Page 109 of Heartless Game

“How did you even get into the bedroom?”

He laughed. “You think a locked door can keep me from you? Tovah, god himself couldn’t keep me from finding you and bringing you home.”

With those jaw-dropping words, he wrapped me up in his arms, not saying anything else. I didn’t know what to say, either. We both lay there in silence, skin touching skin, breathing in sync, lips inches apart. I couldn’t see him in the dark, but I knew he was watching me.

“I hate you,” I told him, my eyes burning from all the tears I’d already cried over him. “I love you, but I hate you, too. You hurt me. You keep hurting me. When does it end, Isaac?”

“It doesn’t,” he told me, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ll do my best to stop hurting you, I promise. But it will never end, because we’ll never end, bashert. I love you. My heart knows yours. My soul recognizes yours. Like we’ve known each other forever.”

He didn’t even know how right he was.

We lay in the dark like that, silent but not sleeping, our bodies wrapped around each other, a wall keeping the world out, like we could keep it from destroying us.

But as each second ticked by, I became more and more sure we couldn’t.

44

Isaac

When her breathing finally evened out, I gently unwrapped myself from her and headed downstairs. I felt like an asshole for what I was about to do, especially when she’d been crying, but the urgency to get this done was building inside me.

Downstairs, I grabbed the package I’d hid the night she’d had PMS and headed back up.

Jack had sourced a microchip for me. He’d put one in his own girl’s body, and she still had no idea. I felt bad for the poor fucker when Aviva found out, because there’d be hell to pay. But even knowing that, I was going to do the same thing to Tovah. I’d gone back and forth about this all week, questioning such an unhinged choice, but now I was decided.

She was hiding shit from me; she’d changed her last name—obviously she wasn’t safe. And then there was the possibility of the article…I loved her, but I didn’t trust her. And with the bullshit engagement, she was too much of a flight risk. In case she ever ran, or someone took her…well, I needed to know where she was at all times, didn’t I?

Grabbing what I needed—the microchip, surgical knife, and needle and surgical thread for stitches, I climbed back up on the bed, kneeling over her to prepare the area. I watched her for a bit. She looked so soft and vulnerable in sleep, and I couldn’t help but drop a tender kiss on her lips. Fortunately, she didn’t wake up, although she did moan my name softly. The sleeping powder that I’d dissolved in her water earlier had done its job.

My cock stirred.

I smacked it in reprimand.

Then I lifted her arm, because I wanted to put it under her left armpit where she wouldn’t look—and where she’d hopefully assume the sting was from razor burn.

I looked down.

And sucked in a breath like I’d been punched.

“What the actual fuck?”

There was a birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon.

A birthmark.

In the shape of a goddamned crescent moon.

Oh, I remembered that crescent moon. I’d never forgotten it.

The girl from my childhood appeared in my mind’s eye. Short, dark, curly hair, a feisty grin. She’d lived on our compound, the daughter of one of the staff. I’d eventoldTovah about her. About the birthmark. She’d been afraid, and I’d sworn to protect her…until she disappeared.

The same day that my mother had been killed.

Blood. Death. Loss. The memories, the feelings, they came back in waves that threatened to drown me. To take me under and never let me free. Like my father, like my fate, and now, like Tovah—who, by lying to me, had stolen our future and any chance I’d ever have at happiness.

No.Everything in my body rejected what I was seeing. I fell to the floor, my legs no longer holding me up.

It all made sense, didn’t it? Tovah was on the run from my father, she’d gone into hiding. She kept changing her hair color, not out of rebellion, but because she didn’t want to be found. Who else could she be? And the evidence in front of me was irrefutable.

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