Total pages in book: 15
Estimated words: 14237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
Clasping his hands together, he added quietly, “And…if I’m honest, I don’t think—even if I could find a name or an address—that I’d approach any of her kin, not after she hid me away for so long. She kept me hidden for a reason. She didn’t want me. I reminded her of something she’d rather not recall. It makes sense now I know the truth, but I think the shame and pain of my existence is something she happily died with, protecting her true family from ever knowing what happened to her and how I came to be.”
I frowned, drawn in despite myself. “So you’re saying you were brought up by a woman who didn’t love you. That you put your life on hold to nurse her and when she died, you tried to commit suicide?”
He flashed me a tight smile. “Sounds pathetic when you say it like that. It makes me sound like some poor little boy who can’t survive without his mother.” Sighing heavily, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “The thing is…with her gone, I don’t seem to have the strength to suppress the parts of myself that I’ve always fought. They’re getting worse. The needs are getting worse. I’m getting worse. It’s as if being utterly alone has allowed the darkness to consume me.”
Ah, shit.
That wasn’t good news.
I could see where this was going.
Where I’d gone.
Why I’d forbidden myself from touching a woman unless it was a paid professional, until Tess tripped into my heart. Why I’d murdered my father in cold blood and spent my entire life repenting for what he’d done.
I couldn’t cure myself.
Couldn’t turn off the blackness inside me.
I could merely live within the cage Tess kept me content in, ever so fucking grateful that she could withstand my violence, my sickness, my curse.
“You killed a girl?” I kept my voice deliberately calm. “You gave into that darkness?”
His answer would determine on him walking out of here alive or dying right there in the wingback.
He caught my gaze, flinching at whatever he saw in me. “No, I didn’t go that far. But…I did hurt her. I was the idiot who got drunk and took a one-night stand back to my family home. The same home where I’d nursed my sick mother for the last four months. The home where I’d grown up in, always feeling unwanted. The home where my equally drunk partner asked me to ‘play rough.’”
He cleared his throat and ran a shaking hand over his mouth. “I-I went too far. I didn’t have any power against the needs inside me and…I spilled her blood on my childhood bedroom floor.”
My hands balled. My gut churned. My mouth watered to end him.
“And you’re here for me to bail you out? To get you off a criminal charge?”
“No.” He slouched into the chair as if he wanted all his sins to devour him. “I’m not in that sort of trouble. But I also know what I did. I know how badly I fucked up. But I did stop. I stopped by turning that blackness on myself. I-I would’ve finished the job and put myself out of my misery if she hadn’t taken the knife off me. She…forgave me. I compensated her. And…she left.”
I stayed silent, letting him stew in his guilt.
Licking his bottom lip, Henri took his time forming his next sentence. “I came here because…I have nowhere else to go. No one else to call my own. I don’t know how much longer I can keep fighting and I’m tired. I’m tired of being so fucking lonely all the time. I’m tired of being on my own. I’m tired of being different. So…I made a bargain with myself.”
“A bargain?” I asked softly. “What sort of bargain?”
He didn’t look up. “One that will either save me or condemn me. When I dug that blade into my thigh, hunting for a way to end it, I remembered what my mother said. That she’d been taken and raped for over a decade. That she’d birthed me in some chateau in France. That she’d done her best to raise me when she was granted the permission to spend time with me.”
I studied him.
Did he remember that time?
Did he remember me?
His eyes locked on mine, answering my unspoken question. “I thought I’d recall something from my childhood driving up here. I thought for sure I’d recognise you if what she said is true. How could I have spent the first eight years of my life in a place I can’t remember? How could I have a half-brother that I’ve never met? How could I have this disease inside me and have no way to get rid of it?”
I knew how.
I’d seen it happen in numerous slaves I’d rescued and rehabilitated.
Selective amnesia.
Deliberate blank spots in a traumatised psyche to exist the best it could.