Culmination (Clandestine Affairs, #3)

by Tessa Teevan

  That was before. That was before I let myself picture a future with her. A family with her. That was before she dug in so deep, entwining herself around my heart until I had no chance of escape. Not that I wanted one. But the first time, I hadn’t completely lost myself to her. Not like I have ever since she left the hospital. Ever since I had a glimpse of what life would be like without her.

  Now? Knowing she’s gone willingly, that I could not only lose her to him again, but lose her heart? To the one man…the one fucking man who actually has the power to love her as much as I do?

  I’ve never been more fucking terrified of anything in my life.

  I’m unraveling, and if I don’t find her soon, I may combust.

  If Morningstar has hurt one hair on her head, I’ll kill him myself.

  Whether he’s my brother or not.

  And if he’s wormed his way back into her heart, he better be ready for the fight of his fucking life. Because when it comes to Brie, for the first time in my life, I’ll hang up every inch of moral fiber and sink to the depths of the underground, fighting dirty with fire and fury if I have to.

  She’s mine. Nothing—and no one—else fucking matters.

  And nothing—and no one—will stand in my way.

  TAKING GABRIELLA TO MY secretly rented apartment in the city is probably a mistake. Still, Matthews is likely hot on our heels and I must have a chance to explain everything to her before he comes bursting in like the knight in shining armor he so desperately wants to be. God, why did my father have to send him of all people? Couldn’t he see what was right in front of him? Rafe Matthews has always wanted what’s mine. So for Father to dangle Gabriella right under his nose…

  That’s when it hits me.

  Of course. This was his plan all along. Just one more way for him to exercise his control. To show me that there’s no way out and he’ll do anything in his power—including taking my woman from me—to keep me in check.

  I nearly scoff at the absurdity of it all when Gabriella’s throat clears from just inside the apartment.

  I lead her to a couch and gesture for her to sit. When I take a seat on the opposite end, I have the urge to close the distance between us, but I know she needs space.

  “You must know the only thing that’s important to me is your safety. That is why I’m here. It’s why I had to see you.”

  “From where I’m standing, the only danger to me is from two people. One’s in this room, and the other is his father,” she replies, showing strength I’ve never encountered from her before.

  I like it. Why did she never show that side to me?

  In truth, I liked meek, at-my-beck-and-call, hanging-on-my-every-word Gabriella. I didn’t have to share her. She was wholly mine, undivided attention and all. She was the first, and only, person in my life who thought I was worth something.

  If only I’d been half the man she thought I was. Perhaps, she’d still be mine.

  I haven’t written it off yet. I saw the way she looked at me in the sanctuary. The way I still affect her. She may think she loves another, but is it love or is it desperate need for protection? I have to know because I can give her both. Hell, I gave her both for the better part of two years, and Matthews has had what? Three months?

  When I look at her, her jaw is set, her eyes narrow. Undeterred, I continue. “Gabriella, that man. The one you”—I pause, nearly choking on the words—“the one you’ve left me for… He’s not that man he pretends to be.”

  Her face is expressionless. I hate that I can’t read her anymore.

  “That man,” she answers bitterly, “said the same of you.”

  I release an exasperated sigh. While I’m sure what she’s been told of me is mostly true, I can only imagine the way Matthews has embellished my exploits for his own gain.

  “Of course he would, darling. He sought to win your affection from me. Why wouldn’t he say such things? I know how men like him think.”

  “You know nothing about him, Adrian. Not a damn thing.”

  I can’t help the snort that escapes me at that. “You would be wrong about that. I’ve known all about Rafe Matthews for years. Far longer than the time he’s been gracing your bed.”

  My fists tighten into balls. The thought of her—my beautiful, sweet, innocent Gabriella—in bed with another man threatens my patience. All I want to do is throw her over my shoulder, rush to the closest airport, secure her on a private plane, and steal her away until she remembers why she was mine for so long. Why she should be with me above all others. Above him.

