Page 15 of Maximus

My world stopped the moment she entered my line of vision. It’s her. My mysterious stranger.

My eyes must be playing tricks on me because surely it’s a vision.

As she approached, my anger grew because what the actual fuck? Did she recognize me? Was last night a trick? She must have known. I don’t believe in coincidences and hot on the heels of another one the math isn’t mathing.

Miranda’s visit came as a surprise, yet her unauthorized arrival at my penthouse represented a security problem I found unacceptable. Luckily for me, I don’t rely on anyone except for my trusty consigliere who has proven his loyalty countless times. He has been monitoring the concierge for months and it threw up an interesting fact. Miranda has been Enzo Sorconi’s mistress for several years, even before she married her husband. It’s a deception that has spanned several years and after a night of interrogation, Toby discovered the plot to wipe out my family at the wedding.

It had been arranged for a reason and not the one my father told me, and so, secretly, I arranged for a few extra guests of mine to be hidden strategically in the congregation.

When I saw his daughter, Sierra, I concluded she was complicit from the beginning and last night was merely part of his plan to account for the massacre. To take her virginity out of wedlock would be punishable by death in our world, so it all made sense.

However, when she alerted me, the emotion I experienced changed my mind in a heartbeat and, as my men took aim, I covered her body with mine.

Now, as we sit side by side in my bullet-proof car and speed to safety, I have many questions with her name on them.

“Maximus.” She gasps as she calls me by my name for the first time ever, and I love how it sounds on her lips.

“What happened?”

“I have the same question for you, Sierra, or should I say, Gina?”

She tangles her fingers in her lap and leans back against the leather upholstery.

“I can explain.”

“That’s good, because I am waiting.”

I’m irritable and irrational because there are too many situations that don’t add up and yet only one concerns me now.

“Did you come to my penthouse intent on seduction and under whose order?”

“NO!” Her horrified exclamation settles my mind, but not my heart.

“I promise I didn’t know your identity until today. The second I saw you standing at the altar, I realized I would have some explaining to do, but not what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking, Sierra?”

My voice is cold as I wait for explanations and she whispers, “I wanted to control one aspect of my life. I didn’t want to marry you. It was the last thing I wanted. I’m not my mother and I never wanted that life. So–” She turns and the tears in her eyesare almost my undoing as she reaches out and strokes my face and whispers, “I didn’t expect what happened between us and I didn’t expect to like it.”

“What did you expect?”

I stare deep into her eyes, loving her touch against my skin but refusing to give her the reassurance she seeks.

“To get my revenge on my parents. This life. The situation and you, actually.” She shakes her head. “Not the man I met last night, but the one waiting at the altar. I didn’t know who you were and to be honest, I imagined the worst.”

I can’t fault her reasoning because I had the same idea. One night of abandonment as a reaction against the control our parents had over us. I lean back and sigh, breaking contact, and as her hand falls, I say huskily, “How did you figure out it was an ambush?”

“I didn’t.”

I turn and face her with derision and she shrugs.

“It was an awakening if you like. Last night, before I took the elevator, a woman came out. She was familiar, but I ignored it. Then, today at the service, when my father took my arm, I remembered seeing him with her entering a hotel. The look they shared resonated with me because after our, well, experience last night, I wondered if I would ever have a reason for a man to look at me like that. You see–” she says sadly, “I expected the worst and well, I got the best.”

I’m shocked when her small hand finds mine and links our fingers together and she whispers, “I’m so glad I almost married you, Maximus. Somehow, we have both been saved today, but I want you to understand that after last night I would have welcomed it.”

Her words touch me deep inside and I turn and raise our entwined fingers to my lips and kiss them softly, gazing into hereyes as I whisper, “I am also glad it is you because when I woke up this morning to find you gone, I hated that it was over.”

Her eyes brighten and then the expression is replaced with pain.

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