Chapter Twelve
We collapse breathless and spent beneath the sheets. Before we even fully come down from the high, he’s dragging me into his arms.
“Don’t regret now,” he warns, his tone gruff. “I know I need to earn those words. But hearing them? I will pay any price to hear you say them again.”
“No price,” I insist tiredly. “Just honesty.” Something that’s been on my mind all day chooses now—of all times—to resurface. “Why did you leave her, really? What made you think you couldn’t take care of her?”
Just from how he interacts with her, his nurturing instinct is wholly intact. Something deeper must have shaken his confidence. A hint as to what shapes his expression now—raw, unbearable pain.
“My real surname isn’t Gorgoshev,” he admits—an unsurprising admission given his accent. “My mother never gave me one, and my father denied me his… I was worthless, a bastard unworthy of belonging to any family. I never envisioned starting one of my own.”
I brace my hand over his forearm, my throat tight. No man should sound so depreciating—especially not him. So beautiful, so intelligent. Can’t he see that?
No, I suspect, reading his stricken gaze. He can’t. He’s blind to that aspect of himself entirely.
“Back when… In my captivity,” he says hoarsely, “we had no say over our clients, mind you. I’ll let you interpret that statement as you may. Reading people became a strict criterion for survival. I was adept at it. Until one day, a man came before me who wasn’t like the others. He had been promised a luxurious getaway on my employer’s estate—which in reality was a setup to frame him, allowing my employer to use his presence there as blackmail. This man was a professor, and a researcher in a prominent biotechnical company. His knowledge and skillset made him a tempting target for those in the realm of garnering black-market information. In pharmaceuticals. Genetics. Biotechnology. You’d be surprised the price such knowledge can fetch.”
I listen to him in silence, my heart throbbing at his clinical, detached tone. He almost sounds like he’s reading from a script, not recalling his own past in chilling detail.
“The man’s name was Hiram Gorgoshev,” he says. “And rather than utilize his power to abuse me, he saw through my act. We were well trained, you see, expected to lie to our clients, creating the façade that we were willing participants rather than the victims we were. Slave owners, you see, cringe in abject horror when faced with their victim’s chains—but as long as they’re hidden out of sight, they can sleep at night.” Real emotion colors his tone—disgust. Rage. Hatred so searing, I flinch as if burned.
Reflexively, he grips me tighter, preventing me from pulling away, even if I wanted to.
“Hiram saw me,” he says. “He spent his time with me reciting the laws of physics rather than refuse outright and risk having me beaten. He sacrificed his own leverage just to ensure that. I didn’t understand the risk he took back then. I had no idea…” A rare, broken smile shapes his lips for a fleeting moment. “He even offered to help me escape—but I couldn’t. Not then.”
My brain mulls obsessively over his potential reasons why. For Irina?
“When he finally did leave, he slipped a piece of paper into my hand with an address on it,” he explains. “But it wasn’t until a year later that I finally gained my freedom.”
“And you went there?” I ask, craning my neck to better see his face.
He nods. “I wound up before a modest estate in Germany, wearing rags, my mental state in ruins. I think at that point, Ena had to force-feed me bits of bread during the trip, or I would have died from starvation by then. When Hiram saw me, shivering on his doorstep, he brought me into his garden. Gave me a cup of tea. He offered his home to me so that I could rest… And I don’t think I left once for six whole months.” A muscle in his jaw twitches, and he strokes the flesh with the tips of his fingers. “And that entire time, he kept me fed. Clothed. He let me heal my fractured psyche, and when I was ready to reenter society, he gave me his name. More than that. He used his connections to get me a world-class education more comprehensive than what the children of some dignitaries are privy to. He guided me to a prominent position in his own company, Eingel Industries, which was a fledging, but promising, venture. When the time came, he ceded control to me, and even when my wealth far surpassed his, never did he ever ask me for anything. Not once. I think… He was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father.” He sounds confused, even as he says it. As though it’s a realization he’s only just come to. “He was the one who helped me navigate Magdalene’s sudden appearance,” he adds. “Nothing ever caught him off-guard, not even her existence. He encouraged me to gain custody of her, in fact. When she was sick, he was preparing to come on the next flight from Munich just to see her. That bear she has? That came from him. His idea anyway. But in the middle of her illness, he died suddenly of a heart attack, and I couldn’t even leave her side to go mourn him.”
“That’s why you dedicated the garden, the one at your building,” I say, my eyes widening as everything clicks into place. “For him. It’s your way of saying goodbye… I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe it worked out for the best.” He shrugs. “I wasn’t ready then.”
But for some reason, I doubt that he truly believes that. Maybe it’s just easier for him to reconcile it.
But the reminder of his vigil over her