  She gasps then quickly tries to cover up her surprise. She can’t help the widening of her eyes, however, and I know she’s curious.

  “What?”

  It’s a single syllable, yet it’s so beautiful. It’s hard to contain myself from shouting the truth. So Rafe Matthews hasn’t been candid with Gabriella. Something profound warms my dark heart, a heart that’s been cold from the moment she left me. This is it. My way back in. After all, how can she condemn me as a liar when he is very much the same?

  I nod. “As I said. You don’t know the real man.”

  She lifts her chin in defiance. “I know who he is. I know he worked for your father, and I know he—” She snaps her mouth closed. Interesting. “Unlike you, Adrian, he told me the truth. He told me everything. We have no secrets. It’s one of the many things that set the two of you apart.”

  My mouth twitches and I try not to bask in the fact that my sweet Gabriella is still as naïve as she was the day we met. “Everything, darling?”

  Frustration emanates across her features at my condescension. “Yes,” she replies through gritted teeth.

  My cock aches as her words take me back to how she used to say my name in bed.

  “Everything.”

  “So he told you he worked for Theo?” I prod.

  “Ye—yes, of course,” she insists, her voice not so confident anymore,

  My brow lifts. “He didn’t just work for my father. He works for him now.”

  “He…he what?”

  It’s apparent Matthews wasn’t all that honest with Gabriella after all, and I mentally declare it a small victory. Perhaps I can turn it into a rather large one.

  “Yes, Gabriella, your Rafe Matthews is currently employed by my father.”

  I almost pity her confusion.

  “But what about his business?” she asks. “The construction gig…” The way she pulls her plump, bottom lip in between white teeth stirs something in my cock.

  Damn.

  I’ve missed her.

  Now that she’s within arms distance, in such close proximity, I can barely stand the idea of not touching her. But I can’t. Not yet.

  Gabriella is still my skittish little lamb, and one false move will send her fleeing. I must reel her in, regain her trust. Her love.

  I swallow my lust and continue the matter at hand. As soon as she realizes we’re cut from the same cloth, she’ll come back to me. After all, it was I who loved her first. Who will love her always.

  “Don’t you see, darling? It’s the perfect ruse.”

  She appears to mull it over. Confusion washes over me when she squares her shoulders. “This is not about Rafe. This is about you and me.”

  Before I can speak, Gabriella clears her throat. My eyes meet hers as she sets her chin.

  “I have something to get off my chest,” I tell her.

  “As I said, this is not about him. It’s about you and what you did to me. You deceived me, Adrian. I gave you my heart blindly, and you betrayed my trust.”

  As her voice falters, my heart splinter. At least that’s what it feels like.

  She truly has no idea. That’s apparent now, and if I could go back in time, I would have explained everything to her long ago.

  I take a deep breath, hoping to strike a nerve. “That may be true, but can’t you say the same of him? Is he really that much different from me?”

  At first, anger flashes over her features, but the
n she calms, appearing to contemplate my question. “Rafe may have kept things from me, but he had his reasons. And more than that, he was never cruel to me. Never unkind. The way he treated me was leaps and bounds better than you did.”

  “Circumstance,” I explain. “He was there to watch me. And what better way to ensure my focus is on my father’s efforts than to seduce you out from under me.”

  Vibrant coffee-colored eyes widen briefly. I pray I have my in. But my hopes are dashed when she arches one single eyebrow, her mouth compressed into a single line. She’s skeptical. But she’s not arguing.

  Yet.

  “You forget, Adrian, that I planned on leaving you before I ever even met Rafe.”

  I want to scoff and wave her off. She might have said the words that she was leaving me. We both know, however, that if Rafe Matthews hadn’t come along and inserted himself where he didn’t belong, Gabriella would be mine. My father would be none the wiser.

  Most importantly, Gabriella would be safe.

