Page 53 of Creed

“Yes. I promise you I was going to tell you soon, Sophie.”

“Bullshit,” I scoff. “Lies.”

“I have never, nor will I ever, lie to you, angel.” He takes a step toward me but stops when I jump back.

“No, you just keep important, significant key details from me instead.”

“I wanted to give us time.”

“Time for what? To make me fall in love with you,thendrop the bomb?” The tears I’ve been holding back slip down my cheeks. Their presence looks like they gut him.

“Angel, please,” he rasps. “Let me explain.”

God, this hurt so much. I had felt from the first moment that he and I were too good to be true, and this is the axe I’ve been expecting to fall. However, I never fathomed it would be this.

“Nothing you say will change the reality of this.” But God, how I wish I was wrong. “And congratulations, you did exactly what you planned and aimed for by withholding this from me. I fell in love with you, Creed Santoro. But what you’ve kept from me destroyed any future that love could ever have.”

“No.” He moves toward me without stopping, even when I put my hands out to stop him. “Don’t say that, angel. We can work through this. Just please, listen to me.”

He cups my shoulders and looks at me so intensely that I feel I might burst with the angst rushing through me. “I run Santoro Ventures Inc. No parts of that are illegal.NothingI do is illegal. It’s all above-board, tax-paying, you name it.”

“Maybe so, but the foundation is built on blood money. This,” I sweep my arm out to indicate the penthouse, “is paid for by blood money.”

“Everything I built in my business comes from legitimate sources, Sophie. Even the start-up funds. The capital I used for my first business venture was money I had earned working when I was young and that I had invested. From an early age, I knew I didn’t want anything to do with that side of the family’s empire, and my father respected that.”

I swallow thickly against the lump in my throat, and he wipes away my tears with his thumbs.

“None of my actions or business dealings, or any of the businesses under Santoro Ventures Inc., are touched by the criminal world. There’s no infusion of money, money laundering, or other activities like that.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Even if what he says is the truth, it doesn’t matter, it can’t. Because his family is his family, and my family is my family.

“How can it not matter, Sophie? Please, angel, just listen… Don’t do this.” He cups my face, pain etched on every surface of his. “Please don’t do this. Don’t put this wall between us.”

“I have to.” My voice breaks. “I never told you who my father was, Creed. He’s never had any role in my life.” I swallow hard, forcing myself to keep looking up at him. “He’s a sicario for theGarcia Cartel. Do you know why he never had any role in my life?”

Shocked silence echoes in the entry foyer of the penthouse.

“Yourmamá…yourabuelaandabuelo…” He closes his eyes as he understands. When he opens them, it’s like looking at the most beautiful crystal blue shattered glass. “They didn’t want you to have any contact with someone in the life.”

“I can’t choose you over them,” I choke, my heart shattering as much as his. “And if I stay with you, I will be.”

“No,” he refuses my claim. “You deserve to live your life for you, Sophie. You deserve to make choices that make you happy.”

His words echo what I’ve been telling Zac for months.

And just like Zac, I see no way out. There is no other path than the one I’ve always known and chosen to follow.

“I want you to be happy, Creed.” I step away from him, a sob catching in my throat. “But that happiness can’t be with me. You need to let me go.”

“No. Angel.Please.”

My heart is ripping in two and feels like it’s being wrenched from my chest. His, too. All I want to do is throw myself into his arms to stop our pain. I want to stay in this penthouse, forever hiding from reality and the world.

“You need to let me go, Creed.”

And the thing that breaks me the most is the look in his eyes and on his face that tells me that, because he loves me, he will.

---