Page 19 of Legacy

He lifted his head, his eyes red-rimmed, and utter devastation etched all over his face.

“Cloe is dead. Murdered. Shot in her own home.” His news came in a rush of stilted and broken statements, like he couldn’t bear to elaborate on the awful details.

He walked over to his couch and dropped unceremoniously onto it as if he were a broken man.

Well, this was a series of firsts.

Ozias avoided showing weakness at all costs. He would rather die than admit a flaw or vulnerability.

But Cloe, it seemed, could do it.

For most of my life, I knew her as the preferred mistress. He showered her with gifts and chose her as his companion for extended travel, even over my mother, while she was alive.

Affairs were the norm in our world. Mistresses were an expectation, not an oddity or scandal.

From my teen years, I knew about Ozias’s relationship with Cloe. I despised her for the pain she caused my mother. Still, I knew expressing my opinion to Ozias wouldn’t have made any difference. In fact, it would have caused problems for my mother, so I kept my mouth shut.

Now, seeing him so ragged and torn about the news of Cloe’s death, I realized he’d actually cared for her. In thetwenty years they’d slept together on and off, my father had never acknowledged her in public.

At first, I thought it was because they both had been married for part of that time, and he respected the need to keep quiet. However, following my mother’s and her husband’s deaths, my father never labeled her as his girlfriend. Perhaps he was too cautious that such a designation could lend her power over him.

“Are you okay?” I asked. I didn’t care. It felt good to see him suffer for a change. But the obligation to inquire was there.

“No. No, I’m not fuckingokay,” Ozias yelled as he resumed his pacing. “I swear I will find whoever was responsible. Until the day I die, I will look. I vow to bring her killer to justice.”

I stood there, silent and shocked by the vehemence behind his words. It wasn’t so much his vow to avenge as to do it for a lover and not for something associated with the family.

In my entire life, I’d never seen Ozias this emotional or distraught. He barely gave a shit when Mama had learned about her cancer. He had never shed a single goddamn tear when she died.

Nothing.

The fucker loved Cloe. He’d cared about something or someone other than himself for once in his life.

Go figure.

His heart wasn’t black and dead.

Knowing I couldn’t do anything for this situation, I lefthim to stew and brood. Giving him any condolence attempt would be a waste with the feral state he’d waded into.

As I headed toward my suite to wash up, though, I saw the parallels and differences between the two dead women I’d learned about today.

Marcos’s reaction of violence stemmed from disrespect to his wife’s memory and hurt toward his young children. His fury came from guilt and loss.

Ozias had lost his lover, and her murder incited him to lash out with vows of revenge. There was no guilt for not protecting her, but there was a need to blame and exact vengeance.

However, it revealed he cared for someone other than himself.

Which way would I react?

I shook my head and pushed open the door to my suite.

I had to marry Avra first, then answer the torrent of questions running through my mind.

Damn woman haunted me, and we’d barely spent any time together.

I needed to focus on why she wanted to marry me in the first place. No one offered themselves up on a platter to the son of their enemy without a reason.

She was in for a rude awakening if she believed I played by anyone else’s rules instead of my own, she would be in for a rude awakening.

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