Page 20 of Lust & Lies

AIDEN

I WAS READY TO TAKE a life. I was ready to murder someone brutally. And I wanted the police to find the body so the world could know just how horribly they’d died. Why the hell did they have to call right now?

Why couldn’t they wait a couple more hours? Or call during business fucking hours. They could’ve at least waited until the damn sun came up. I licked my lips as I headed to my office. Damn, I still tasted her.

My Noe.

My wife.

Well, not yet. But soon.

As I stormed down the hall, jaw clenched, my mind raced with all the things I needed to do. We needed to get married as soon as possible. I needed her legally bound to me. Not just legally.

I wanted her emotionally bound to me. Intimately bound to me. Spiritually bound to me. Bound to me in every way possible. I wanted her so wrapped up in me that the very thought of being apart filled her with dread.

Because that’s what I felt when we weren’t together, that’s what I felt during our time apart. Not a day went by that I didn’t feel lost and alone. A sense of dread had been my constant companion, so much so that even now, I could feel it lurking, ready to appear again.

I couldn’t go back to those days when I’d experienced that constant ache that didn’t fade. There had been a hollow, gnawing void inside of me that no amount of drinking, fighting, or killing could ever fix.

Even when family and friends had surrounded me, I’d still felt incomplete when she wasn’t with me. Nothing soothed the ache caused by being away from her. I refused to go through that again.

That was why we had to get married as soon as possible. Though I’d call it renewing our vows, this would be our first wedding. My plan hadn’t been to move this fast. I’d wanted to take my time with her.

I’d wanted to let her gradually fall back in love with me. But fuck, I swear she stared at me like she already loved me. The way she’d gazed at me just now made me feel like the love had never gone away.

When she cupped my face while I was lying between her thighs, everything else vanished. There were no lies. No distrust. No stormy past. Just her. Her gentle touch. Her loving gaze.

She may not have uttered the words, but in her eyes, I saw her love for me.

I saw the old Noe. The one who’d always had my back when I felt like the world was against me.

The one who’d loved me so fiercely, so passionately, so wholeheartedly, that I’d been willing to turn my back on my entire family for her.

The Noe who’d been my friend and my lover. The only woman I’d ever loved. When she’d stared at me just now, I saw her, that Noe. And I knew in that instant that her memories of me may be gone, but her love for me had never left.

It had just been on pause for a while due to the fucked up shit that happened in our past. When she cupped my face as I lay between her legs, it reminded me of the old days. It made me feel as if we’d been transported back in time, back to a happier place for both of us.

I’d given her a chance to back out. Told her if we moved forward, there would be no turning back. No regrets. Her response was a promise not to leave me. Therefore, there would be no leaving. Ever. Not for either of us.

The office phone was still ringing when I entered the room. I snatched the phone up, already knowing who it was from the ringtone that had called my cell.

“What the fuck do you want, Tristan?”

“Good morning to you, too, brother,” Tristan’s deep voice came across the line.

“You have three seconds to say something that keeps me from hanging up.”

“Grandfather is growing suspicious.”

Shit! Swiping my hand over my face, I swiveled my office chair around and plopped down in my seat.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You happened,” Tristan replied.

“What happened to make you think the Old Man is suspicious?” I growled, not in the mood for this back and forth with my older brother.

“He’s hired investigators to look into...”

“Fuck!” I yelled, drowning out the rest of my brother’s sentence.

“This shouldn’t come as a shock to you. You had to know he would investigate things,” Tristan drawled.

Yeah, I knew he would. He wouldn’t be my grandfather if he didn’t. I guess I thought I’d have more time. Damn it.

“I thought I covered my tracks well enough,” I mumbled, running my hand through my hair.

“You did,” Tristan assured me. “But the Old Man is thorough. And relentless. Plus, Noe is like family to him. Hell, he treats her better than he treats us.”

“Does he?” I asked, letting sarcasm seep into those two words.

“You know he does. You may not agree with his decisions, but you knew how this would affect him. He was in the hospital for a week after he heard about the accident. He still hasn’t fully recovered. I was with him yesterday. He’s not doing well.”