  So, while it’s on the tip of my tongue to point out exactly whose fault it is that she’s in this predicament, I hold myself back. If she believes she loves this man, the last thing I need to do is send her running back into his arms.

  That is why it’s imperative I remind her of what we had. Of how I loved her. How she loved me. I realize, now, I must switch tactics.

  As I contemplate how to best move forward, I rub my jaw, my fingers catching on stubble. Gabriella’s watching me, her head tilted sideways, her soft, brown eyes now relaxed instead of skeptical. Her curious expression once again gives me hope, and I must capitalize on her vulnerability before it’s too late.

  “Before I even met you, you fascinated me. It wasn’t long before watching you was no longer enough. I had to meet you. And when I met you, I had to have you. When you became mine, there was no way I could ever let you go. How could I ever want another woman when you were all I could see?”

  I take a deep breath and gaze into her eyes, imploring her to trust me. To believe me. To promise me I haven’t lost the most essential being in my life. “I am many things, but I am not a liar. I suppose I’ve failed at using my words with you lately and that is my failing. You are my one and only, Gabriella. You always have been, and if you’ll have me back, you always will be.”

  She remains silent, and I take her non-refusal as a victory. Now, I just need to explain everything.

  “Adrian, how can I believe anything you say?”

  At that, I grimace. “The first thing you need to know is that, while I might have done bad things, that doesn’t mean I’m a bad man. Not entirely.”

  I hope she can see the desperation in my expression. I need her to believe me. I have to make her understand.

  Her expression sours. “What about the blood?” she asks so quietly that I barely hear her words. “There was blood on your shirt the last night you came home.”

  My gaze darts away from hers for a split second and I anxiously tap my index finger on my thigh. Then I sigh. “I’m not proud of the things I’ve had to do. But I had to act the part. Play the role. You must understand. My father was always watching. He always had people watching me. Believe me. Moving forward, I will fix this, Gabriella. All of it.”

  “Why? After everything that’s happened, why do you care?”

  I pause for a moment before releasing a breath. “Did I ever tell you about my mother?” I ask, and she wrinkles her brow, perhaps searching her memory for mention of the woman I’ve not seen in nearly three decades.

  She shakes her head. “You never wanted to talk about her.”

  I nod then let out a small laugh. “I only have very early memories of my mother, but from what I remember, she was a lovely woman. Unlike my father, she was warm and gentle.” I smile as a fuzzy picture of my mother swims in my mind. “When I was a young boy, she’d tuck me into bed every night. Instead of reading from picture books, Mother would tell me stories of her as a little girl in far-off lands where she grew up poor, until one day when her own mother fell in love with a prince. She promised to take me there one day. If Father permitted. When my mother met Theo Morningstar, she thought she’d met her very own prince. It wasn’t long before she realized that he wasn’t so; he was her captor.”

  Gabriella’s brilliant sea-colored eyes shimmer with tears, her lips parting in disbelief. “What?”

  “I fear my father wishes to do the same to you as he did to her. This is all my doing, Gabriella, and I must keep you safe. I will not allow you to end up like my mother. Or for your child to end up like me.”

  “What… What happened to her?”

  Emotions I’ve kept stamped down for so long suddenly rise to the surface. Anger. Frustration. Powerless. Longing. Anger at her abandonment. Frustration at my father’s unwillingness to be honest about the situation. Powerless to stop her from leaving. And longing. Longing for the mother I remember in my dreams.

  These feelings… They’re all so foreign to me. I don’t know if it’s this discussion or the fact that Gabriella is pregnant, but thoughts of my mother hurt more than I expected.

  “I fear I’ll never know. One night, she was telling me about taking me away, visiting her homeland, some island across the world. The next day, Father said she was gone. That’d she’d decided to go home, without me.”

  Gabriella gasps.

