My anger increased because her awareness was nonexistent. She had me in the palm of her hand—and she didn’t even know it. “If I didn’t want you there, I wouldn’t have welcomed you into my home. I wouldn’t come into your bedroom at night. I’d visit my favorite whore instead. I wouldn’t drive all the way here. I wouldn’t be sitting here right now at all, looking at you the way I always have, since the moment I first saw you. I kept my promise to you even after you broke your promise to me. You’re alive this very moment, when anyone else would be dead. I don’t want you there…” I shook my head. “You insult me. You fucking insult me.” I rose to my feet and moved to the door, expecting her to get off her ass and follow me.

But she didn’t.

I turned back around and gave a deep sigh of annoyance.

“You have to try… Otherwise, I won’t come with you.”

I bent over backward for this woman. I destroyed my self-respect for this woman. There was no request I wouldn’t honor. Anything she asked of me, I would give it to her. It was fucking pathetic.

Almost made me walk out for good.

But I’d lived a life without her…and it was unbearable.

Obsessed. Addicted. Infatuated.

Haunted. Bewitched. Possessed.

This woman was the fucking air to my lungs.

So, I caved—again. “Alright.”

I drove her back to the palace.

Gilbert greeted us with disappointment, taking her bag with a sigh, as if he’d hoped she would never step foot in this place again. He could barely tolerate her when things were good. I imagined he was worse now than he’d ever been before.

“Gilbert.”

He halted and turned back to me. “Yes, Your Highness?”

I just stared him down because he would understand my silence better than my words.

He gave a slight nod then carried her bag to her bedroom upstairs.

I turned back to the office. “I have shit to do.”

She looked around the foyer, the gold sconces, the floral wallpaper and the portraits on the wall—like she’d never seen it before. “Can we have dinner together?” She looked at the floor, expecting a no before she heard it leave my lips.

I stared at her fair cheek, the blush that highlighted her prominent cheekbones, that gave her a deeper level of beauty. The answer that came to mind stayed there and never left my lips. “Yes.”

The anger was impossible to release.

Not when I was this enraged.

But it was a necessary sacrifice to have the one thing more profound than my hate.

My chérie.

I stepped into her bedroom and found her at the dining table near the window in her living quarters. Her makeup had been refreshed, and she was in the designer clothes I provided.