Page 14 of Redemption

“Then untie me.”

He gives a derisive laugh. “I like seeing you like this though.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Kilian.”

He takes the knife and presses the edge of the blade against my breast, then slowly drags it down my stomach, pushing the silk fabric of my robe open as he does it. “I missed you, Bella. I went back to the bar the night after you rushed out of my home. They told me you quit. I went to your apartment, the landlord said you moved out. What happened?”

I take a shaky breath. I can’t tell him. I can’t risk it. Instead, unwanted tears come to my eyes and I fight like hell to keep them in.

“Why did you leave without a goodbye, Bella?” he asks as he slices through the sash on my robe, causing it to fall open. His voice turns soft, almost broken. “Why did you leave me?”

I can’t hold back the tears any longer. I bite my lip as I try to keep my uneven breaths in. But being around this man I would have given my whole heart to is making my walls crack. This man I thought was dead. The man that has owned me since the day I met him.

Suddenly I feel the knife against my ankles, the zip ties snapping off. I open my eyes to find Kilian kneeling in front of me, a look of despair on his face. “Why?” he pleads.

I shake my head. “I can’t… I can’t.” I struggle to get the words out as I look into those sapphire eyes I spent so many nights staring into. Nights we told each other everything. Everything except for what made up the core of us.

His hands move up my thighs, to my hips, and slowly along the outside of my breast before his hands cup my face. “Why?” he asks again.

“Let me go,” I cry. “Just please, let me go.”

He drops his hands as his head falls. He slowly stands without another word. He cuts the ties on my wrists then walks toward the window across from me.

I pull my hands in front of me, rubbing the red lines on my wrists. I stare at Kilian’s back. I can see the sadness and the defeat in his shoulders. I also see scars and marks that weren’t there ten years ago between the ink of his tattoos and I wonder what he has been through. What has changed him from the carefree man I knew so well. Because now he is a stranger.

I am standing and walking toward him before I even realize what is happening. My hands land on his back and memories hit me as I feel my hands on him again. “Kilian,” I whisper.

He spins around so fast I nearly lose my balance but his hands grab my hips and he presses me into the brick wall behind me. His nose is in the groove of my neck and he inhales deeply. “You still smell like you used to. Of lemon and patchouli.”

“Kilian,” I whimper as his hands tighten on my hips.

“I never thought I would find you, Bella. Never thought I would see you again. But for years I told myself if I ever saw you again, I would never let you go.”

I shudder at his words. At the meaning behind them. Knowing he felt the same way I did even though neither of us actually said it.

“But I can’t be with you.” His lips press into my clavicle, across my neck, and up behind my ear to that spot that makes my toes curl. Then his lips are on my temple, my cheek, the outside of my own lips. I want to grab him. I want to pull him into me. But I don’t. I slowly put a hand on his chest and feel him shake underneath my touch. His lips graze against mine. “I can’t be with you until you tell me the truth.”

He pulls away and I feel the sudden chill from the loss of his body heat. “And I don’t think you will ever give me that.”

He picks up his shirt from the table and pulls it on. I watch as he buttons each button, then pulls on his vest, then his jacket. He slips a card out of his pocket. “If you see or hear from your brother, call this number. They will get in contact with me.”

He says nothing else as he walks out of my house and I am left standing with my heart in shambles in the kitchen.

7

KILIAN

By the time I get back to my penthouse in London, my anger has erupted. It’s past boiling. Bella Gallo, the woman who left me without a word, the woman I spent three years looking for, the woman I thought was a ghost, was standing right in front of me. And her name isn’t Bella Gallo, it’s Mirabella Di Masio.

I punch my fist through the wall in my office as I pick up my phone and contact Tomas. He answers on the first ring.

“I need you to find everything out that you can about a Mirabella Di Masio. She lives in Cefalù, Sicily.”

“Do you have any other information on her?” Tomas asks.

“She is related to a mafia family. But I believe she changed her name. Di Masio is not her last name.”

I hear the scratch of a pen on paper through the phone line. “I’ll call you in two days.” Then he hangs up on me.

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