Heir to a Dark Inheritance

by Maisey Yates

  He advanced on her, his lip curled into a snarl. “You’re right—I’ve spent enough time running, Jada, so I know what that looks like. But you aren’t even running. You’re just standing in the same spot, glued to it because you’re afraid to move on. I know your path changed, I know it’s rough and scary and I know it hurts, but you still have to walk on it, dammit. You were the one that told me life moves on. But you aren’t moving, Jada. You’re standing still.”

  “So I should just go on like he didn’t matter? Like everything is fine?”

  “You didn’t die three years ago. He did,” Alik said, his voice hard. Angry.

  “Stop. Just stop.”

  “No. You listen. You are alive, Jada Patel, but you choose to bury yourself. To try to live unchanging and unmoving. There is life here. There could be life with me. But you won’t take it.”

  Her eyes glistened, with tears. With anger. “Just because I don’t want you doesn’t mean I don’t want to live,” she said. “I did change. I got Leena, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t change—you simply didn’t have anyone standing in the way of what you always wanted. Because he did stand in your way, Jada, whether you want to admit it or not. He stood in the way of Leena. Of who you are.”

  “He didn’t, Alik. He was a good man, he—”

  “Better than me?”

  “Yes.” He jerked back, as though he’d been slapped. But still she kept going. “I want a simple, normal life that doesn’t hurt all the time. I want to raise my daughter, with you because you’re her father and it’s right, but I don’t want to be your wife.”

  “You are in luck, then,” he said slowly, taking an envelope off the desk. “The adoption is finalized. You don’t have to be my wife.”

  She blinked slowly. “I don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “You listen to me,” he said. “I will divorce you. I will give you what you ask for. I will put you in a house of your choosing. Here, in Attar, in New York, back in Oregon. I don’t care. But before I do that, I am going to say it one more time and when you reject it, you be sure that you don’t want it because I will never say it again…do you understand me? Reject me again and I withdraw it.”

  She closed her eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. And she nodded, biting her lip, trying to hold the pain at bay.

  “I love you.”

  She shook her head, a sob escaping her lips, more tears falling. “No.” It was all she could say.

  “Then that is the last time I will torture you with the words. Now get out.”

  “Alik…”

  “Out.”

  Alik watched Jada walk out of the room, and he felt his chest tear in two. It was like everything in him had come to life, new and raw and bleeding. He felt it all now. The loss, so intense, crippling, and with it, the love that beat behind it. Too strong to be wiped out, no matter how cruel the rejection.

  This was why he had left himself numb for so long.

  Because his life would have been nothing but an endless hell of pain if he hadn’t learned to numb it. But if he had spent his life feeling, then perhaps this moment wouldn’t be quite so devastating. Perhaps he could have built up a security system against it. As it was, there was nothing to prepare him for it. For how it felt to tell a woman he loved her. To have her throw it back at him.

  He wanted to hurt her, as he was hurting. He wanted to take Leena from her. Just for one, small, ugly moment, he wanted it. And then he imagined the pain it would put her through and his own doubled.

  Love was hell. To want to make her feel his pain, to know that if he did it would hurt him even more.

  No wonder he had guarded himself against this. He had been smart.

  He wished he could close himself up again. Wished he could go back to life before Jada. Wished he could unlearn intimacy. Wished he had never made love with her.

  But if he wished it all away, if he turned back to the man he was, then he would lose his love for Leena, too. And Leena was worth the pain. She was worth any pain.

  So strange. He had lived his life for so long, and he had had nothing to live for. So he had flirted with death. With danger. Now he had something that was truly worth dying for. He would lay down his life for Leena without hesitation, but for her sake, for the love of her, he wanted to live now more than he ever had.

  He also wanted to cut his heart out of his chest.

  It was too damned early in the day to drink. And he had no way to numb his pain. So instead he walked out of the sitting room and back to the patio. Marie was still there talking to Leena.

