Page 19 of A Diamond Deal
In another life, he would have saved his mother.
In this life, he would have to save everyone else.
He’d tried to save Poppy.
He knew she battled with her own current. He knew the tide had been too strong for her when Isaak had died. It had taken her under with him. Into darkness. Her mental health after the funeral was so very…poor.
Was it still?
He stood before her.
Flowers.
The scent flooded his senses. Burnt its way into his nostrils.
Theos mou…
He handed down the glass to her sitting form. ‘Drink this.’
Her slender fingers rose, long and elegant, and she tentatively took it from his grasp, cupping it from the bottom and purposefully missing his fingers.
He released it to her.
Together, they brought the thick crystal to their mouths. In sync, their lips opened as the crystal tilted. The amber fire spilt onto his tongue. Her throat flexed.
His drained, the glass fell from his mouth, and he placed it down on the long-legged occasional table beside her.
She finished the rest of her drink, and put it beside his. And oh, so slowly, she put her hands, palm side down, on the armrests of the chair. She pushed her knees from their bent position.
So small, she stood before him.
She looked like his wife. She smelt like her. But…she was different.Changed.
An unknown—unfamiliar—energy vibrated from her too slight frame.
And it was…too big.
She didn’t look like the Poppy on the cliff.
Her eyes glittered.
The silent drag of breath through her slightly flared nostrils made her chest rise too slowly. And it pulsed in the silence between them.
Anger. ButhisPoppy didn’t silently seethe. His Poppy didn’t recoil from his touch.HisPoppy would have opened her mouth and caressed his fingers with her tongue.Sucked them.
Hiswife would have let him have her in the alleyway.
Hiswife did not hatehim. The man he was with her. The man he’d spent years honing. An honest man. A man who promised to protect. A man who’d tried to protect her.
You failed her.
You failed him.
He wouldn’t think of the tiny casket.
He wouldn’t think of the weightless box on his shoulder as he carried it to a grave too small.
He would not again admit the truth that he had manifested his infant son’s death. He’d caused it, because never should he have allowed it. For him to be conceived when he knew his genes were defective.
