Page 28

Stefanos

My guilt became a slow poison in the first month of Amari’s departure.

After visiting my uncle, and rereading my father’s letter, it all made sense.

My mother held my father prisoner and over the years he became accustomed to balancing both sides of his dysfunctional life.

He never told me for the fear that I would grow to hate him.

I was an adult, he could have shared his life with me.

I think after the initial shock I would have listened to him.

After spending weeks of drowning in the numbing comfort of my amber scotch, I cleared up the empty bottles and crumpled up legal documentation that voided every clause and injunction I had weaponised against Amari’s family.

The money I funnelled into her account was blood money, a coward's apology.

Five million pounds.

Enough to buy her freedom in her life, but not enough to scour the guilt from my soul.

I told myself that she was better off without me.

The cold silence I used to push her away was mercy.

Yet the lie ate away at me each time I caught a glimpse of her through the tinted windows of my car, trailing after her like a wraith.

She wandered through parks and her local high streets, her lifeless eyes searching through the sea of people.

I watched her sit for hours in cafés, staring blankly at her book.

I would flinch when her fingers would absently trace her collarbone where her collar once bit into her skin—the memory of tugging on the leash while she crawled behind me disgusted and roused me.

The sight of her yearning for her collar carved me open.

Work became an afterthought, conducting meetings in my study or in the back of my Bentley, my attention split between reports and the live feed from the private investigator hired to keep an eye on Amari.

My tracking device inside her always told me where she was, but it wasn't enough.

There were whispers about my absence, but I didn't care.

The only thing that mattered was the grainy footage of Amari pushing her sister on a swing, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

Then came the night she wore red.

She made arrangements to meet her friend at a bar.

I waited impatiently outside her house for hours nursing a flask of bourbon.

When she emerged from her house wearing a sinful long red dress that clung to her curves like a second-skin, she took my breath away.

I’d seen her naked, vulnerable, owned, but this—this was different.

This was Amari reclaiming her fire, her defiance, and it made my heart race to see her bright spark of life emerge. My eyes narrowed on her body, she’d lost weight.

Keith followed her taxi through the neon-drenched lights while I relived the memories of my pet.

The first time I made her kneel, the raw pain and disbelief in her eyes when I set her free.

After several visits to a bar, the ladies settled for a trendy nightclub.

The strobe-lit darkness allowed me to linger in the shadows, hidden with my gaze locked on her.

Men swarmed like vultures—suit and tie predators, offering drinks, compliments and hungry stares.

Each rejection she issued filled me with relief and a savage fuck you to all the pricks unworthy of her.

When a blonde Adonis, his hand brushing her waist, I almost crushed the glass I held.

Amari turned the man away with an icy smile and my relief morphed into shame.

I had no right to be jealous, no right to the heat pooling in my veins when she flicked her long black hair back.

The hair I once combed.

It didn't stop me from watching her dance, the silky red material sliding over her hips as she moved, her breasts swayed, showcased in the low-cut neckline.

Later slumped in the car outside her house, I replayed the night on a loop.

The way she’d thrown her head back laughing with her friend, the shadow that flickered across her face when she thought no one was looking.

I knew that shadow, it mirrored my own—the hollow where obsession and guilt festered.

I dialled his number, listening to it ring.

It was four in the morning, but I didn't care.

He picked up on the third ring.

“Double the surveillance,”

I said to the investigator with a rough voice. “I want every detail. Every man who looks at her.”

I didn't wait for a response, I hung up, looking at her house before telling Keith to take me home—the empty home which was full of vivid memories of us.

I meant to let her go, to live alone, but my obsession went deeper than the ties of blood.

It was time to face the truth.

She was not just my father’s stepdaughter, not a pawn in my twisted retribution.

Amari was my ruin and my redemption.

Thicker than blood. Thicker than betrayal. She was the one thing that made me feel alive and the only thing that could destroy me.

It was time to make my move.

***

After I knocked on the door, I tugged at my tie before quickly began to fix it when I heard the chain and lock opening.

Amari’s mother stood staring at me, her eyes wide and her lips parted.

She looked like an older version of Amari, the same eyes, nose and lips.

I smiled at her but it faltered when she glared at me.

She pushed me back, and I stumbled on the step.

She stepped outside, closing the front door behind her, but it didn’t fully close.

“You are lucky that you are Christos’s son or I would slit your throat and bury you in my back garden to ensure my tomatoes have a decent fertiliser this year,”

she snapped viciously at me.

I held my hands up.

“I come in peace,”

I said softly before checking her hands for weapons.

“What did you do to my daughter?”

she asked with her nostrils flaring while she stabbed her finger into my chest with each word.

I gulped at her question because there was no way on this earth that I could tell her what I did to her daughter.

“I-I made a mistake, Ms Jenson. I—”

“Are you here to hurt my daughter again?”

she snapped, interrupting me.

My twisted mind went to all the times that Amari got off from pain and I hesitated before answering.

“I will never harm your daughter emotionally and only physically if she wants me to,”

I answered honestly but my cheeks burned when she looked confused.

“What do you mean if she—”

she began to ask but the penny dropped and she looked flustered. “God, never mind. I don't want to know what you young people get up to nowadays.”

Thank God.

“Why are you here?”

she asked looking me up and down with narrowed eyes as she crossed her arms. “What do you want from her?”

This was harder than I thought it was going to be, but I thought of Amari and my resolve strengthened.

“Ms Jenson, I never knew about any of you until my father passed away.

I was under the misconception that you sought to ruin my family.

There is no excuse for the manner in which I behaved, but the news came while I was grieving the loss of my father.

It wasn't until I spoke to my mother and she told me what she did to ensure my father never divorced her. I am truly sorry for everything,”

I said lowering my head to look away from her. “I should never have presumed the things that I did and Amari bore the brunt of my anger.”

“How dare you?”

she whispered causing me to look up.

My heart plummeted at the sight of her eyes glazed with tears. The same deep dark eyes as Amari’s.

“Your father always talked about how proud he was of your accomplishments, your character. Today, he would be ashamed of you,”

she said quietly wiping the tears away from her cheeks. “He was a good man. A good man who had to make difficult choices for you.”

“Ms Jen—”

“Call me Thema, you’re making me sound old,”

she said with a sniffle.

“Thema,”

I said softly, appealing to her with my eyes, pleading. “Please give me a chance to make amends, to let me get to know Alcina, to know you.”

Her lips trembled and more tears rolled down her cheeks. She had lost her partner that could never fully be hers because of me and my mother. A love that became forbidden in the eyes of the world.

“You’re just saying that because you don’t want to become fertiliser,”

she said with another sniff.

I was about to reply when the door flew open and another Jenson set of eyes was trying to murder me.

Amari.