  “Let me take her,” he said.

  He picked her up and smelled her hair, and a strange feeling of calm cut through the pain. He had Leena. No matter what, he had Leena.

  He didn’t need Jada. He only needed his daughter. And he wouldn’t hurt his daughter by taking her from his wife. The woman who would be his ex-wife soon enough.

  After giving Leena back to Marie, he walked outside into the chilly Parisian morning and did his best to ignore the word. Ex-wife. It kept repeating itself in his mind. Over and over again, in time with his footsteps.

  He gritted his teeth. It didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. He had made a vow. He would not tell her he loved her again. He would not even think it. Jada had missed her chance with him. She could have her freedom. She could have her safety.

  She could cling to the memory of a husband who could no longer hold her.

  He would not look back. He would not offer his love again.

  He’d sent Jada and Leena back to Attar, while he’d taken a different plane, had gone back to Brussels to check on his earlier deal. The one that had been interrupted by the discovery of his child. And the acquisition of his new wife.

  Now he was walking downtown, the streets cold and wet, the clubs inviting. In there was every tool he needed to forget. Women. Alcohol. Especially women.

  He jerked open the door to one of the clubs. The music, cigarette smoke and thick smell of sweat and booze hit him hard. It was all so familiar. So much more familiar than this feeling of raw vulnerability in his chest.

  Here, there was no pain. No need to be honest. Here, there was oblivion. Shallow and perfect. The strobe lights were blinding, the bass deafening. A hostile takeover of the senses. Everything he could have asked for.

  He went to the bar and ordered a drink, then surveyed his surroundings. Until he spotted her. Blonde, tall and bombshell curvy. All the things Jada wasn’t.

  She was leaning against the other end of the bar, a drink in her hand. She lifted a toothpick from it and put it in her mouth, sucking the cherry from the end. Subtle she was not. Good. He didn’t want subtle.

  He wanted easy.

  He put his glass to his lips and made eye contact with her. And on cue, she worked her way down the bar toward him, her hips swaying. He felt no desire for her. But this wasn’t about her.

  “Buy me another drink?” she shouted over the music.

  He nodded and signaled to the bartender.

  He knew the steps to this dance. Everything about it was familiar. Except for the sick feeling in his stomach. Except for the total absence of adrenaline. Of the thrill.

  The woman approached him, put her hand over his, tilted her head to the side. She talked. She played with her hair. She licked her lips.

  His vision blurred. Until he saw Jada. In a white dress, walking down the aisle toward him like she was going to the gallows.

  And then he heard their vows. Over and over again.

  Promises of togetherness until death. Of faithfulness.

  And Sayid’s words, echoing in his head.

  You think what happened here today, the words you spoke, you think those won’t matter?

  It mattered. Regardless of what he wanted to believe. It mattered.

  She mattered. And the simple act of her not returning his love didn’t erase it.

  “I have to go.” He put his drink down on the bar and t
urned away from the woman, walked back toward the door.

  Someone ran into him, laughed, a strange-sounding laugh. Drunken. Not genuine.

  No wonder he had never found anything lasting here. No wonder this had never brought him satisfaction. There was nothing real in this. Nothing of substance.

  Jada and Leena were the real thing.

  They were all that mattered. And if he had to put himself through the pain of her rejection a thousand times, he would do it.

  Because before Jada, he had been a prisoner in himself. And now, pain and all, he was free.

  Alik had been gone for days, leaving Leena and Jada alone in Attar.

  Jada couldn’t complain. She badly needed the space. Needed to get her head on straight. Find herself again, whoever that was.

  Although the idea that space would somehow ease her pain was terribly flawed. She knew that. Space, separation, caused so much pain.

  Leena had fallen asleep already, which was nice in some ways. Not in others. Because without her daughter to entertain, all Jada had were her thoughts. And her thoughts were a sad, bitter place at the moment.

