Page 121 of Heart of a Villain

“True.” She turned away, engaging in her nervous ritual of picking at the translucent skin on her palms. “I didn’t know how to tell you about Lorenzo. I really didn’t. And it’s not because I believed you would judge me. I was afraid that it might change the way you see me. The other reason is because of what happened to your mother. I knew the moment I told you, you would want to kill him. Until today, I wanted that honor. But then I saw the way you looked at him. Killing him would be cathartic, yes, but watching the man I love end the life of the man who took advantage of me? It gave me the strongest sense of…letting go.”

“You still love me?”

“Of course I do, Adrían.”

“Sayeda, I promise to end the life of anyone who attempts to scar you,” he said, making sure she heard the words instead of solely inferring them from his behavior. “I don’t intend to leave your side or have you leave mine, regardless of what we ‘fought’ about. There was always going to be a future for you and me.”

“Eesh explained that to me.”

She plucked harder.

He remained quiet, waiting.

“One night, he was just there, you know?” she began. “In my apartment. There was a storm. It knocked out the lights.”

“And he took the dark.”

She nodded. “Yes. The dark where I first fell in love with you. Honestly, and this might sound completely idiotic, but it was the worst part of it. He took you from me. Not all of you, but enough where it was like a deep, deep chunk was stolen from the place where I kept you all that time. You were all that was good and wonderful in my fucked up life, and I lost this huge, what I once thought was irreplaceable, piece of you.”

“It’s not idiotic, minha amada. That place? It was what kept me safe. The world realized how unfair it would be to take me, knowing that I was embedded that deep in somebody’s heart, somewhere.”

She attempted a smile, but it faltered.

“How many times?” he cautiously asked.

“Just the one. Chefe found out, and he moved me into the mansion. It wasn’t for my safety, but it helped to keep me safe.”

“It was to control Lorenzo’s…urges.”

“Yes.”

“Are you lying to me, querida? It was just the one time?”

“That’s the truth. The,” she crooked her fingers, “‘saving grace’ is that I fought him so much, he had to drug me. I couldn’t move.”

“Could you feel?”

“No.”

“But you knew, you saw.”

A tear slipped onto her cheek that she quickly brushed away. “Yes.”

“I’m so sorry, my love.”

“This was a couple of years ago. Still, before we had sex for the first time, I asked Tayler to go with me to get tested. I’d already been tested a ton of times, so she was the one who helped me understand why it wasn’t working to help me feel…better. My fear wasn’t a positive test. I was relying on those results to convince myself that what Lorenzo had done wasn’t ‘stuck’ with me. Or stuck to me. I don’t know what I would have done if…

She trailed off.

He took her hand. “We would have worked through it.”

“That’s what you say now.”

“No, not just now. Understand the way that I feel about you is more than numbers and papers and results. It goes to the core of you. A distinct part of you that speaks to a distinct part of me.”

She tried for another smile, this one lasting a little longer than the first. “Everything that comes out of your mouth is like poetry.”

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

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