My hands are shaking with the urge to commit murder. I’ve lost something precious, and I can’t live without it.
I want her back.
Now.
Turning on my heel, I leave the room without offering anyone a greeting. In a far-off corner of my mind, I register Izabella’s fallen expression. The manners my mother has drilled into me dictate that I stop and offer an explanation, at the very least, an apology. It would be only that. Manners. I’m too apathetic toward my future fiancée to care how she feels. All I can think about is that Zoe is on the loose in a dangerous city where at least a hundred or more dangerous criminals would love to capture and torture her to get to me. Kill her.
Fuck!
I slam the door open with a palm and rush through the foyer.
“Maxime!” My mother’s voice and clacking heels chase after me. She finally catches up with me at the entrance. “Where are you going?” she cries, grabbing my arm. “What’s wrong?”
“Not now.” I shake her off. “Zoe ran.”
Her body jerks. Her face goes white. “What did you say to me?”
“I said, Zoe ran.”
“This is your engagement weekend, Maxime.”
“I don’t give a damn!”
“Oh, God.” My mother places a hand over her heart. “This isn’t happening.”
I follow her gaze. Izabella and Leonardo are standing just inside the door. Izabella’s face is drawn. Leonardo looks furious.
How similar they look, my mother and Izabella. So groomed. So composed. So perfect. Like cut flowers cultivated for a vase. Pretty to look at, but their petals have no smell. They’ve been brought up to accept their fate. Not like Zoe. She’s a wildflower, a rose that smells sweet like a rose should. She’s authentic.
Leonardo must’ve told his family what Zoe means to me, yet Izabella hasn’t run. She’ll never run because of another woman. She’ll turn a blind eye and the other cheek, over and over, just like my mother does, no matter how many times my father comes home smelling of whores and infidelity.
Then it strikes me. That’s what makes Zoe different from the women facing me. She believes in love. She believes in something beautiful. Not convenience or money or duty or a business deal. She believes in the real thing, the once-in-a-lifetime kind of love you find with a soul mate. That’s how she survived, how she managed to stay afloat in family violence and poverty. That’s how she survived me.
Fuck me.
That’s her secret, the knowledge I was chasing so hard, the hope I wanted to steal.
The answer is love.
I’m incapable of love, but I want hers. I want it more than anything. If I don’t find her, there’s no hope for me. If I don’t get her back, my happiest moments will be confined to the stolen years we spent together.
I don’t fucking think so.
Trying to hold me back by grabbing a handful of my jacket in her fist, my mother says, “Maxime, if you walk out of here now, I’ll never forgive you.”
I couldn’t give a damn.
Jerking free, I make my way down the porch steps with long strides.
“Your father will disown you,” my mother calls behind me. “Is that what you want?” When I don’t stop, she goes for the ultimate insult. “You’re behaving shamefully, like a lovesick puppy, not the respectable head of your father’s business.”
Her words still me. I pause with my hand on the door handle of the car.
I guess she’s right. In a way, this is my own kind of loving.
Just not the selfless kind.
I’m going after Zoe with everything I’ve got.
Chapter 2
Zoe
Our flight lands just after ten at night. Stepping from the plane onto South African soil is like an out-of-body experience. I feel lost and unanchored. This is home, and it’s not. I’ve become a stranger to my homeland and a stranger to myself. The woman who returns is nothing like the girl who left.
Seeming to understand my hesitation, the man my brother sent to rescue me from France, Russell Roux, takes my elbow and steers me through the throng of people toward the exit. Thankfully, I only have the bag I checked into hand luggage. We can make our way straight to the parking where an SUV waits.
I look at the familiar, yet unfamiliar, dark landscape as he drives. So much has changed in almost three years. There are more buildings and less open land. The roads and signposts are different. It’s as if my world has moved on without me while I was stuck in a very bad dream. A bittersweet dream. Despite the bad, there was also the kindness, like when Maxime got me into one of the most reputable fashion designing schools in France or the time he told his cousin, Sylvie, to befriend me. He might’ve gone about it the wrong way, using his power instead of allowing me to win these things on my own merit, but he did it because he wanted me to be happy. The lies and deceit of his twisted methods hurt, but his intentions weren’t always bad. All those tender moments we shared when he made himself vulnerable and opened up to me to teach me how to open up to him had to have meant something. At least that’s what I choose to believe. The alternative is much too devastating and bleak for my heart to survive.
I made it this far. I got away from Maxime Belshaw, a French mafia boss who enjoyed toying with me by playing cruel games. Europe and everything that happened there are behind me. From here, I can only grow stronger.
Russell takes the road to the Vaal River and stops in front of a quaint cottage with a private jetty lit by a row of walkway lamps. The dark silhouette of a man is visible in the porch light. He stands by the rail, his hands shoved into his pockets, waiting. I’d recognize that tall, indestructible frame with the permanent tension in the
