Page 104 of Dark Rebel's Fortune

The questions were direct and poignant.

"I didn't leave voluntarily," Kyra said. "I was stolen from you, just as you've always suspected, but instead of killing me, they made me forget my family and who I was. Many parts of what I'm going to tell you are reconstructed because I have no recollections ofthem, but the information I've gathered is pretty reliable."

She told him how she'd been abducted by her family, taken back to Iran, subjected to drugs and shock treatments that had erased her memories, and how she'd eventually escaped with the help of the Kurdish rebels who had been imprisoned with her in the asylum and joined the Kurdish resistance, living as a rebel with no knowledge of her past.

"I don't remember our marriage, Boris," she said, watching pain flash across his features. "I don't remember anything from before I woke up in the asylum. Not meeting you or falling in love with you, not our wedding, not our life together, not even Jasmine's birth or her childhood."

His hands clenched into fists on his knees. "Nothing at all?"

She shook her head. "The damage is most likely permanent by now. I don't even have glimpses of the past."

The only clues she'd ever had were the dreams about Jasmine that she'd thought were about her own childhood.

Boris's eyes misted with tears. "I looked for you," he said, his voice ragged. "For months, I drove everywhere and showed your picture to everyone. I called the police every day until they threatened me with arrest." He shook his head. "I knew it was your family. You said they would come for you. I thought your family had killed you, and then the divorce paperscame, and I was angry but also hopeful that you were at least alive."

Jasmine had told her about that.

"I don't remember signing them. My father probably wanted a clean break. Or maybe I insisted on that to set you free."

He nodded. "That thought occurred to me. You were never cruel. You wouldn't have wanted me to suffer. To be alone. You loved me."

Kyra felt a deep ache for this man with whom she'd shared a life. "I believe I must have," she said.

It was the most honest answer she could give, and it seemed to comfort him somewhat. His shoulders sagged, and he reached for a half-empty whiskey bottle on the end table near his armchair.

"Every time I looked at Jasmine, I saw you, and it hurt."

"She understands," Kyra assured him, though the knowledge of his emotional abandonment of their daughter still stung. "She knows you were trying to protect yourself and, in your own way, to protect her too. It's not too late to make amends, though."

This was the other reason she was here. Boris and Jasmine had both been injured by her disappearance, and they needed to heal their wounds and become a father and daughter again.

Boris nodded. "She looks happy with that guy, what's his name?"

"Eli," Max supplied. "He adores her."

Boris looked at Kyra, studying her face as ifcommitting it to memory. "And you? Are you happy now?"

The question caught her off guard.

She glanced at Max and smiled. "Yes. I have my family back—Jasmine, my sisters,their children. And I have Max."

Boris's gaze shifted to Max, assessing him with the wariness of a rival. "Take good care of her, you hear?"

"Of course," Max said with a smile. "Kyra takes care of herself, though, and I just have the privilege of standing beside her and watching."

Boris seemed a little confused by his answer, but he nodded and then looked back to Kyra. "Thank you for doing this. I've carried the pain of your loss for all these years, and seeing you alive and well has lifted a weight off my chest."

"I know," Kyra said. "As soon as Jasmine told me about you, I knew I had to come and give us both closure. Neither of us deserved what happened to us, but you built a new life with a good woman, and now I'm building a new life with a good man."

A smile lifted Boris's lips. "A much younger man. Good for you, Kyra. You always went for what you wanted despite the way you were raised. You are a fighter. No wonder you ended up in the Kurdish resistance."

He sounded so much more upbeat now that Kyra felt the weight of her own guilt lift off her chest.Even though she hadn't been the one who had caused his misery, she'd been at the center of it.

They talked for another hour—about Jasmine's childhood and Boris finally accepting her choice of becoming an actress instead of doing something more tangible with her good brain. He told her about his wife and his two stepsons and even about his insurance business woes.

She'd guessed correctly that finances had been tight as of late. Insurance companies were becoming stingier with paying their agents and brokers.

When it was time to leave, Boris walked them to the door, looking years younger than the man who had opened the door an hour ago.

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