Chapter Four #2
Rose’s gaze didn’t drift an inch from his carved face.
Neither did Aliyah’s. God, she remembered those days.
How little time she’d get with him. How gaunt and pale he’d begun to look.
How they would steal away little pockets of time, frantic to spend them with each other.
How she’d encouraged him in achieving her father’s approval.
How he had promised her that he would make her father proud and their dreams of building a life together a reality.
How he had once told her that it was the thought of returning to her that kept him going day after day. They’d survived on each other for nearly four years like that.
Aliyah looked away, blinking back tears.
“I’m sorry Aliyah’s papa was so horrible to you, Mr. Xenakis,” Rose said in a small voice, breaking the building tension.
To Aliyah’s shock, Constantine didn’t minimize the teen’s concern for him or laugh it off.
Instead, he said, “The point of that sad story is that I know what that feels like, Rose.” He tapped his fingers on the back of her hand, switching from the past to the present with a grace that Aliyah couldn’t fathom.
“I have had my team investigate your uncle and he’s every bit the greedy, unscrupulous relative that Aliyah said he was.
I’ll do everything I can to get you out from under his control. ”
Aliyah felt the breath catch in her chest.
He meant it. And that shook her more than anything else he’d done so far.
She saw it now—how he recognized something of himself in Rose’s fire. How he, once upon a time, had crawled up from the dirt, from under her father’s control. A shocking new thought arrested her.
He had never hidden the fact, not even before Julian’s death, that he wanted to make something of himself.
That he wanted power and wealth and the ability to control his destiny.
That he wanted to prove himself worthy of an heiress like her, even though she’d told him numerous times that all she wanted was him.
And having seen her mother’s intolerance of him, the ruthless conditions and tasks that her father set for him to prove himself, Aliyah had understood his thirst to move up in the world, his drive to rewrite his life.
If only he hadn’t made a mockery of her love and her trust in him. If only he had at least made the effort to tell her that her love meant less than his lifelong goal.
Would she have understood? Would she have not fallen apart so badly? Would she have not run away in the dark of the night without a word to him?
Rose narrowed her eyes at Constantine as only a teenager could. “I still want proof. I want to know that this isn’t just about locking Aliyah up for your nefarious purposes.”
Aliyah took Rose’s other hand in hers and squeezed tightly. “Please, Rose. I trust Constantine to protect you, if only to thwart your cunning uncle rather than because I’m attached to you.”
Constantine’s gaze collided with hers, a flicker of shock in it. “How about as good faith,” he said, still holding Rose’s hand, “I get your uncle to agree to let you stay through the wedding? I’m aware that he’s frothing at the mouth that Aliyah brought you here without telling him.”
Rose tilted her chin up defiantly, even as relief loosened the tension in her limbs. “Fine. But I’ll be watching you.”
Aliyah couldn’t help smile. “Speaking of the wedding,” she said, shifting to face Constantine, “when were you planning to have it?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Two weeks.”
Her brows shot up. “Two— That’s too soon.”
He raised a brow, the barest hint of a smirk playing on his lips. “Need more time to plan your fairy-tale wedding?”
Aliyah exhaled through her nose, conscious of Rose’s alert gaze flicking between them. Of course he remembered her idiotic plans for a dreamy wedding as a teenager.
God, she’d been obsessed with the two of them starting a life together. The man couldn’t let peace persist between them for two minutes before he provoked her.
“Fine,” she said, settling back.
“Personally, I can’t wait to be a married man,” Constantine said mockingly, and when her eyes met his, the charged silence between them thickened.
Aliyah’s pulse fluttered wildly, as if it wanted to jump out of her body.
In a mere two weeks, she would be his wife. The reality of it gripped her throat even as heated sparks flared in her lower belly.
In his gaze, she saw it again—the challenge he had flung down when she’d told him she would never sleep with him.
You’ll beg me, fterouga. To put a baby in your belly…and make you scream my name while I do it.
The memory flushed heat through her veins. She needed space, oxygen, time. Anything but this unbearable tension that clawed at her skin, this buzz that begged to be spent and relieved.
The car slowed as they pulled up to the private entrance. Outside, photographers had already begun to gather behind barricades, their cameras clicking away.
Aliyah’s spine straightened, fingers brushing against Rose’s.
As an awkward teenager who lived in her own world, the high profile her family had boasted had terrified her.
It was the one time she’d been grateful for her father’s neglect of her.
But, for once, the cameras and the condescending looks and the covetous eyes as Constantine held her elbow came to her rescue.
Nothing like having to face her parents and the world they inhabited to cure her of this ridiculous attraction to a man who was determined to make her pay for sins she didn’t understand.
She stepped out of the car and into a gilded world.