  Bitter at herself, mostly. And at Alik for demanding so much of her.

  Jada sighed and rested her arms on the railing, looking out over the ocean. She missed Alik. She missed his touch. His kiss. His laugh. She missed how she felt happy around him.

  You’re not the same woman you were.

  She couldn’t get his words out of her mind. That was what scared her. That she’d changed so much. That all her memories were fading into a vague, colorless past. Happy, but no longer so poignant. No longer something she felt desperate to recapture. No longer something she idolized as utter perfection, but something she now saw as flawed. Real.

  She was standing on the edge of a cliff, and she wasn’t sure whether or not she should jump. She was afraid that by embracing her new self with Alik, she would lose who she’d been with Sunil.

  But Sunil was gone. And there was no way to know how things would have played out if he was still here. No way to know how she would have changed, or not changed.

  The simple truth was, the woman who was here and now, wanted Alik, and no other man. The woman she was now wouldn’t go back, because this life, her life, was everything she hadn’t known she’d wanted. And she wanted Alik, so much. So incredibly much. His touch, his laugh, him.

  She waited for the guilt that admission should bring, but there was none. Just a sort of sweet ache in her heart.

  She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky, the ocean breeze skimming over her skin like a caress. That made her think of Alik, too. When she thought of the word husband, it was his face she saw. When she thought of love…

  She couldn’t go forward while she had one foot in the past. She realized that now. She also realized that she’d been doing it by design. That she’d been doing it to keep herself safe.

  But Alik, stupid Alik, sexy, wonderful Alik, wouldn’t let her stay safe.

  He had pulled her open, exposed her, made her care and laugh and love. Made her hunger for life, for the next chapter instead of the ones at the beginning of the book.

  She had been terrified of shedding her old self. That her new skin seemed to fit so much better. Because she hadn’t been sure how to reconcile it all. She had been happy with Sunil. But…but with Alik there was the promise of something true. Something complete. And it had all been too much for her to handle.

  And now she’d ruined everything. Alik would never offer his love to her again. His face when he’d said that…it had been so cold. So horribly cold.

  “How dare you?”

  She turned and saw Alik, walking toward her. He was wearing the remnants of a suit, no tie, his shirt rumpled and the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

  “How dare I what?”

  “How dare you…storm into my life.”

  “You were the one who stormed into mine,” she said.

  “Then why am I the one left devastated?”

  She flinched, the haunted look in his eyes almost too painful for her to witness.

  He took her arm and pulled her to him, his expression fierce. “You stripped me of all of my protection. Of everything that was holding me together. And then you took yourself from me too.”

  “How dare I?” she asked. “How dare you! I feel like…I don’t even know who I am anymore. No, that’s not it. I feel like I found myself for the first time and I have nothing to hide behind. I have no excuse now, not to be this person, not to…not to grab what I want and I’m afraid of what I want, Alik. Of how badly I want it.”

  “And what is it you want?”

  “You,” she breathed. “No matter what…I…all I want is you. I’ve made some bad choices lately.”

  “You have?” he asked, his expression frozen.

  She nodded. “Alik, I was so stupid. I was so focused on protecting things that have already passed that I missed something I could have had now. I was too…I was too afraid of the person I was becoming and it made me want to cling to the past even more.”

  “Emotion,” he said slowly, “is a very strange thing. As I am learning. I tried to feel for most of my life, and I failed. I tried to create deep feelings from shallow things but that doesn’t work. You can’t protect yourself and embrace love.”

  “Sometimes you can’t stop it, either, even though you want to. I wanted to stop it, Alik, but I couldn’t.”

  He laughed. “You wanted to stop what, princess?” The tenderness in his voice made her want to cry. Then she realized she was already crying.

  She wiped a tear from her cheek. “Alik, I tried so hard to fix you because it was easier than looking at myself and seeing what a mess I still was. I was so afraid that wanting different things now, becoming a different person now, would make my marriage obsolete. That it would dishonor my husband’s memory. More than that even…that I just wouldn’t be able to hide anything of myself. You distracted me, made me start to forget.”

