Page 230 of Chandelier Sin
“You bought her as a child,” Atticus said, his words like shards of glass, cutting through the haze of truth.
“Or did you steal me?” I asked, feeling disgusted.
His expression turned dark.
“No.” I shook my head, panic surging with the weight of my memories pressing against my denial.
Atticus held my gaze across the table, assessing my reaction.
“You won me in an auction. Saved me from…you set all that up?”
“It was more of a smooth transition.”
I shot to my feet, refusing to believe it.
Even as I tried to suppress them, my memories poured in, a relentless tide surging to drown me, raw and unyielding as I pressed my hand to my chest to help me breathe. Aemon was looking at me with sick sympathy.
Atticus seemed ready to spring up out of his chair to catch me should I faint.
“This can’t be true.” I pointed at him. “You told me you were saving me. I was eighteen. You bid on me to stop me from being sold off to…”
Aemon’s expression turned prideful. “You believed what you wanted to believe.”
“You wanted me to believe you saved me.”
He shrugged. “I have no idea who your mother was. You were taken from her. I took you off their hands and placed you here. You seemed happy. At least I waited until you became a woman.”
Bile tried to rise up in my throat. “Did you ever try to find my mother?”
He waved that off. “Pointless.”
“Not to me!” My legs weakened. “There must have been a report. News about a lost child. A mother begging the authorities to find her.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Was she American? A tourist? A local?”
“Sit down, darling.”
“Don’t you dare call me that.”
“You are still my wife.”
“Where is she? Who was she?”
He grimaced. “We don’t ask those kinds of questions. What’s important is you were housed safely. Here, in this pleasant home.”
“Were you going to leave Eloise here? Have her face the same fate?”
“I’d never harm my own child. Never forget she is still mine.”
“If you loved her, you wouldn’t keep her mother from her.”
“If you can prove you can be rational—”
“Please, Aemon, let me see her.”
“We had an agreement. You were to be obedient. Your reward was a reunion.” He gestured toward Atticus. “Only you fucked another man when I wasn’t around. Without my permission. And that, my dear, is a break in our promise.”
