing that would be stolen from him by the Adair family. He could not reconcile that. He could not endure it.
“When I climbed up to your room your stepmother was there on the balcony, waiting for me.”
“Josefina is a serpent. She always has been.”
“A bit of a cliché,” he said drily. “The wicked stepmother.”
“One I feel she took to heart.”
“She told me you had gone. That you had confessed that I had been coming to your room at night, that you had elected to marry Stefan, who you felt was much more fitting of a woman in your position.”
“How could you have believed her?” Charlotte asked, her voice torn with pain. “I told you that I would have given you everything. You wouldn’t let me give it. I was not unwilling.”
“Because I understood what you did not. That while you might have been willing at the time, you would come to resent me later. For all that you had left behind. For all that you had lost. I was never going to move you straight into similar circumstances, Charlotte, but you were too cosseted to think of such a thing. Because you could not imagine life without a tower.”
“All I wanted was life outside the tower,” she said. “You do me a disservice thinking otherwise.”
“Then I did you a disservice. But it is in the past. And this conversation does not lead up to what you wanted to know. How did I escape?”
He heard her swallow, heard the rustle of fabric, and he wondered if that indicated she was fidgeting. He wasn’t sure what she was wearing today, so he couldn’t be certain of the way the fabric would sound when it moved.
“Tell me,” she said. “I promise I won’t interrupt again.”
“I arrived, and there she was, standing on the balcony. She told me I was too late, and that you had gone. She also told me that your father was going to send guards, and that I would be dealt with. She said I would surely leave the property in a body bag. Her words. She was not wrong. She was smiling... It was very grotesque. She enjoyed my pain. Enjoyed threatening me. Somehow, I think your father had cast some blame on her for our tryst. Because she was the lady of the manor, I suppose, and hadn’t realized I was sneaking into your room. She told me she wasn’t going to allow me to destroy all she had built. Would not allow us to be her downfall. I took a step away from her, and then I looked down over the balcony, and considered that I needed to climb back as quickly as possible and try to escape if I could. Because I knew she was correct. If your father’s men found me, the only way I would leave was as a dead man. But while my focus was turned away...Josefina pushed me over the edge of the balcony. I was not paying attention, or there would have been no way she could have overpowered me. I was about to turn and climb down on my own, and she used that momentum against me.”
He heard an indrawn gasp from Charlotte, a choked, distressed sound. “How did you survive that?”
“A true miracle and mystery,” he said drily. “Though, the fact that I had my momentum broken by a couple of rocky ledges, and then again by the hedge that grows around the perimeter of the villa did help. Still. I sustained a severe head injury. And that swelling damaged my ability to see. For a while, they hoped that the swelling would go down, and that my vision would right itself. They say now that it is incredibly unlikely.”
“But not impossible,” Charlotte said.
“It does not benefit me to think of it as anything but impossible, Charlotte. I have never been one to hope for miracles. Everything I’ve ever gotten has come with bloodied knuckles and no small amount of struggle. My current status being no exception.”
“Who helped you escape?” she asked.
“One of your father’s men found me. Pietro. He was an older man who seemed...weary of the business. I had spoken with him a few times over the years. He used to talk about a woman he left behind when Michael called him in. He also owed your father a favor. He went to the estate, and he never returned home. He never saw the woman he loved again.”
“That’s sad.”
“Life with your father was sad, as you well know. I think...I think he wished he could find his way back to something real again. To life. Love. He was sent down to the bottom of the tower to collect my body, and to have me removed. But when he got down there he discovered that I was still breathing. Though most of my bones were broken, and I was unconscious. He took his life into his hands rescuing me. Covered me with a sheet and told your father that he was off to dispose of me. Instead, he took me to a local doctor that he said we could trust. That man cared for me until I was stable. And then he paid to have me moved to a hospital far away. I was utterly dependent on strangers. My life was in their hands. I despise being helpless. But a broken blind man who would be as good as dead if his employer found out about his existence is as helpless as it gets. I don’t know what became of Pietro when it was discovered that I was not in fact dead. I imagine it didn’t end well for him.” Rafe sighed heavily, thinking of that man and his heavily lined face. One that relaxed only when he spoke of his love. A love Rafe was certain the man had never seen again. “I hope...I only hope that he felt... He missed his humanity. He told me that. I hope that whatever price he paid in the end, he felt that what he did healed him in some way.”