Damn. Hurting my grandfather was never the plan. But I was done sacrificing my happiness for him. He hadn’t thought twice about how he was destroying me when he forced me to walk away from her.

He hadn’t flinched when he crushed her heart in the process, forbidding her from being with me. Now I was supposed to give a damn about his feelings? No. Not this time. I was done playing by his rules.

I loved my grandfather. He’d sacrificed a lot for our family. He’d fought hard to make our businesses prosper over the years. He was the backbone of the Park family. And I know living in the States, learning to navigate life here while facing oppression had been hard on him and his parents.

However, that didn’t mean he could control my life. That didn’t mean I had to walk the same path he had. He’d lived his life. It was time for me to live mine. I was done following his orders. And I refused to live without Noe. That was not an option.

“Did you hear what I just said, Aiden?”

“Yeah, grandfather’s not doing well. I got it. He’s a tough old man. He’ll be okay.”

“Aiden!”

“Isn’t he the one who always says love is a weakness?” I asked. “He shouldn’t have let Noe become his weakness.”

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Believe it.”

“He practically raised her,” my brother pointed out. “She’s family. That’s why...”

“We’re not blood related, Tristan. And you know her being like family isn’t the reason he didn’t want us to be together.

The Old Man created a path for all of us.

He didn’t give a damn about what we wanted or about how we felt.

My path didn’t align with the one he had planned for Noe.

So he did everything in his power to keep us apart. ”

“He’s set in his ways, Aiden. And he does what he thinks is best. He doesn’t do things to spite us or make us unhappy.”

“Yet we somehow end up unhappy,” I countered.

“He does what he thinks is right for us. He had a hard upbringing and faced a lot of trials. He’s only trying to keep us from making the same mistakes he made, the same mistakes our great-grandfather made when he came to the States.”

“Brother, save that talk for someone else. I’ve heard it a hundred times from him, Dad, and you. I wasn’t buying it in the past. I won’t buy it now.”

“Family protects family,” Tristan recited one of our family mantras. “What do you expect from him, Aiden?”

“I understand that. But his way of protecting us is suffocating. I’m done playing by his rules, brother. I’m not trying to make him sick. I’m just trying to get my life back on track. Noe’s too.”

“But you didn’t stop and ask her if she wanted this. She had a life, Aiden. No, you weren’t a part of it. But she still had one.”

“You know she wasn’t happy, brother.”

“No, I don’t know that. She never told me that.”

“Because she doesn’t like talking about her feelings. She doesn’t like being vulnerable. But I know her. She wasn’t happy with grandfather’s plans for her. I know it. You know it. He knew it.”

“Even so, your plan was rash and reckless. There are too many loose ends, Aiden. I warned you that this could all blow up in your face. If grandad’s team finds out the truth, there will be a shitstorm headed your way.”

“Are you done talking yet?” I asked, ready to get back to Noe.

“How is what you're doing any different from what grandfather has done?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. It was different. I loved Noe, and she loved me. I wasn’t trying to control her. I just wanted to free her from grandfather’s clutches. This was fucking different.

“You can’t answer that, can you? You need to put an end to this before it gets out of hand. If grandfather finds out she’s alive...”

“He won’t find out.”

“Even Ethan knows. How long do you think it’ll be before he lets something slip in front of grandfather?”

“He won’t. He knows what I’m doing was the only option.”

“Yeah, but he talks too damn much. He will let something slip.”

“Are you saying our brother can’t keep a secret?”

“He called me last night to let me know he talked to Noe and that she remembered him cooking for her.”

Damn it, Ethan.

“Ethan makes mistakes all the damn time,” Tristan continued. “Letting him know the truth wasn’t the right way to go.”

“He’s her best friend. I had to let him know. Plus, I’d needed his help putting my plan into action.” This conversation was giving me a damn headache. “Look, Tristan, I don’t need your advice on this. I know what I’m doing.”

“No. You don’t! When it comes to Noe, you’ve always been a little crazy. No, you’ve been crazy as hell. And you know how damn crazy she can get. If her memory returns...”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t be sure of that. If it returns, she will kill you for this.”

“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 for her, 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.