“I think we both know why I’m here.”
“I don’t, I’m afraid. I’m the only one here.”
I admired how brazen she was. But that didn’t mean that I was going to allow her to get away with it.
“I’m here for your daughter.”
“She is not here for you,” the woman said. “How dare you show your face?”
No one save my father had ever spoken to me with that tone of voice. This woman, who only came to the middle of my chest, spoke as if she would cheerfully remove my head from my shoulders. “Go off and have your wedding. Leave us in peace.”
“I have questions for Marissa.”
“And she has none for you. If she did, she would be out here. My daughter is strong. Made stronger because of you. We don’t need you here.”
“I am very sorry,” I said, feeling nothing of the kind. “But I can’t take no for an answer.”
I stepped inside, and she moved back, allowing the entry. My footsteps fell heavy on the wood floor, and I knew that was what signaled Marissa, who came charging in from the next room.
Damn, she was beautiful.
Even more than the last time I’d seen her. She’d been a woman then, but she... She had blossomed in the years since.
Her curves were more exaggerated, hollows in her cheekbones, rather than the pleasant roundness that had been there before. Her dark hair was long, curling at the ends, and there was a wildness to it now. I had thought, the first time I’d seen her, that she did look every inch the church secretary.
She did not now.
There was an edge of sophistication to the way she was dressed, even though it was simple and not designed to draw attention to her. She was wearing makeup, which I had never known her to do before.
I resented it. I wanted to wipe it away, just like I wanted to wipe away the years. Wanted to go back to a time when things had made sense to me in a way that they never had before.
When my world had been contained in an empty stretch of shore and this woman.
But I had been wrong then. Wrong about what mattered. Wrong about everything. So there was no point going back.
And there was no point mourning the passing of the years.
“How dare you?” she asked. “My mother told you to leave.”
“And I said no.” I took a step forward. “Have you forgotten who I am, Marissa?”
“In the five years since I’ve seen you? Almost. Your name has not crossed my lips once, Hercules. This is the first time in all that time. I swear it.”
Her expression was guarded, the words hard, and she was nothing like the girl I had once known. And I believed her.
“I want to know where you went.”
“You want to know where I went?” Confusion and anger contorted her beautiful features.
And it hit me then that however much Marissa had changed, it was strange that she was angry at me.
She was the one who had left. And I had racked my brain over the years to try to think of reasons why. But I had been faithful to her. And yes, I had gone back to Pelion and left her in Medland, but I had assumed she would understand I would be back. And I had been.
She was the one who had abandoned us. A good thing, I could see now. But that made me question why rage still burned in my chest.
I heard the clatter of footsteps on the stairs, but they did not sound heavy or even enough to be an adult’s. I looked and saw a little girl leaping down the steep staircase, her dark curls bouncing with the motion. And everything in me went still. I’m not a man who believes in premonitions. I believe in what can be seen, felt and touched, but in that moment, I felt something supernatural steal over me.
And when that child looked up at me, her chocolate eyes connecting with mine, I felt a stirring of recognition down in my soul.
I knew this girl. I, who had never had exposure to any child and who had never had a strong feeling about one, was suddenly overcome, immobilized by the strength of the connection that I felt to this one.
Because looking in her eyes was like looking into a mirror. I recognized her face, because it was mine, but smaller, rounder, cherubic in a way I was certain I had never been. I looked up at Marissa and saw she had gone pale.
“What the hell game are you playing?”
CHAPTER THREE
Marissa
IT WAS THE shock on his face that confused me. I don’t know what I had been prepared for. But I had always rejected the idea that he might lay eyes on Lily, because he didn’t deserve to. Because he had rejected her. I had thought in terms of protecting my daughter, because what mother wouldn’t? He didn’t deserve to see what a wonderful child we created, because he had rejected her. Because he had sold her when he bought my silence.
But the look on his face was not that of a man who saw this child as being inconsequential. No. The look that he had on his face was that of a man who was...shocked. As though he had been struck by lightning. Of all the things I had expected, I had not expected this. I had done my best never to think about it, of course. But...
No, something was wrong about the way he was looking at her, and I knew it. Deep down I knew. I had seen his face when he thought no one was looking. That sort of blank hardness that I’d witnessed on his features the first day I’d seen him all those years ago.
I’d seen him smile. Laugh.
I’d watched as his guard dropped completely and he’d given himself over to pleasure.
But I had never seen him look like this.
It was not rage; it was something beyond that. His skin had taken on a waxen pallor, and for the first time he seemed...
Well, human, and not so like a god.
“Explain this,” he said, his voice hard.
My mother looked at him and then at me, her expression helpless.
My mother had worked hard to repair the relationship that had been severed by my father. She had secretly traveled to visit me and Lily a few times over the years. And I hated that my father’s death had brought me a sense of relief, but it had. Because it had returned my childhood home to me, and my mother and I no longer had to stoop to subterfuge to see one another.
She felt nothing but sympathy for me, and I wondered if sometimes she felt a bit of envy.
Because I’d found a sort of passion that had made me behave the way that I had.
Because I had then gone out and raised a child on my own, which she’d not had the courage to do.
In spite of how unhappy she had been.
And now I could see that she was prepared to fight for Lily and me if need be.
“What do you mean what is this?” I asked. “You know perfectly well.”
“I don’t know anything,” he said, his eyes never leaving Lily.
“We cannot have this conversation in front of her,” I said.
Lily, being four and full of inquisitiveness without an ounce of perception, tilted her head back and stared up at the man I knew to be her father.
“Who are you?” she asked him.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he responded, his voice far too hard to speak to a child.
“I’m Lily Rivero,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Lily was precocious and polite, and I was happy that I had been able to stay home and take care of her. That we’d been able to afford to buy a wonderful house in a beautiful neighborhood. I had made the absolute most of all that I had been given, if for no other reason than to throw it in the face of Hercules, whether he could see it or not.
When he looked at me, the fury in his eyes was terrifying. It wasn’t fire. It was like ice. And I sensed that it had the power to utterly destroy me.
But then, he always had. He was my weakness. My undoing.
My brightest and most beautiful sin.
My father had repeated
the quote that the wages of sin was death.
Looking at Hercules now, I was beginning to wonder.
The words were quite literal and not spiritual as I had originally taken them to mean.
“Perhaps there is a place where we can talk,” he said.
And I feared slightly for my own safety and health. It was like staring at a stranger. A large, incredibly muscular stranger, who bore no small amount of anger inside him.
But then...
The light hit him, just so, a shaft of sun coming through the window. And I knew him.
It was like being cast back to those sunny days on the beach.
When I had trusted him. When I had given myself to him.
When I had known him, better than I had ever known anyone.
It was still true.
That this man would always have a piece of me that no one else would. What we had shared, my father had called a sin. The result of which he had called the consequence.