The Duke and the DJ (The Rebel Royals 3)

She’d never admitted that much to anyone. She hadn’t felt the need to go into details. By the way Zhi tightened his hold on her, she knew that he understood.

Unlike with the Mondegos, Spin’s mother, Angelica, had been abused by a man who hadn’t even claimed her. She’d stayed for years. Until finally, she found the courage to leave. Leaving Spin?

?s father had taken a lot of strength for Angelica. Staying away had taken everything.

“My mother would do anything for me,” Spin said. “She would have endured anything to keep me provided for.”

Spin didn’t know why she needed to say it, but she needed him to understand. She turned her head and looked up into his pained face. With just one glance, she saw that he clearly did.

“I understand that,” Zhi said. He brushed his callused fingertips across her brow with reverence. “I’d do anything for my mother, including ignoring my own heart.”

“Ignoring your heart?” The prickle of cold doubt spread across the tops of her shoulders. She was loath to pull away from Zhi’s warmth. She held on as she reached for clarity. “Are we talking about me? Or is this about Parker?”

Zhi took a deep breath, but it came out shaky. He turned back to where he’d come, back to where Parker was. The look on his face when he turned back to Spin was filled with pain, guilt, and shame.

Spin’s first instinct was to gather him up in her arms, to take all his pain away and bring it into her. But she wasn’t her mother. She’d learned that strength came from standing up for yourself and not sitting down or taking the blows from another person.

“You’re going back to her, aren’t you?” said Spin.

Zhi shut his eyes. When she tried to step back from him, his hold tightened. But only for a second before he loosened his grip, and she was able to easily break away.

It was déjà vu. How had she come to live her mother’s life? Every time her father went back to his wife, her mother had stayed in bed for a week. A few weeks later, he was back. Finding them wherever they were in the world and the cycle began anew.

“I have to,” Zhi said, bringing Spin back to her present reality.

Spin’s feet were already in motion. There was no way she would willingly enter a cycle of her own. But she turned back. She had to know. “Why?”

Zhi looked sick, shame-faced.

“You have everything, can have any woman,” Spin said when the answers didn’t come soon enough. “Parker doesn’t want you. Why are you after her? Is it because you’re both rich?”

He actively avoided her gaze now. Turning his head away so that she couldn’t see into his eyes. But she didn’t need to see him to know.

Spin stepped to him, forcing him to look at her. Her gaze caught on his hands and the callouses there. There was a new cut she hadn’t noticed before. How did a man of leisure get cuts and calluses?

There was a single thread loose on his collar. Her father had always dressed impeccably. She’d never seen him in the same shirt or pants twice. That was the way of the noble class. So why was Zhi constantly bucking those traditions?

The possibility that flashed into her head made her nauseous. “You’re not rich, are you? You’re after her money.”

He reached for her then. “It’s not like that.”

She raised a brow.

“The situation is,” he clarified. “But I’m not like that.”

Spin crossed her arms over her shoulders. Even as he began to confess, and she began to see him anew, she still ached to be inside his arms.

“I’m not going to be like that. I’m not going to be like my father. I’m going to make her happy. I’m trying to learn how.”

As his lips worked on detailing the devotion he’d have for another woman, Spin still wanted to feel them against her lips. She wanted to know what he tasted like, what he felt like.

“I can’t let my mother live in squalor. I can’t let the staff lose everything. I’m not doing this for me. I need to save them.”

It was rational. All so rational. The sickness she thought she would never catch, the illness she’d always believed she was immune from, raged like a high fever through her body.

“I’ll do everything in my power to make Parker happy.”

“That’s the worst kind of abuse. You’re abusing yourself.” Spin took a deep breath. Her stomach hurt, and her chest was hollow, as though she’d just risen from the worst flu of her life. “You’re not the man I thought you were.”