Page 131 of When Hearts Awaken

My pulse pounds in my ears and a headache forms at the base of my neck. “You see, when I asked Elias to look into your past, the first thing I asked him to search for is Ian’s whereabouts all those years ago.”

Taylor gasps, her face slowly leaching of color. Her hands slide out of my grasp and she crosses them over her chest.

She’s slipping away already.

Dread lines my stomach and I feel like I’m suffocating in front of everyone. “He found a photo on the dark web of Ian with a few men at Hotel Renegade on the same day you were assaulted.”

“No, no, no,” she mutters, shaking her head. “It can’t be. I couldn’t have been working with him this entire time and I… No, it can’t be—”

“Didn’t you tell me one of them had blond hair and light eyes? And how you reacted to him the day we met? You were frozen in fear, Tay. I thought you were insane that day, but now I know better.” My voice is hoarse, pained as I reach for her, desperate to feel her warmth again.

She shrinks away, her eyes darting around the room, her skin as pale as a sheet of paper. “I was mistaken, right? I told myself I didn’t remember because I was drugged. The monster smelled like peppermint. But Sir Ian smells like oranges. There’s no way,” she stands up, her chair topping over in a clang, “I couldn’t have been working with my rapistthis entire timeand not know it. Tell me it isn’t true!”

Pulling my hair, I stand up too and haul her to me, crushing her in my embrace because seeing her standing there, looking so damn fragile and shell-shocked, has me wanting to burn the world for her. “I don’t know, but we’ll find out for sure, minx. Maybe your body remembered something your mind couldn’t. Fuck, we’ll find out the truth. I’m so, so sorry. If it was Ian, fuck!”

“No, no, no,” she mutters over and over.

Closing my eyes, I shush her trembling body as we reel with this devastating clue.

“I’ll always stand on your side, Tay. No matter what,” I promise.If you’ll still have me.“I should’ve told you when I suspected. I’m so fucking sorry for withholding this info from you. Will you forgive me?”

Taylor stills and looks up at her, her eyes searching my face. “I-I don’t know what to think right now and Iammad at you for not telling me.” She swallows. “I can understand the reason. But I won’t put up with this shit in the future, Charles Vaughn. You need to talk to me!”

I heave out a sigh of relief.She isn’t breaking up with me.Pulling her back in my arms, I murmur, “I promise. No more secrets.”

She harrumphs. “Bastard, you better. And this doesn’t mean I forgive you yet.”

“We need to confirm it’s him, of course. It’s tenuous right now, with him being your dance director and the ongoing blackmail. If itishim, he obviously suspects we’re onto him,” Emerson murmurs, as I usher Taylor back into her seat after Maxwell uprights the chair from the floor.

“Everything is circumstantial. There were tons of people at Hotel Renegade that night. It could all be coincidence.” Elias takes a sip of the whiskey, his brow arched high.

I don’t believe in coincidences either.

“From where I sit, there are two ways to proceed from here. If the bastard is Ian Vaughn, and Charles confronts him, he will deny it and walk free because we don’t have a shred of evidence. The photos or videos may be leaked online and we’ll need to deal with that fallout.” Emerson taps his fingers on the table.

He continues, “If it isn’t him, we’ll have caused unnecessary friction in Charles’s relationship with his uncle and Taylor’s relationship with her boss. Whoever is behind this may still find out we haven’t given up and may still leak the photos or videos. Without concrete evidence, we’ll never be able to verify if it is him.”

“Or I can just torture it out of him,” Elias offers, flicking open his lighter. “I just need half an hour. That’d be an overestimate.”

“No!” Taylor sits up, some color finally returning to her face. “I need to know for sure before we do anything. Ballet is my life and Sir Ian is Charles’s uncle.”

She looks at me, her face crumbling at the possibility her rapist may be her mentor and the man I’ve looked up to my entire life. “I won’t blow everything up until I know for sure. And I need to know what happened. I need to know the truth.”

Elias snaps shut his lighter and sets it on the table. “If you don’t want the torture route, then there’s only one way to find out. But it’ll be hard for you, Taylor. Are you up for it?”

Chapter 54

The blinding flashes ofthe cameras singe my skin, each trigger click feeling like bullets aimed at me. I’m standing behind the podium at Kensington Hotel, about to deliver a quaking blow that’ll shatter life as I know it into a million pieces. The press gathers in front of me, a swath of grays and blacks sitting in orderly rows, their hushed murmuring and quizzical whispers echoing in my ears.

Elias’s words three days ago sweep into my mind.

“The best defense is offense sometimes,” he murmured, his piercing eyes pinning me in place as I brushed past him on my way out of the MacGregor Whiskey Library after our meeting.

I stopped and turned toward him. “Do you think this will work, Elias?”

He cocked his head to the side, the long scar on his cheek facing me. “You’re taking control of the narrative.”

I nodded. “How do you know so much about PR strategy, Elias? I don’t think this is part of the usual curriculum of a mobster, is it?”

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