  “My sex appeal, I think.”

  “You would think that, and I won’t lie, it was that in the beginning.”

  “And now?”

  “I am the most self-righteous, ridiculous, un-self-aware person on the planet.”

  “Are you?”

  “I must be. I had myself convinced that my past was perfection.”

  “And I know that I’m not perfection.”

  Her heart seized. “Alik…no…let me finish. I thought moving on from my past would somehow be disloyal or that it would…that it would erase it. That wanting something different now might mean that what I had then was somehow less. Alik, you made me want again. You made me dream. You took me dancing. You made me happy. You showed me that I wanted things I hadn’t even known I wanted. And with all of that…I don’t need my memories anymore. And those memories meant so much. They’re warm and sweet, calm. They’re what my idea of love was.”

  “We are not sweet and calm, are we?”

  “No. We aren’t. You challenge me. You arouse me like no other man ever has. I’ve spent my life doing things exactly how I should, and no one has ever made me want to deviate from that path. But you…you had me up against a wall in an opera house! You make me lose my control. You make me dizzy. And this isn’t anything I’ve ever felt before, anything I ever wanted before. And I didn’t understand how this could be me. I didn’t understand how this thing between you and me could be love.”

  He put his hand on her cheek, his eyes filled with sadness so deep it made her heart squeeze. “For you, maybe it isn’t.”

  She shook her head. “No. You were right. It’s different because you’re different. Because I’m different. Because I need to be different. I realized it then, Alik. And that was when I ran. When you said you loved me, I had to face the fact that I loved you, too, and…”

  “You love me?”

  She nodded, the words sticking in her throat.

  “Then why did you…why did you walk away from me?”

  “I
was running. You should know all about that.”

  He slid his thumbs over her cheeks, wiping her tears away. “Will you stop running from me? Will you stop running from us? I have. I tried to go back, Jada. I’m not proud of it. I tried to go to a club, to pick up a woman. I found I didn’t even want to. I couldn’t. I am too changed by what has passed between us.”

  She nodded. “I am, too. I don’t want to go back, either, and that’s what scared me, Alik. That I’ve moved on. Finally. Really.”

  He took her hands in his, pinned them to his chest. “I have broken down every wall inside of myself so that there could be nothing between us, and I swore I wouldn’t offer it again, but, Jada, my pride can burn in hell because if I don’t have you…there is no meaning. Pride won’t keep me warm. Pride won’t show me beauty. You are what I have been chasing all my life. This is the feeling. I thought I was dead inside, thought I could never, ever have this…and then there was you.”

  Jada looked at Alik, at the man who had changed her. At the man who was offering her healing. “I’m so sorry, Alik.”

  “What?” he asked, his voice choked.

  “This is what I did to you, isn’t it? I dragged you out of your safety, out of your comfort zone and I made you face everything that scared you the most.”

  “You did. But it needed to be done. Protecting myself…protecting myself from the pain of losing my mother would have kept me from truly connecting with my child. It would have kept me from connecting with you. From loving you.”

  “I was so arrogant to think I wasn’t hiding, too. I was. I was hiding behind grief and excuses. I…I don’t want to hide anymore. Alik, please, please forgive me. Please love me. Please tell me it’s not too late.”

  He pulled her in, crushing his lips to hers, stealing her breath. When they parted, she was dizzy. “Of course it’s not too late. In fact, I was planning on mounting a full-scale attack on your defenses.”

  She laughed. “As if you hadn’t already!”

  “I’m a strategist, remember? That’s what they pay me for. And I had a plan to win you back.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t remember. I discarded it somewhere between the plane from Brussels to Attar, then I spent days in a hotel room, sulking and then I went and got this.” He held his left hand up. There was a dark band tattooed around his ring finger.