He heard her sit down, the heavy weight of her body as she plopped indelicately onto the settee he knew was positioned at about three o’clock.
“Rafe,” she said softly. “I wish I would have known.”
“Why?” He was truly curious about her rationale.
“Because I would have come to you. I would’ve come to find you. As it was I was off hiding. Hiding, and thinking only of myself. I had no reason to believe that you were in any trouble. I was told that you were fine. But you were off somewhere. And I didn’t doubt it.”
“So you would have come to find me, and then what? We would have been much easier to locate if both of us were in one place. And there would have been no way that I could have ever gone into the public eye if you and I were attached.”
He wouldn’t have cared. That much he knew. All those years ago, he would have taken the risk on her still.
But that would have been a mistake. Because his salvation had not come through Charlotte. It had come through money. It had come through power. Perhaps, the love of wealth truly was the root of all evil, but he would much rather that root be in his possession, something that he could grow and tend at will. Something that he could manipulate for his own ends.
He had been born powerless. And he had remained so until he had come into the position he was in now. It was irrefutable, undeniable.
“I just wish I would have known,” she said. Silence hung between them, and he could hear her labored breathing. “I was very sorry. When I heard. And of course I did. When you became prominent, when you began to make the news, they said you were blind. And I knew it was because of some accident, which the media alluded to. But of course there were no details.”
“There would be no details. Nobody knew what had befallen me. When I went to a hospital, I did not give them the real story. And so there was no way anyone could know. And unless your father purposefully chose to out himself and connect himself to me, there would be no way anyone could know.”
“It was clever of you. Escaping him in that way. Because of that thin facade of respectability that he had. He would have known that he could not touch you. Not out in the open.”
“He found it best to let it be. As it became clear that it was best if the both of us mutually did not acknowledge one another.”
There was no sound then, nothing but the pop and hiss of the fire in the hearth. Then he heard her move, the faint slide of her fingers against skin, then through her hair.
It made him think of how that hair looked unbound. It made him ache. It made him want to shut out the outside world and take her in his arms again.
To erase the past.
But he couldn’t go back. The sun was there. And he was here. Plunged in
to darkness.
“Money is the only real way to control your future, Charlotte,” he said, his tone hard. “It is the leverage that is required to deal with difficult situations in life.”
“True. Why would you talk to somebody when you can stick them in a helicopter and fly them up to a castle and detain them until you decide what to do with them?”
“You were not going to tell me about my child. I had no other choice. You don’t understand. I have been manipulated too many times in my life, and I will not stand for it. Not again.”
He heard her agitation. Her feet shuffling on the marble. Her abrupt shift in position. “How? How have you been manipulated?”
“I believe story time is over,” he said, his voice hard.
“Fine.” He heard the slap of her hands against fabric. “I can’t understand you if you won’t let me. I can’t actually know you if you won’t share with me what there is to know. You were just saying that we didn’t know each other, but you’re not allowing me to.”
“It is unnecessary for the situation that we find ourselves in. We are not children playing at games of love anymore. We are having children that are going to come into a world where their father cannot see. I can leave nothing to chance. Not even you.”
“So you’re not going to trust me. You’re not going to trust that I won’t keep your children from you?”
“No,” he said without hesitation.
“There is nothing I can do to change that?”
He gritted his teeth, so hard that they began to ache. “Charlotte, I trust no one but myself. That which I can manipulate with my own two hands. It has been proven to me that unless I seize control of something it will not be as I wish. It has been proven to me time and time again.”
And with that, he walked out of the room. He knew the layout of this castle better than just about anything on earth. The map of the place inscribed upon his soul. It had been his mission upon purchasing it. To create a sizable domain that he could maneuver about with ease. And so, there were very specific instructions given to every member of staff. Everything was positioned just so. To the centimeter, exactly like the Braille map he had memorized when he had first purchased it.
