The Christmas We Loved

Chapter 1

The Unforgettable Christmas

Sophia's POV

"Do you sometimes consider what we might have been?" Alexander spoke in a low, almost terrible melancholy. Between us, the words hung in the air, an irresistible force neither of which we could fight.

My heart thumping in my chest, I stopped. I had vowed never to let him ask once he had asked me one question. My eyes fixed on him across the poorly lit ballroom, the soft glow of the chandeliers creating long shadows on the floor. It had been years—five precisely—and I had never imagined seeing him once more. Not following events as they transpired.

"You shouldn't be here," I said, my voice softening more than I meant. I detested the way weak I sounded, how much my heart betrayed me in his company. Once fiercely adored, the man who had left me without thinking twice was standing before me once more, as though time had not gone. As though we hadn't spent years apart, working to mend the damage he had done to me.

"I could not keep away, Sophia." Alexander's eyes fixed me as though he dared me to reject the reality we both knew. "Do you think about us? I need to know. Regarding what we had?"

I swallowed; my throat went dry. Our clandestine kisses, his ability to make me feel alive and wanted, the Christmas we spent together in the Maldives—the memories came flying in. Happiness. The intensity. The love. But had everything not been a lie? Had it all been? Then there was the reality I had buried far inside me, one I never considered I would have to face.

"I have time for nothing like this," I murmured, the words coming out more frigidly than I had meant. I turned to go, but his hand darted out to grab my wrist and dragged me back.

"Don't walk away from me again," he cautioned, his voice a low growl, the force of his grip on my wrist jolting me with lightning. The touch, the heat of his skin against mine, broke the years of distance I had battled so valiantly between us.

"Let go of me, Alexander." My pulse racing, my emotions a whirl, I pulled against his hold. He was not changed, was he? Still the same conceited, domineering man who dominated every place he went into. Still, I could sense the magnetic attraction—that which had never really vanished.

He stepped in front of me, dysregulating my objection. "You never could stay away, could you?" His whisper of the words felt like a punch to the belly, warm against my ear. "I always loved you, Sophia."

The words overwhelm me, engulf me in a flood of feelings I had carefully suppressed all these years like a tidal wave. "You left Alexander, not sure. You left without a single word of justification," I spat, my voice faltering despite my best efforts to keep it together. "I had to survive alone. You left me to gather the bits of a broken heart.

Thick with the weight of our unspoken words, our past, the quiet enveloped us. His hold relaxed on my wrist, but he held me back. His eyes softened, and for the shortest time I could see the man I had loved. The man meant to be everything to me. But it was already too late. Too much has passed.

"Look at me, Sophia," he whispered, his voice gentler than I had ever heard it to be. "I loved you, so I walked away. Unable to defend you, I turned to leave."

I stopped; the words stayed in my ears. Shield me?

Our tense moment was broken before I could answer someone else. "Well, quite nicely. What do we have right now?

My breath seized in my throat as I wrenched my head around and identified the woman in the doorway. Grant Lila. The former fiancée of Alexander. No matter how many years had gone, the one woman had not really let go of him. Her smile was deliberate, piercing, as she absorbed the picture before her.

I stepped back automatically, pulling my wrist free from Alexander's hold. Lila's presence simply served to heighten my own inner turmoil.

Alexander mumbled, his face stiffening, "perfect timing as always, Lila." But I caught the flutter of something else: guilt. Regret?

Lila's eyes darted from me to Alexander. "I had no idea you were so keen to go back to the past, Alexander." Her voice dripped with anger, yet there was something darker about it. "I suppose what they say—some people just can't let go."

Looking between them, I could feel my pulse quickening. Years of history and unresolved business fuelled the obvious tension between Alexander and Lila. But Lila's eyes also held something more, something that made my spine tremble. She was secreting something. Something posing a threat to everything.

"Don't pretend you care," I murmured, my voice more stern than I wanted. "We both know, Lila, why you are here. Have you not really let him go?

Lila's eyes blazed with rage, but she soon covered it with a grin. "You always had great sensitivity, Sophia. Too bad you missed learning to interpret the signals earlier. Her comments challenged and dared something. The threat of something far worse than simply jealousy caused the air to seem to thicken. Lila had a far more deadly objective than she was here, merely reminding me of her importance in Alexander's life.

Turning to go, "I don't need to stand here and listen to this," I muttered. But some basic feeling drove me to turn around one final time at Alexander.

