Page 43 of Tempting Devil
I moved to help her, but she vehemently shook her head, holding her arm defensively in front of her.
“Why?” she gasped, her breaths coming in ragged spurts.
I opened and shut my mouth several times, trying to figure out what to tell her.
It was one thing for her to know who I was.
It was another to tell her exactly why I’d been lying to her.
Instead, I turned back toward my suite, where Henry stood in the doorway, watching us with a mixture of pity and sorrow.
“Can you make sure she gets home, okay?” I asked softly.
“I told?—”
I cut him off with a sharp gesture of my hand. “I don’t want to hear it right now. Just make sure she’s okay.”
“I don’t think she’ll ever be okay after this,” he responded under his breath.
I chanced one last glimpse at Imogene, her expression pale.
As if she’d seen a ghost.
“Then make sure she’s safe,” I pleaded, my voice catching.
He gave me a solemn nod and moved toward Imogene, wrapping an arm around her waist, supporting her as he led her toward the elevators.
Once they disappeared from view, I stormed back into my suite, clenching and unclenching my fists as I paced the length of the bedroom.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t erase the sight of Imogene’s anguished expression when I finally admitted the truth. It would remain one of my core memories until the day I died. Not the day I met my mentor. Or the day I graduated college. Or the day I learned my gaming platform had become an overnight success.
From this day forward, I would always remember the pain I caused Imogene Prescott because of my lies.
I collapsed onto the bed and buried my head in my hands, sucking in deep breath after deep breath, feeling like the world was falling apart around me. When I caught my reflection in the mirror, I could no longer recognize the man staring back at me.
Not because I’d changed my appearance. It was so much more than that. I couldn’t stand looking at this face anymore. The face I was forced to wear after my old one was too beaten and damaged from years of abuse, leaving behind nothing but a shell of who I used to be.
All because the men I trusted betrayed me.
With a guttural roar, I leapt to my feet and slammed my fists into the mirror over and over again until nothing remained but my blood and hundreds of shards of glass, each one mocking me with everything that had been taken from me.
Chapter Seventeen
Imogene
I didn’t know how I got out of the hotel. Everything was a blur.
Everything except the truth that Gideon Saint was Samuel Tate.
Just like I suspected.
Everyone told me I was crazy.
Gideon told me I was crazy.
But I wasn’t.
And now I was supposed to just accept the fact that the man I loved with every fiber of my being had been alive all these years? That he’d been lying to me?