Page 152 of The Billionaire's Fake Wife

"I almost died as a child."

"What?" I swing around. He’s staring at the opposite wall. A pulse flares to life at his jawline. "The Mafia kidnapped us and kept us captive."

"For how long?"

"Too long." He fiddles with the clasp of his watch. "It was close to a month." His jaw tenses.

I don’t dare speak, don’t want to break this line of thought. He’s thinking of… something… caught in the throes of his nightmares. I am not the only one running from my past, eh?

"We were bound to our beds, kept drugged." He clicks open the clasp of his watch, then shuts it with a harder click. "I floated in and out of consciousness." The tendons of his throat flex. "In my lucid moments, I tried to communicate with the other boys in the room. There were—"

"Seven of you."

He nods. "That’s how we met. From different homes, families, different realities; and our lives were changed irrevocably in that time."

"A powerful bond."

"One that unites you and haunts you for the rest of your life."

"What did they want?"

"They blackmailed our families for money. Until they realized mine didn’t have any."

The clicking of his watch grows louder.

He pulls himself up to his full height, "After about 3 weeks in that hell hole, one of us managed to break free. He was caught and brought back. That day they decided to make an example of me. I was the expandable one, after all." His smile grows fierce. "They beat me so hard that I lost consciousness."

I gasp. "The scar over your eyebrow...?"

He nods.

"The other families paid up. The kidnappers took the money, revealed the location where they were holding us. I was rescued with the other boys." He clicks the clasp of his watch. "When I arrived at the hospital I wasn't breathing. They resuscitated me." The clicking grows louder.

"They brought you back." The breath rushes out of me.

"I chose to live."

"Is that why… uh! You're so intense?"

One side of his mouth kicks up, "Now you’re being diplomatic."

Yeah, but when a man decides to reveal something of his deepest self, you don’t exactly kick him for it, eh?

He straightens, rubs the back of his neck, "I almost died… The rest of the Seven didn't escape unscathed either."

"What do you mean?"

"That is their story to tell."

He turns to me.

His shirt is unbuttoned, his hair mussed as if he’s been running his hands through the thick strands. It gives him a veneer of vulnerability. An act. Surely, it’s an act?

He’d wanted me to draw my father into the open. He’d wanted to destroy him…. Guess he got his wish, huh? So, what’s left? "Why share all of this with me… now?"

He holds out his hand. "Take a break."

I stare at his hand. "Is everything a negotiation?"