Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 234281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1171(@200wpm)___ 937(@250wpm)___ 781(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 234281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1171(@200wpm)___ 937(@250wpm)___ 781(@300wpm)
The world around her blurred. The jump from tree to wall had seemed so easy a while ago. Now, it felt like she was jumping from one end of a cliff to another.
From afar, shouts could be heard and beams of light from torches began to pierce the darkness.
Below, the dogs barked more noisily, angrily.
Damen, she thought again. Damen was outside, waiting for her.
Mairi jumped.
She went over the wall, landing on all fours. When she looked down, her knees were bleeding, too, and her wrists hurt badly. The pain made her feel woozier, but she forced herself up. She had to get moving before people figured out she was gone. She had memorized the name of the hospital Damen was in when she caught it on TV. Now, she had to find a way to get there, without money, without a phone, without anything. But she would get there. She had to. She needed to get to Damen no matter what.
Mairi closed her eyes for a moment.
Damen’s face filled her mind. So sinfully handsome, with his wicked silver eyes and—-
She choked back a sob, her eyes flying open as the Damen in her mind changed. Now he looked horribly beaten, his eyes swollen, his mouth bleeding.
Oh God, she had to get to him. It didn’t matter what she had to do. Walk, hitchhike, or call for an ambulance and get herself driven there. It didn’t matter. The pain in her leg blazed, but Mairi was numb to the hurt. All she could think of was him.
Damen, I’m coming. She would get to him. She would. She needed him. He needed her. And so for as long as Damen needed her, Mairi would be by his side.
Chapter 2
SEVEN DAYS AGO
“I received a text from Mairi,” Norah said as she joined her sister in the living room. She felt so old and frail as she took a seat beside Vilma. It was as if they had aged a hundred years in the past few weeks.
Vilma asked stiffly, “Is she all right?” She would never ever forgive herself if anything happened to her niece. A choked sob tried to escape her. All they had wanted was to protect her. But in the end, they had ended up causing Mairi to risk her life just to escape them.
“There’s no need to worry,” Norah said, squeezing her sister’s hand. “She says she’s with Damen where he’s being treated, and she’s going to stay there.”
The two of them fell quiet as they digested their niece’s words.
Mairi was with Damen.
After everything that the Greek billionaire had done to her, she had chosen to be with Damen Leventis.
Did Mairi know what was going on in Damen’s life now? It wasn’t just that he was no longer a Greek billionaire. According to the media, almost all of his accounts were frozen. It would be a miracle if he even had a million to his name.
Although Norah knew her niece was in no way materialistic, she also knew that part of Damen Leventis’ appeal was because he had fit the bill of the man of Mairi’s dreams. But now that he no longer possessed a billion-dollar fortune? What now?
Would Mairi finally see Damen for what he really was? A man who trusted no one, a man who could be inhumanly cruel in his revenge, and a man who might be incapable of love?
Looking around their living room, Vilma could easily recount all the years that had gone by. It was here they had often discussed the stories they would read for bedtime, the debate becoming more fun and lively as Mairi grew up and formed her own strong opinion about her favorite kind of hero.
Closing her eyes, she remembered the time she and her sister had been right here, keeping an eighteen-year-old Mairi company as she wrapped the covers of her books with plastic. Mairi was messy with her stuff like most teenagers, but she had been quite the neat freak when it came to her favorite books.
Mairi was seated on the rug, legs tucked under her and bent over a sheet of plastic. “Maybe it’s time we don’t read about Greek billionaires. They’re so predictable, don’t you think? That makes them boring...” The words came out of nowhere, and Mairi spoke them without bothering to look up from her task. Her attention was entirely focused on cutting a straight line through the plastic.
Vilma saw Mairi gazing musingly at the cover of a Lynne Graham novel, one with another Greek billionaire hero whose wife had been an expert on ferns. It was a very good book, that one. It gave Vilma hope that one day a nice and rich young man would not think Mairi odd for being such a hopeless romantic.
Norah looked like she wanted to cross herself at the blasphemous words. “What are you saying? Boring? How can they be boring? They’re excitingly unpredictable because of how they’d go to such lengths to show their love!”