Page 314 of Enigma: The Complete Collection
My pupils widen as a thought smacks into me.Why is he claiming me knowing Ophelia is alive?
“You'remine, Isabelle,” Isaac mutters under his breath while tugging his shirt over my head.
My eyes dart between his as confusion makes itself known with my gut. “But are you mine?” My tone is surprisingly strong for how much my heart is hammering. “Or are you hers?”
His silence remains as staunch as his composure, and it has my anger from the past two days steamrolling back in. I jump up from the bed, causing my head to get a rush of dizziness from my quick movements.
“Are you here because you're claiming me as yours? Or because you want to ensure Hugo doesn’t stake a claim to yourpossession?”
He shoots me a wry glance that has my pulse hastening. His fury at the mention of Hugo’s name is marked all over his face, but it doesn’t lessen my anger in the slightest.
“You left, Isaac. You walked right out those doors without a backward glance.” I point to the doors of the master suite. “You rushed out of here, forgetting all the promises we made to each other. All the promisesyoumade tome. That means you lost any right to claim me as yours.”
His face reddens as his furious eyes glare into mine. I reinforce my stance, showing him I’m not the daft wallflower he thinks I am. I'm the strong, independent woman my uncle raised me to be.
“Did you go to her? Did you see her? Her son? Is that why you rushed out of here so quickly?”
The stranglehold on my heart strengthens when he angrily mutters, “Yes.”
“And?” My eyes flick crazily between his. “Did you kiss her?”
Isaac chuckles a menacing laugh. “You’re going to ask me about whom I kissed, when you woke up in another man’s bed, wearing his clothes, smelling like him!”
“Yes!” I shout as my tears burn my eyes. “Stop skirting and answer the goddamn question. Did you kiss her?”
“Yes.” His darkened gaze connects with mine. “I kissed her.”
Pain shreds through my heart. “You son of a bitch!”
When I pivot on my heels and sprint for the door, Isaac growls my name. I ignore his threatening tone by racing down the hall as fast as my quivering legs can move.
Halfway down the hallway, my wrist is seized, and I’m yanked back, then my body is pinned to the wall by Isaac’s imposing physique. A hiss whimpers through my lips, my body choosing its own response to his closeness. Even irritatingly angry, it can’t deny its attraction to him. He owns my body, and everyone but me knows it.
“Why did you come back? Why didn’t you just stay with her?” I sob as the first lot of tears splash on my cheeks.
The pain of seeing everything I'm losing up close is too much for me to bear. My heart feels like it’s being torn in half, my head hurts, and my body is aching to be claimed by him.
“Because you're mine, Isabelle.” He's so close, his warm breaths dry my tears. “You'remine.” He crowds himself closer, leaving nothing between us, making us become one. “And I am yours.”
CHAPTER32
ISAAC
Thirty-six hours earlier…
Can you imagine having everything you’ve ever believed suddenly stripped away from you? Every decision, every mistake, every choice I’ve ever made was altered when Isabelle whispered that Ophelia was alive.
At first, I assumed I must not have heard her right, that I must have misunderstood what she said. It was only when she continued speaking did the reality of the situation dawn on me. I placed her onto her feet and took a step backward, so I could gauge the veracity of her bold statement, unable to fathom a response to the truth in her eyes.
Every decision I made from the day Ophelia died ran through my head—my empire, my decision to make myself sterile, my inability to express my feelings to Isabelle. It all filtered through my mind on repeat. Its raucous cycle only stopped when Isabelle said Ophelia had a child, a boy whom she guessed to be around six—the age my child with Ophelia would have been if she weren’t involved in her accident.
Blinded by shocked anger, I packed a bag, eager to seek answers to the questions hampering my astuteness. The cloud consuming my mind lifted for the briefest second when I caught sight of the devastation marring Isabelle’s beautiful face. Even knowing I was hurting her, my hesitation about leaving only lasted a second. Nothing would have stopped me that night. I needed answers, and Ophelia was the only one who could give them to me.
The flight to the other side of the country was tedious and uneventful. Even exhausted from not sleeping the previous two nights without Isabelle and fighting in the charity match, my ability to sleep still lacked. My brain wouldn’t stop replaying the lead-up to Ophelia’s death in my head over and over again.
By the time my private jet arrived in Tiburon, it was a little after seven in the morning, and the battery on my cell was sitting at twenty-three percent. In my haste to pack, I failed to grab a charging cable. Once Hunter advised the location he’d given Isabelle the previous day, I shut down my phone to conserve its charge.
My extreme speed in my rental car had me arriving at the family-owned pharmacy just before eight. Not surprisingly, the front glass doors were dead-bolted, and the sign displayed that the pharmacy wouldn’t be opening until ten o’clock. I yanked my cell phone out of my pocket and fired it up, planning to call Hunter. I wanted to get the private home address of the pharmacy owners, too impatient to wait another two hours.
