Page 55 of Lust & Lies
“I feel like a dead man without her anyway,” I drawled. “I’d gladly let her kill me. I have no regrets.”
“Aiden!” Tristan yelled.
I leaned back in my seat and stared up at the ceiling. “Is there anything else?”
“You refuse to listen to reason, don’t you?”
“I’m hanging up.”
“You’re taking this a little too far!”
“For her, I’m willing to take this as far as I have to.”Straight to hell if need be.
“Aiden, take my advice. Some relationships are just not meant to be, no matter how much you want the person, love the person, or fight for the person.”
“That’s the difference between you and me, brother. I’ll never let go of the woman I love.”
I knew that was a low blow. But I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t going to lose Noe the same way he’d lost the woman he loved.
“But you did lose her, brother,” Tristan replied calmly, but I heard the change in his tone. He was pissed off. “You did lose her. She’s not yours anymore. She moved on. That’s why you’ve kidnapped her. Because you lost her.”
“I didn’t,” I yelled, leaning forward in my seat. “I never let go of her.”
Tristan chuckled, the sound filled with malice, not mirth.
“If you didn’t let her go, if she’s yours, as you say, then why kidnap her?”
“I didn’t!” I yelled, slamming my hand against my desk, making the pens and stapler rattle. “I’m reclaiming what was mine, what was taken from me.”
“We’ll see what she says about that when her memory returns.”
“It won’t return!” I yelled, but Tristan had already hung up.
Fuck!I slammed the phone down. For a second, I considered calling him back, just to say fuck you. Then remembered that I’d had the phone set up to not allow outbound calls. Only inbound. I leaned back in my seat, my brother’s words drifting through my mind.
“If you didn’t let her go, if she’s yours, as you say, then why kidnap her?”
This wasn’t considered kidnapping. Noe belonged to me. She was mine. And I was hers. She was my future and my unfinished past. She was my life, my beginning and my end, my oxygen, my gravity, the blood that flowed through my veins, my world.
There was no Aiden Park without her. There was only a shell of the man known as Aiden when Noe wasn’t by my side. No, I didn’t kidnap her. I reclaimed her. I freed her from my grandfather’s clutches.
I got us back on track so we could continue our story. My grandfather treated us like his pawns. Like chess pieces in a game only he could control, only he could win. That was the same way he’d treated Noe’s parents, and look how their story ended.
I wouldn’t let our story end like that. I wouldn’t let Noe walk the path he’d chosen for her. I would do whatever it took to keep her safe and to let her live the type of life she wanted to live, even if I had to fake her death to do it.
I loved her too much to let her remain trapped in my grandfather’s golden cage, living the life he’d mapped out forher, having the career he’d told her she should have, trying to love the person he’d told her she should love.
So no, this wasn’t kidnapping. This was love in its purest form. Yet, even as I thought that, more of my brother’s words continued to play over and over again in my head.
“We’ll see what she says about that when her memory returns.”
I closed my eyes as that sense of dread crept in, leaving me feeling paralyzed. I couldn’t let her memory return.
I couldn’t.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AIDEN
