I follow her gaze. Izabella and Leonardo are standing just inside the door. Izabella’s face is drawn. Leonardo looks furious.
How similar they look, my mother and Izabella. So groomed. So composed. So perfect. Like cut flowers cultivated for a vase. Pretty to look at, but their petals have no smell. They’ve been brought up to accept their fate. Not like Zoe. She’s a wildflower, a rose that smells sweet like a rose should. She’s authentic.
Leonardo must’ve told his family what Zoe means to me, yet Izabella hasn’t run. She’ll never run because of another woman. She’ll turn a blind eye and the other cheek, over and over, just like my mother does, no matter how many times my father comes home smelling of whores and infidelity.
Then it strikes me. That’s what makes Zoe different from the women facing me. She believes in love. She believes in something beautiful. Not convenience or money or duty or a business deal. She believes in the real thing, the once-in-a-lifetime kind of love you find with a soul mate. That’s how she survived, how she managed to stay afloat in family violence and poverty. That’s how she survived me.
Fuck me.
That’s her secret, the knowledge I was chasing so hard, the hope I wanted to steal.
The answer is love.
I’m incapable of love, but I want hers. I want it more than anything. If I don’t find her, there’s no hope for me. If I don’t get her back, my happiest moments will be confined to the stolen years we spent together.
I don’t fucking think so.
Trying to hold me back by grabbing a handful of my jacket in her fist, my mother says, “Maxime, if you walk out of here now, I’ll never forgive you.”
I couldn’t give a damn.
Jerking free, I make my way down the porch steps with long strides.
“Your father will disown you,” my mother calls behind me. “Is that what you want?” When I don’t stop, she goes for the ultimate insult. “You’re behaving shamefully, like a lovesick puppy, not the respectable head of your father’s business.”
Her words still me. I pause with my hand on the door handle of the car.
I guess she’s right. In a way, this is my own kind of loving.
Just not the selfless kind.
I’m going after Zoe with everything I’ve got.
Chapter 2
Zoe
Our flight lands just after ten at night. Stepping from the plane onto South African soil is like an out-of-body experience. I feel lost and unanchored. This is home, and it’s not. I’ve become a stranger to my homeland and a stranger to myself. The woman who returns is nothing like the girl who left.
Seeming to understand my hesitation, the man my brother sent to rescue me from France, Russell Roux, takes my elbow and steers me through the throng of people toward the exit. Thankfully, I only have the bag I checked into hand luggage. We can make our way straight to the parking where an SUV waits.
I look at the familiar, yet unfamiliar, dark landscape as he drives. So much has changed in almost three years. There are more buildings and less open land. The roads and signposts are different. It’s as if my world has moved on without me while I was stuck in a very bad dream. A bittersweet dream. Despite the bad, there was also the kindness, like when Maxime got me into one of the most reputable fashion designing schools in France or the time he told his cousin, Sylvie, to befriend me. He might’ve gone about it the wrong way, using his power instead of allowing me to win these things on my own merit, but he did it because he wanted me to be happy. The lies and deceit of his twisted methods hurt, but his intentions weren’t always bad. All those tender moments we shared when he made himself vulnerable and opened up to me to teach me how to open up to him had to have meant something. At least that’s what I choose to believe. The alternative is much too devastating and bleak for my heart to survive.
I made it this far. I got away from Maxime Belshaw, a French mafia boss who enjoyed toying with me by playing cruel games. Europe and everything that happened there are behind me. From here, I can only grow stronger.
Russell takes the road to the Vaal River and stops in front of a quaint cottage with a private jetty lit by a row of walkway lamps. The dark silhouette of a man is visible in the porch light. He stands by the rail, his hands shoved into his pockets, waiting. I’d recognize that tall, indestructible frame with the permanent tension in the shoulders anywhere.
Damian.
The stance throws me right back into the past to a boy who expected the worst from the people who was supposed to love us, a boy who always had to be ready to defend himself against violence and prejudice. Like a puppy kicked too many times, he grew up into a vicious dog. For the most part, he was a mistrusting and cynical adolescent, but the Damian I remember before he went to jail had hope and ambition. Who is the man today? How does being locked behind bars for a crime one didn’t commit change a person?
Russell unlocks the doors. A part of me wants to run to my brother while another part can’t get out of the car. Time and everything that filled up that time hold me back. We haven’t seen each other in seven years. For six of those, he’s been in prison. I’ve spent three in my own prison, and it changed me. I’m out of place, and I’m scared. Damian and I will be strangers to each other, but Russell is waiting, so I get out and pause.
There’s more to my hesitation than just my trepidation. I don’t want to put Damian in danger. Maxime will come after me. I’ll have to disappear, but before I do, I have to make sure Damian knows about Maxime’s schemes. I have to tell him his trusted friend and cellmate, Zane da Costa, sold information to Maxime about Damian’s plans to take back the mine Dalton stole from him. He needs to know Maxime kidnapped me to hold a sword over his head, ensuring my brother would continue selling the diamonds from the mine directly to the Belshaw family by cutting out the middlemen.
When I finally manage to put one foot in front of the other, Damian comes down the steps. We meet each other halfway. The moment his face becomes visible in the headlights of the car, all my reservations vanish. He’s exactly as I remember, albeit a little older. Yet he’s different too. The man who stands in front of me is no longer the strongest boy in the neighborhood. He’s grown into something much more powerful. He looks unbreakable, and I feel better for it.
He holds out his arms. “Zee.”
The minute he says his childhood name for me, I fall into his embrace, letting his strength fortify me.
“Hey.” He brushes a hand over my hair. “You’re safe. It’s all right. You’re here.”
I’ve shed enough tears for a lifetime, but more flow at his words. This is only the first step. There’s a long and difficult process of letting go ahead.
“Thanks, Russell,” Damian says.
Russell salutes. “You take care of her.”
A look passes between the men. It says I’m pretty much screwed up, enough for Russell to have noticed.
Sniffing away my tears, I offer Russell a sincere, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He hands my bag to Damian. “I’ll see you around.”
“Come,” Damian says, turning toward the house when Russell gets back into the car. “You must be tired.”