  “I no longer believe his story. A few weeks ago, I discovered divorce documents that my mother had filed, asking for sole custody of me—and the unborn child she was carrying. The paperwork was filed two weeks before she left. Somehow, my father had the paperwork thrown out due to her abandonment of me, and while he’d hired the best private investigators, they found no trace of her.”

  “That means…”

  “I have a mother and a sibling somewhere. Or, at least, I once did.”

  “Did you confront him about it?” she asks.

  “I did. He told me to back off. Be thankful I was his sole heir, and if I continued my ‘insolence’ I’d end up like them.”

  “Do you think he had something to do with her disappearance?” she asks grimly.

  “Nothing would shock me about Theo Morningstar anymore. And that is why I have—need—to protect you, Gabriella. I will not allow you to end up like her.”

  God, it’s been ages since I’ve thought of my mother. Although thinking of her as such wasn’t quite how Father wished for me to remember her. To him, she was the whore who fell pregnant by another man and took off, leaving me with him, motherless, without a second glance.

  But I had my memories. I was young when she left. Three, maybe four, and experts will say you can’t remember details from such a young age. But I do, and they’re vivid.

  My mother was petite, beautiful, with a melodic laugh and she loved me with everything in her. I knew it then, and as much as Father railed on about how she’d abandoned me, didn’t care for me, I knew he was a liar. In my dreams, I see her. She’s holding my hand as we stroll through the garden on Father’s estate. She takes me to watch the hummingbirds flitting about, their wings flapping a thousand beats per minute. We run through the field of sunflowers, hand in hand, and sometimes I let go, begging her to chase me. In every single dream, she catches me.

  Until she falls pregnant.

  There was one thing, however, that struck me as a child. Father was insistent that, no matter how great of a mother she had seemed, she’d chosen her new baby, her new life, over me. Why else would she have left me? According to him, she could’ve taken me with her. He wouldn’t have fought. Of course, that sentiment did wonders on my confidence growing up. Neither parent wanted me. I hated that faceless baby. No matter how innocent the child was, it was still its fault my mother was gone. Its fault my father no longer loved me, if he ever had at all.

  So I became the man Theo Morningstar wished his son to be: cold, unfeeling, dark-hearted. I threw myself into my work—or, well, my father’s work—and I did everything he ever asked me to.

  Inclu
ding following Gabriella.

  Making contact was the first time I’d ever done something for myself. Because that day, watching the tears pour down like rain on her pale cheeks, I had the urge to move forward and wipe them away. Her dark hair, swept up in a sleek French twist, beckoned for me to release the locks, wrap my hand in them, and pull her close so I could her until every sob finished racking her petite body.

  Everything about her that day called to me. She was a dainty little lamb that needed someone to protect her. To love her.

  I decided, then and there, that man would be me.

  Damn my father’s plans all to Hell, I thought. For once in my life, I was doing what I wanted.

  Little had I known, that was exactly what my father was expecting.

  I jolt as tiny fingers grasp my forearm. When I look up, Gabriella is gazing at me, confused, curious, and it kills me not to take her into my arms this very moment. I thought the first time I told Gabriella about my mother would’ve been when we were out from under my father’s thumb. When I’d ask her to help me find her. When I’d ask her…to be mine forever, telling her everything in hopes she’d still love me. Still decide to stay.

  I thought it was too late. I thought Gabriella was lost to me. But she’s here now. That has to mean something.

  “Adrian, what do you mean? What about your mother? You told me she was dead,” she whispers softly, shaking her head just the slightest bit.

  I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, unable to resist the urge to touch her. My hand lingers. “Gabriella, you know I haven’t been forthcoming with you about many things, but you must know it was for your protection. I never meant you harm, physically or in any other way. You must believe me.”

  The next moment lasts a lifetime between us. My little lamb’s lids flutter closed, and her shoulders heave as she breathes in deeply. I bide my time, not wishing to rush her, wanting to show I can be patient. When she opens them, hope soars in my heart.

  “I do, Adrian. I believe you.”