Page 166 of Punishing His Runaway Bride
I'd been in New York, at the manor, drowning in endless meetings and social obligations, thinking about her, searching for her, not even knowing where the hell she was.
"What's your angle? Why'd you get close to her?"
"She's a good woman," Sebastian said. "So I wanted to become her husband."
"Shut your mouth! She's your cousin-in-law!" Rage flooded my vision. I drove my fist into his face.
"Is she?" His head snapped to the side. He wiped the blood from his lip, looked back at me, the smile in his eyes fading slightly. "Then why did you leave her alone with a kid, struggling in a foreign country?"
I stared at him.
"You don't know," he continued, "how many jobs she worked tosupport herself and Leo. Flower shop, restaurants, cleaning—she did everything."
"I—"
"You don't know," he cut me off, "because all you care about is power, status. You didn't go looking for her."
"I did look!" My voice rose. "I looked for her for five goddamn years!"
"But you didn't find her," he said. "I did."
The words cut like a blade.
I stared at him, feeling that fire in my chest ignite again.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means," he set down his champagne glass, looked at me, the gentleness gone from his eyes, replaced by something cold and sharp, "she's doing fine now. She doesn't need you."
"Whether she needs me isn't your call."
"It's her call," he said. "And she already turned you down, didn't she?"
My fingers clenched tight.
"Sebastian," I said, biting off each word. "Stay away from her."
"Can't do that, man. I don't have to give you everything. The inheritance is yours. Does she have to be yours, too?"
He smiled, the expression full of mockery and something else I couldn't decipher.
I took a step forward.
He didn't back down.
We stood there, less than two feet apart, eye to eye.
"She doesn't love you," I said.
"Maybe," he said. "But at least I never hurt her. And I was there when she needed someone."
The words hit like a slap.
"And you?" he continued. "What did you do when she needed you most? You locked her out. You let another woman move into your home. You let her leave alone—"
"Enough."
My voice dropped low, each word scraping through my teeth.