But it was already too late. His expression had shifted, grown steely. He no longer fixed me in the eye. He was staring at Lila; the strain between them was turning into something far more lethal. He moved toward her, his face unreadable, and for the first time since I had seen him once more, I experienced a flood of anxiety—fear of what was ahead.

Alexander's voice sliced through the air before I could go another stride, heavy with a tone I could not identify. "We should speak."

I stopped feeling.

With a shaky voice, "I don't want to talk to you." Before I could stop them, the words flowed. But they were not for him. For myself, they were. No matter how much my heart shouted at me to turn back to him, the woman I had become learnt to stand on her own.

Still, the silence that followed felt oppressive.

Lila moved forward, her eyes not straying from me. "You ought to get out, Sophia. This is not secure anymore.

Her comments made my skin tingle with discomfort, and I knew, without a doubt, something was dreadfully wrong. Whatever game Alexander and Lila were engaged in, it went beyond simply old hurts and previous regrets. Something more hungover all of us: a menace.

Trying to calm myself, I inhaled deeply, but before I could get moving I heard a faint click. A gun being c****d sounds.

My blood froze.

Then followed the voice I least expected. "Sophia, get down!"

The ballroom rang with the crisp sound of a gunshot, the globe whirling as I dove behind a pillar and my heart surged in my breast. Alexander dove for me with wide-open dread in his eyes. I couldn't, however, concentrate on him. Only the sound of my own breathing and the frigid horror that had lately seized my soul could help me to concentrate on anything.

As I bent behind the pillar, my heart beating in my chest, the world slowed to a crawl. Though everything felt muffled—like I was submerged in water, the world outside of me remote and unreachable—the piercing c***k of the gunshot nevertheless reverberated in my ears. As I tried to calm my breathing, the sense of anxiety shot up my spine. The cold marble squeezed my back against it, the chill slicing through my dress's fabric.

Keep down! Alexander spoke with real, genuine panic. His hand flew out, clutching my wrist and dragging me toward him. His body heated me as he covered me from view; his chest rose and fell with every breath. But there was no time for anything except survival; comfort was not possible.

I turned not far from Lila. Frozen, she stood there with wide-open terrified eyes. She looked as astonished as I felt, not like a lady who had planned this. But the understanding struck me like a shock to the heart: someone else was following us, someone with even darker goals.

"Who the heck did that?" Whispering, I tried to keep my voice calm as the surge of adrenaline coursed through me.

"I don't know," Alexander said, his voice taut with rage. "But we have to relocate. Now.

Still another image came out, this one closer. My breath seized in my throat as I experienced the agonizing sensation of being ensnared, imprisoned in a game I never requested to participate in. One in which I was the pawn being used and everyone seemed to have secret agendas.

Alexander said, "Get up," his hold on my arm getting stronger. "We have to leave. It isn't safe here.

I shook my head, my brain whirling. "No, I cannot simply—"

But before I could finish, another voice cut through the tumult, one that sent a frigid chill of identification across me.

From the darkness, Sophia's deep, gravelly voice said, "Don't move."

My blood chilled. My heartbeat missed a beat upon realizing who it was. Matteo here. The man I had assumed I could rely on—the man working covertly with Victor Kane. Rising forward, his rifle raised, he wore a nasty smile.

"Matteo?" My voice was just a whisper, I gasped. You?

His eyes black and unblinking, he laughed humorless. "Did you honestly believe you could get away from this, Sophia? You have no idea the depth the rabbit hole descends.

The walls all around me appeared to get closer. Alexander stiffened next to me, his body hard with fury. Matteo, you are making a mistake. You want nothing like that.

The cold barrel of the rifle felt pressing into the side of my skull, and it dawned on me then just how high the stakes had grown.

Everything stopped as the cold metal of the revolver pressed more forcefully on my temple. I hardly breathed, the weight of death hovering over me. Though my pulse ran, the actual, unadulterated fear grabbed me like a vice. Matteo leaned in closer and his smile grew wider, his breath hot against my ear. "You believe you can turn away from this? You believe you will have another chance? Over here, Sophia.

I prepared for the shot, then saw a flurry of movements. Alexander leaped forward. Though not directed at me, the gunshot sounded absolutely thunderous.

"Travel!" Alexander yelled, dragging me to the ground as yet another gun fired. His body's might drove us over the chilly floor in different directions.

Matteo's furious visage, contorted with incredulity, caught me at last as everything sank into darkness.