The sun was setting, casting a warm, golden glow over the patio, but I barely noticed. My coffee sat untouched on the table, cold now, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. All I could hear were his words from last night, circling in my mind like a storm I couldn’t escape.
“I love you,” he said, the words hanging in the air between us like a weight. “Not because of the bond. I genuinely love you. I fell in love with you the moment I set my eyes on you.”
“You can hate me all you want, Sasha,” he said softly. “But it won’t change the fact that I love you. And I’ll spend the rest of my life proving that to you if I have to.”
How could he say that? The man I had loathed for years—the man responsible for my father’s death—had looked me in the eye, his voice filled with emotion and confessed h
