Page 156 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

But I want to try. For the first time in my life, I want something more than wealth. More than fame.

I want to do something good.

She runs a hand over one cheek, wiping away a tear. “You didn’t, though.”

I falter. “What?”

“I tried. I tried to pin something on you and your brother. These last few months, I knew about Lucifer’s diagnosis. I tracked down everything I could on you and Rafael and came up with nothing.” She rolls her hand over in mine, squeezes my fingers. “I’m sorry. I wanted to believe that you both were like him, to continue on this quest for vengeance. I think a part of me hoped it would fill the void I was experiencing after Texas. After realizing I’d based so much of my work on your father and what he did to mine. Renew my motivation for my career. But you’re nothing like him,” she adds softly.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Her laugh is surprisingly light against the darkness of our conversation.

“Were you relieved? When you realized Rafe and I were not like our father?”

“Not at first. I was surprised. Then I was angry.” She sucks in a deep breath. “And then I was angry with myself for being angry. For wanting you or Rafe to be like him.”

She looks at me then, straight on. I respect her for telling me all of this, even more so knowing how much it cost her. I also feel myself slipping closer and closer to that edge that I came so close to that night in Paris when I realized the kind of woman Juliette Grey truly is.

“Why did you want me to be like Lucifer?”

Her eyes glint with unshed tears, but she doesn’t look away.

“When you live for so long with a single purpose in life, it’s hard to live on the other side of it.” A shuddering sigh breaks from her lips. “I’ve been so incredibly blind. So selfish.”

I nod toward her camera. “Is that what this photo project is about? Trying to find something new?”

“Sort of.”

She picks it up, presses a few more buttons, and then hands it to me. Images of women fill the screen. Most of them young, a couple of them closer to middle age. All of them with a darkness in their eyes that speaks to the horrors they’ve lived through.

But in many of them, there’s also hope. A sense of pride as they meet the gaze of the camera lens.

“Some of the women from Walter’s warehouse wanted their story told. I’d always focused on the perpetrators before. Never the victims.” I look up and she flushes. “I’ve been working on their stories for the past six months. I don’t get the same joy out of investigative reporting that I used to. But telling their stories...” Some of the tension bleeds from her body. “It’s not just fulfilling, it’s inspiring.”

“There’s a difference to you as you’re talking about this.”

She tilts her head to the side. “How so?”

“A softness. The same softness I saw when you looked at Grey House. Contentment.”

I don’t add that I saw the same emotions on her face after we made love. Knowing what I had in my hands, what I pushed away out of fear, makes me sick to my stomach.

She smiles then, a movement so uninhibited and bright it chases away the pain. Juliette is not perfect. She’s human. But right now, as I watch her, I know that she is the most incredible human I’ve ever had the privilege to know. She has more humanity in her so-called selfish heart than I have in my entire body.

Is it even right for me to still want her? To try and convince her to spend the next year with me, in my bed, when I can’t hold a candle to her integrity? When I’ve used people’s desires to achieve my own without a second thought?

“I’ve been wondering for months if I needed to refocus my career. It’s torn me up inside. Ever since I moved in with Dessie, I’ve been fixated on taking down your father. Righting wrongs. But even after I published my first story on your father, there was this...emptiness. I thought maybe the next report would bring me closer finding some peace, some resolution. It wasn’t until after Texas that I started to realize nothing would ever resolve what happened to my family. That I was chasing the unattainable.”

My chest tightens. It’s as if she’s reading my thoughts. Experiencing the emotions that have been growing increasingly tangled over the past few months.

She nods toward the camera in my hands. “But this...this feels different. This feels right.”

“You have a talent.”

I’m not lying as I hold up the camera, the screen depicting a young woman with fatigue in her eyes but hope in the tiniest of smiles. It’s a face I saw time and time again in the poor sections of Santorini. But where I merely glanced on my way to pickpocket the nearest gullible tourist, Juliette has captured a story. She’s brought attention to the faceless, the nameless.

“I told you before, Juliette, that I admire your work. I didn’t lie then, and I don’t lie now when I say this has the potential to be a new beginning for you.”

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