Page 136

“Do not lie to me.” Terror, an emotion that he had only become familiar with since he had learned of what Mairi had gone through, made his voice especially sharp.
“I’m not lying. I don’t know where she is and you’re not helping matters when you tell me you don’t know where Mairi is either!”
Mandy’s voice had risen at the end of her outburst, and the note of panic in it was unmistakable. He knew then that Mandy was not lying, and terror swallowed more of the few remaining tendrils of hope that survived inside Damen.
“I’m sorry. I did not mean to be sharp with you. I am angry at myself, not you, for...” He almost laughed, realizing that he had no idea where to start about the innumerable things he had to be sorry for.
For every instance that Mairi had proven she loved him, there were ten things he did to make her think that he did not value her love at all.
“D-do you think she’s in trouble?” Mandy demanded.
“Her aunts should know where she is.”
There was something off in the Greek billionaire’s voice. Common sense told her that she shouldn’t believe Damen Leventis, but Mandy for once did not want to be practical. She told herself that she was just imagining things and that what Damen had said was true. Nothing bad had happened to Mairi. Her aunts would know where Mairi was and her friend would be fine. Was fine.
“How long has she been gone?”
“Five days now,” Damen said hollowly.
“Have you talked to her aunts?”
“I will call them after this.”
Another strangely tense moment of silence followed, and Mandy again felt afraid for Mairi. She whispered, “What happened?”
Damen wanted to say that nothing happened, but he knew he did not deserve to say that. He spoke tonelessly, not hiding a single fact. He told Mandy about how he had been stupidly and foolishly blind to Mairi’s suffering, how he had forced her into a situation that had almost gotten Mairi raped. He told Mandy how he had constantly doubted Mairi’s love, to the point that he had believed a stranger over Mairi, to the point that he had thrown Mairi out of his house and treated her no better than a gold-digging whore.
He waited for Mandy to shout at him.
But she did not.
When she next spoke, she was crying. “I didn’t know...Velvet or I didn’t know any of this. We told her not to apply anymore because she kept getting rejected...”
Fate, once again in a cruelly ironic mood, interfered, giving Damen’s imagination the kind of accuracy only a powerful clairvoyant would have...or one whose love was so great that when it was betrayed, its ability to hurt was unparalleled.
Damen did not have to close his eyes to imagine Mairi forcing herself to smile, to laugh and chat like she was not worried at all about what the future held for her as she received one humiliating rejection after another.
He knew how Greek society worked, knew that those who were firmly on the side of Esther Leventis and the Kokinos clan would not hesitate to treat her like a leper and embarrass her with every opportunity they had to do so.
And again, he knew that she did it because she loved him that much.
Oh God, Mairi, how can I ever make it up to you?
I’m so sorry. There are no words, Mairi. I’m so sorry.
“We told her to tell you...”
But she hadn’t wanted to. His beautiful, selfless, and courageous Mairi had refused to tell him because she had always considered herself a burden to him, someone who still had to prove that she was worthy of becoming a Greek billionaire’s wife.
He wanted to throw up, as if his system felt he was undeserving to digest anything that nourished him because he was that fucking useless. Worthless. She had it wrong. She had it the other way around. She never had a need to prove that she deserved him. With every day they spent together, it was he – Damen Leventis – who had to prove that he deserved her love, which was something not even all his billions could be enough to buy.
“But we didn’t know,” Mandy sobbed. “We didn’t know that she was almost raped. Why wouldn’t she tell us? Why?”
Because of him.
Because he was always to blame.
Because by choosing to love him, Mairi had also chosen to isolate herself, being smart enough to know that anyone she considered a friend would be a potential target of the enmity of Esther Leventis – his own fucking mother – and the Kokinos clan, a family whose fury she didn’t do anything to earn but became a target of anyway because of Damen.