Page 20 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

“You didn’t spend all those days with me. It isn’t as if you raised me. Perhaps both you and my parents needed to take real stock of how much you had to do with the way that I was succeeding. I’m sorry, Apollo, but that is the truth. My parents were off on their adventures, and I was at home studying. I was the one choosing to succeed. You put down your rules, but I chose to follow them. We didn’t even live in the same country most of the time. I managed my life while I was away at boarding school, while I was away at university. I am the one whose life was completely uprooted, and I am the one who had to cope with it. You weren’t there for me emotionally. You think that because you kept me from ending up in an alleyway doing black tar heroin that you’ve succeeded in some fashion, but you do not recognize that I was the one who was there for myself. And now, because you couldn’t stand some other man stepping into your position you... Physically removed him from his.”

“If a man is marrying a woman, and it is possible to physically remove him, and marry her in his stead, he didn’t truly wish to be there. Even if he did, he did not deserve to be. Had someone tried to usurp my place as your groom I would’ve killed them. I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic.”

The conviction in his words shocked even him. The darkness there.

Murder was one of the few sins he hadn’t committed. And yet he knew without certainty he would do it if he had to.

She was his. His responsibility. He would be damned if anyone hurt her now.

“You’re a bit of a monster.”

“I never claimed I wasn’t. You’re the one good thing I have ever done,agape. I will see it through to the end.”

“And I don’t have a choice in it?”

“Think carefully about that. Because the truth is you will have more choices now than you ever have. Do not squander it because you’re angry at me.”

It was then that her friend came through the door of the church. “Hannah...”

“Go and speak to your friends.”

And Hannah obeyed, going off with her friend and leaving him there. Nothing would change. This wasn’t a real wedding. And it would not become one.

It would be a marriage in name only for a year to protect Hannah and her assets.

He had made the right choice.

Like he always did.

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHATTHEHELLwas that?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah said, her heart still beating wildly, disbelief rolling through her like a freight train.

“He just married you.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I was there.”

Her lips burned; her body burned.

The kiss had been short and chaste and nothing much to get excited about, and yet her nipples were still tight and sensitive, and that place between her legs throbbed. Perhaps it was the memory of what happened between them two weeks ago in the alley. Or rather what hadn’t happened.

But either way, the kiss had affected her far more than it should have. But then, how was she supposed to remain unaffected in these circumstances? She had orchestrated this entire thing to get away from Apollo, and now she was his wife.

His wife.

She had dreamed of this.

But never quite in this fashion.

It was like someone had handed her a beautiful snow globe, then smashed it on the ground. All the glass, snow, and the little village still there, but...mangled beyond belief.

And she felt like the broken shards of glass were digging into her now.

“His wife!” she shouted out loud.

“Well,” Mariana said. “I suppose that takes us full circle. Because you know, he’s not your dad.”

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