Page 60 of Arrogant and Merciless

At first, I was afraid that, like everything else in my life, I’d forgotten how to play violin as well. But the moment I picked up an instrument, the music flowed as if I’d been doing it all my life. I cried at that tiny link to my past.

A few days later, Jackie offered to go with me to my hometown so I could visit my parents’ graves. I cleaned their headstones but remembered nothing about them, though I do have some photographs she kept from the time they emptied out my old apartment after I disappeared.

“What is it?” I ask, forcing myself to hold on to the present and what’s real.

“We’re having a performance next Saturday at the charity.”

“Yes, I know.”

“William, your doctor, will be there. He’s one of the patrons.”

I pretend not to be fazed. “Sooner or later, we’d have run into each other.”

“Do you plan on speaking to him?”

“About what?”

“The truth. Telling him you lost your memory.”

“What for? If I was involved with father and son simultaneously, he must hate me, Jackie. He never answered my calls.”

“Taylor, there were pictures online of you and his father,” she says, uncomfortable.

“Pictures?”

“Yes. Most of them didn’t clearly show you. Maybe a stranger wouldn’t recognize you, but I doubt he didn’t see you at his father’s side.”

She told me that, at first, he looked for me, but if he kept doing so afterward, he never involved her again.

“Then it’s basically guaranteed he hates me.”

“How will you handle seeing him on Saturday?”

“There’s no way to be sure, but I can’t control where he goes or which places he visits, Jackie.”

“There’s a good chance he’ll be with someone.”

“He’s a free man. He has every right to date.”

William

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I smileas I watch her walk through the hall, unaware of what awaits her.

I've waited more than a year for Taylor Jarvis to return to the United States. I could have forced her back sooner, seduced her and made her do whatever I wanted, because just like me, she was never immune to the explosive chemistry between us. But I preferred giving her this false sense of freedom, like a butterfly with no clue that its life is about to end.

The time for retribution has arrived, and I’m going to take everything from her. She will give me what I want, and in the end, I’ll leave her to live as she pleases—a hollow, petty existence, just as she is.

Until I saw her today, I wasn’t sure I’d go through with my plan, but now it seems perfect. I don’t believe there’s any other way to silence my subconscious—that need to protect her that still creeps into my dreams, even after discovering everything she did to me.

I admit I was surprised to find her working at a charity, but what better place to find a lover—or with a little luck, a rich husband? After I learned she was alive and well, I pictured our reunion thousands of times. In it, Taylor showed up as the femme fatale of my fantasies, a soul- and scruple-less woman capable of getting involved with a man old enough to be her grandfather. Of sharing father and son.

I remember the night before she disappeared—crazed with jealousy, I took her right up against the door of her apartment. She must have already been planning to run off with my father by then. And to think I felt guilty, even apologized for acting like a jerk.

Yes, I was a fool—but for believing in her sweetness and innocence, for thinking that her inexperience when we first met meant she was pure of heart, when in fact the woman has ice in her veins instead of blood. When did she decide to swap the son for the father? Maybe she quickly concluded the old fool would be easier to manipulate.

“Good evening, Mr. Marshall.”

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