Hope. I shivered as i eased down onto the cold stone bench and clutched my arms around my trembling body. I glanced down at my feet but couldn’t summon any rebuke for having gone out in the chill without shoes or a coat. The only thought i had was to get away as quickly as possible. I couldn’t face Damian now. We had spent months together and he had led me to believe we had been happily married. He never mentioned that I even had a family of my own, even though they sold me. Now i knew why I had been drawn to this place. My thinking spot, indeed. Just hours before that last night, I had sat here. I had been right to be afraid. He didn’t trust me. He didn’t love me. And he had left me to my fate with the kidnappers. I refused to allow the memories to roll back in my mind. They simply hurt too much. At least now i realized why I had chosen to forget. All those weeks of living in fear as my kidnappers waited for their demands to be met had paled next to the betrayal Damian had hande

Damian I paced the confines of my New York office as i waited for Rosie to arrive. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be with Hope. Tony had stayed with her, and I simmered with impatience. Her condition hadn’t changed. Even when she had awakened, she had been distant, unfocused, there but not there. It was as if she had gone to a place where I couldn’t hurt her anymore. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the task at hand. When I heard Rosie enter, I stiffened. It was all i could do not to rage at her, not to break her skinny neck. It took everything i had to smile and act as though nothing was wrong, as though i didn’t loathe the very ground she walked on. “You wanted to see me?” she said breathlessly. “I did,” I murmured. I let my gaze run suggestively over her body even as my flesh crawled. Her eyes brightened, and her stance immediately became suggestive. “I have only just become aware of the lengths to which you went to try and get my attention,” i said with a chuckle

Damian. I watched her leave and cursed. I felt strangled by helplessness. How could i ever hope to make things right between us? She hated me, and she had every right to. I turned to Tony, who had also watched Hope go, a frown etched on his face. “What brought you here in such a hurry?” I demanded. Tony reached into the jacket of his suit and pulled out a folded newspaper. He tossed it onto the table in front of me . “This did.” I opened it and immediately cursed in four languages. On the front page was a picture of Hope being carried by Tony on the day she had run from the apartment. Underneath were pictures of me and of Rosie with a story outlining the soap opera saga that highlighted every single facet of my relationship with Hope. I threw the paper across the room with vicious force. “It had to be Rosie. None of my men would have spoken to the press.” Tony nodded his agreement. “Since you had her arrested for her theft and her duplicity in keeping the ransom demands from yo

Hope I woke up tired and picked up my phone. It showed six missed calls. All from Isabella, my sister. After my memory returned, i remembered she had given me her number. I tried to call her Last night but it went straight to voice mail. I looked at my phone, no texts showed, but voice mails after each one. “Hey, Hope. Call me when you get this.” “Checking in, Hope. You there?” “Um, I’m feeling like a stalker. You can’t still be mad at me. Hell, you can be whatever you want. Shit, I would be pissed. Okay, please don’t be mad at me.” “Fuck.” Effie’s voice in the background, then my sister again. “No, honey, mommy didn’t say a bad word.” I smiled. “Hope, if you don’t call me back right now, I’m getting in my car and driving over there!” “Fuck. I’m on my way!” I checked the time of the messages. The last one was from about an hour and a half ago. Which meant she would be here any minute. I pocketed the phone and ran out the door. On my way down the stairs, I heard a voice I recog

Damian. Growing up, I had loved coming to the house in the Adirondacks, but that felt like a hundred years ago. Now, as we neared the property, Hope sat beside me in the car, everything about her tense. She looked beautiful in the cream colored dress I had chosen, her auburn hair piled high on her head, dark eye makeup accenting the almond shape of her whiskey colored eyes. I touched her knee as we pulled up to the security gate. She startled. “You will be fine. I will stay with you.” She nodded, but the tension kept rolling off her. I hated this. Knew as I waved to the guard and pulled around back to the garage that she was here to be shown around, shown off, a token of my father’s of my family's triumph. I also knew my father had not forgotten what she had done. He would punish her for it, and I had a feeling he would do it tonight. I just needed to keep her reined in nice and tight. After parking the car, I climbed out and met Hope on her side. “I feel sick.” I slid her h