Page 149 of The Enslaved Duet

The hand around my throat pulsed in time with my heartbeat as if to prove to me he was so attuned to my needs, he could read what was in my heart.

“I will,” he vowed.

“You could never make up for everything that’s happened, and I have no faith that you’d even know how to try,” I said, the truth and lies so wrapped up in each other, I couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. “So I can tell you confidently to go straight back to hell,” I snapped even though the feel of his hand collaring my throat made my pulse drop straight and heavy between my thighs.

“Don’t believe you can fool me into thinking you don’t want to rule there by my side.”

“I never should have fallen for your manipulations,” I rushed to say, needing to fount the anger before it ebbed into lust under the hot touch of his hand on my pulse. “You’ve always been the villain in my story, and you always will be. If you really care for me at fucking all, you’ll leave me alone to live my new life without you.”

People were circling too closely to us, aware of the animosity sparking in the air around us, drawn to the chaos of our reunion. I could see Mason powering through the couples, his face set to stone after witnessing my anger.

“Think of this as a courtesy call,” he said dispassionately, completely unaffected by my vibrating anger or the growing unease of the people around us. “You are my wife, for better or worse, and I’m coming for you, Cosima, to inaugurate you at my side where you belong. You can run,” he taunted, angling his nose along the line of my throat before sinking his teeth into my neck on either side of my jugular. “But I think we’ve proven that I’ll always find you.”

Abruptly, he stepped away from me, releasing his hold so that I stumbled slightly on my high heels and instinctively reached out to grasp his arm to steady myself.

His smile was a weapon thrust into my chest. “Oh, andtopolina? If you let that man touch you, I’ll kill him with my bare hands and make you watch.”

Cosima

I listened to Verdi.

He was the favourite composer of both my fathers, Seamus Moore and Amadeo Salvatore. I grew up listening to the dramatic strains of his operas played over the tinny old radio in our tiny yellow house in our tiny life in Napoli, and then I learned lessons I should have been taught as a child from my birth father in his olive grove while Verdi played over the speakers set up at the terracotta patio at the back of his house.

His music was the soundtrack to my operatic life, and it soothed me as I cooked breakfast before dawn the morning after the charity event and hours before I had to leave on a plane bound for England.

I sang along softly with Violetta as she spoke ofsempre libera, being forever free, even as she wondered if she was in love.

I had spent the last three years trying to teach myself how to be free, to no avail.

At first, I’d wondered if the ties that bound me to my past were just too strong, that I was weak in the face of my trauma.

But as time moved slowly on like the drip of cold molasses into a cup, I realized just how wrong that assumption was.

It wasn’t that I was weak and traumatized.

It was that, sick as it might be, I was enamoured with the sins of my past.

Yes, I’d been sold and hunted like a fox destined for death. But Alexander had been there to save me, to claim me with his body in the dirt and the stamp of his ownership bruised into my skin.

After the revelations of last night, I knew that it was his machinations that had brought my “good luck” into fruition after running away from him three years ago.

How could I possibly reconcile the unbiased fact that Alexander Davenport was a cold-hearted villain with the irrevocable knowledge that to me andforme alone, he was also the world’s most unlikely saviour.

I hated him for his interference. I’d wanted, noneededso badly to make my life my own.

But I knew it would have been nearly impossible without him.

As the clerk at that horrible fast food restaurant had said, I was deeply unqualified for even basic work.

Still, Alexander may have given me the means to make a name for myself in the world, but I was the one who had put those advantages to good use.

My life was my own, vibrant and fully drawn even if it existed in a frame of Alexander’s making.

Strangely, I was okay with that.

“A bit early for Verdi, isn’t it?” Giselle asked from behind me.

I spun to face her with a genuine smile despite my inner turmoil. There was no one who made me feel as at peace as she did. I could feel the noose I’d been wearing around my neck since Ashcroft reappeared in my life, the one that had tightened inexorably when Alexander showed up last night, fall lax around my collarbones at the sight of my pretty Giselle wrapped up in grey and cashmere in preparation for the cold autumn morning.