Page 117 of Reign of a Billionaire
“I’m eighteen now, and I know you think I’m too young and immature?—”
I cupped her cheeks. “You’re not too immature,” I corrected her. “You’ve seen shit most men have never seen. You survived them too.”
“But I am young.” I nodded. “Even though I feel like we age a decade for each year that goes by in this prison.”
I chuckled softly. “So what does that make us?”
“Like… one hundred and eighty?” We laughed, but it wasn’t exactly a happy laugh.
“I love you, Kingston.” Her whisper echoed against the hallway. “Don’t make me wait anymore. We could die tomorrow. At least don’t let me die a virgin.”
My chest tightened. I wanted better for her.
“I’m too tainted for you.” The anguish in my voice was hard to miss.
Lifting her hands, she cupped my cheeks.
“No, Kingston. You’re perfect for me.” She’d brushed her lips against mine then, stealing my breath and my heart. “You deserve the world. And if we have to lie, steal, and cheat, we’ll get our happy ending. Because we fucking deserve it.”
The same unflinching determination I now recognized in the woman before me had danced across her face that night, and just the thought of it had my chest shattering from how much time we’d lost.
“Is it true we were each other’s firsts?” she repeated, yanking me back to the present.
“True.” Her shoulders tensed, and I suspected the reason. Lou had never been the sharing type. It was what I loved about her. “There hasn’t been anyone since, sunshine. I thought you were dead, but I couldn’t handle anyone else’s touch. I decided I’d wait for you in hopes that we’d at least get an afterlifetogether.” A choked sob sounded against me, and my heart cracked a fraction more. “Then I saw you again, thinking you were Liana. I hated you—her. You were so familiar yet not.”
“Me too. All of it,” she whispered her admission, so soft I could have missed it. “I didn’t understand why I never bothered with any men until we crossed paths.”
I smirked down at her, satisfaction filling me. I wouldn’t have held it against her if she’d been in a relationship—it had been overeight yearsafter all—but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t please me.
“Maybe our hearts were smarter than our minds,” she mused.
“I think you’re right,” I agreed.
Chapter 56
Louisa
Kingston and I took his jet to Greece, heading for the shelter where we dropped off all the women nearly a week ago. I didn’t know what awaited us, but Kingston was right. We had to find out more about the young woman.
Over the last two days, since memories of my past had started to sharpen into focus, I told Kingstoneverythingthat I’d done over the last eight years, including my reason for trying to infiltrate Cortes’s operation.
I explained how I worked with Giovanni Agosti to kill the old Santiago, and how I learned that my sister was used by Perez to be sold using a Marabella Mobster arrangement.
Kingston held me through my tears, promising we’d find her, wherever she was in this world. My gaze brushed over his forearm, tracing the tattoo of angel wings wrapped around his arm.
There was so much history left to uncover between us, but I trusted Kingston to be here with me every step of the way. Somehow we got through torture, death, and separation, only to be brought back again. That had to count for something, right?
“How did you finally realize I wasn’t Liana?” I asked curiously.
His eyes darted over my face before they came to linger on my throat. “On the nape of your neck, there’s a tattoo I gave you.” I reached my hand back to feel for it, tracing it like he had. “It was our secret. Nobody else knew about it, not even Liana.”
A memory probed at my skull. “The angel wings?”
“Yes, sunshine. It always fascinated you.”
“The wings of your guardian angel,” I whispered, remembering why he got the tattoo. “So they can always protect you.”
He wiped at the tears clinging to my eyelashes. “You always represented my guardian angel, sunshine.”
