“I went home. I told my father and Fayette I wasn’t going to marry Elie and she could have him if she wanted him. My father was furious since I didn’t convince Jean-Claude to accept Fayette in my place. Fayette sobbed for hours, and in the end, my father demanded I find Elie and plead with him to marry me or Fayette. I refused. He threw me out. I walked out and took a job as a nanny for a good friend’s mother in Spain.”
That was why he couldn’t find her. Why his letters kept coming back unopened. Elie cursed under his breath. Damn her father. Damn Fayette. Damn him for being a complete ass and not standing up to Jean-Claude the way he should have instead of hurting the one person who mattered to him.
“You can see why it is impossible for me to marry this man,” Brielle concluded.
“I haven’t heard from Elie yet, Brielle. That is only one side of the story. There are always two sides. Given what Brielle has revealed, Elie, do you want to end this right now and give your consent to allowing her out of the marriage?”
“Absolutely not.” Elie poured conviction into his voice. He leaned toward Stefano. “I never met Fayette Couture until she opened her door when I went looking for Brielle right before I made up my mind to enter into an arranged marriage. I had to fill out the same questionnaire as Brielle did, stating my preferences for sexual practices and I had to swear to the honesty of those practices. The computer matches the two subjects as closely as possible. I’m a shadow rider and I live by my word. I don’t share women. I don’t do threesomes, or practice anything else other than bondage and I do that with my partner and no one else. I am dominant in sexual practices. Fayette lied to Brielle about everything. I never touched her, kissed her or fucked her and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“But—”
Stefano held up his hand. “You have to give Elie the courtesy of hearing him out, Brielle, just as he did you. What you were saying couldn’t have been easy for him to hear, just as this isn’t easy for you.”
“I did say those terrible things to Jean-Claude, not because they were true, but because I was so angry with him for running my life, taking my childhood away from me, my family, and dictating every aspect of my life to the point I wasn’t even there when my father died. More, I had noticed Brielle when she was underage working in the café I frequented. She was gorgeous. I knew I shouldn’t be looking at her, especially since I was older and I already had certain sexual preferences. I couldn’t stop myself.”
Elie pressed his hand to his chest, remembering that moment when he first heard the sound of her voice. “She asked me what I wanted to drink and just the sound of her voice opened up something in me that had been so closed off, but I didn’t understand then what it was.”
Stefano held up his hand, frowning. “No one ever talked to you about what would happen when you found the right person?”
Elie shook his head and then pressed his hand to his temple, ashamed he had to confess not only to Brielle, but to Stefano, the one man he respected above all others. “I began to make certain I knew her shifts and I would go to her place of work. When our shadows touched, there was a sexual jolt that was unbelievable, but more, I could see our shadows knotting together. I always made certain I stood where our shadows touched. At first, I did it because I was addicted to the rush. But then I wanted to tie us together—to have a connection to someone. Not just to anyone—to her. She began to matter to me. Jean-Claude found out about her and what I was doing. I felt like he took the one good, decent thing I had in my life and ripped it away.”
Elie forced himself to look at Brielle. “I honestly loved the way you looked with your curves. I said those things to strike out at Jean-Claude, not you. I didn’t know you were anywhere around. It was idiocy on my part. I was young and hitting out at the great Jean-Claude Archambault. As for saying the things about sex, I played right into Fayette’s hands. I didn’t feel the family had any right to judge me when I felt abandoned by them and yet used at the same time.”
He had. What other conclusion could Brielle have drawn besides believing that Fayette was telling the absolute truth? She had no reason to think her sister was lying. He knew there was that same raw hurt in his voice he felt every time he let that door open on his childhood. He hadn’t been physically abused—he’d been dangerous even at a young age and any trainer recognized that trait in him. He had been emotionally abused, but he hadn’t recognized that fact until he’d grown older and realized he had no idea what a childhood was—or how to act in a family relationship or any other kind. No one had ever loved him—not as a child and not as an adult. Like other women, Fayette and her family had regarded him as a prize.
Elie suspected that he had revealed all of his feelings to Stefano in that brief exchange. He held himself straight, although he was ashamed that he hurt Brielle. “I struck out at Jean-Claude, but the way I did it was wrong. I still feared his power,” he admitted. “I didn’t know how to express the many ways he, the family and the council had made my childhood a nightmare. I felt they shaped me into something monstrous I could never recover from. They left me with no softer side, no way to know how to be a husband or father. Then he had the gall to tell me I was going to marry an innocent girl—my girl. It was tantamount to sentencing her to live with someone cruel and brutal. Worse, I knew they all knew I’d been stalking her and tying her shadow to mine.”
That moment of recognition of just how cruel and ugly he found himself in those days washed over him. He pressed his fingers above his eyes, effectively shading his expression briefly from Stefano. He’d been an arrogant prick, so full of himself. Worse even than the Archambault family realized, but he did. He knew what he was and he had grown to despise himself. When he’d walked into Jean-Claude’s sitting room to see Brielle on the couch, holding herself so still, her innocence shining through, he felt more the monster than ever. He was the devil to her angel. He was such a prick. What he wasn’t was any of the things her sister had accused him of. He had enough sins without Fayette lying about him.
Elie cleared his throat. “I tried to apologize to Brielle. To explain to her. I loved the way she looked. I knew we were meant to be together. The vicious things I said had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. When I couldn’t get her to open her door and listen, or read my letters, I thought time might help and I came to the United States. I had hoped to finally have some kind of a relationship with my mother, but she had no interest.”
He avoided looking at Brielle. Whether she believed Fayette had lied or not, she was much like Emmanuelle in that she was compassionate. He didn’t want her pity. He wanted a lot of things from her, but pity wasn’t one of them. Truthfully, a part of him was holding on to his anger at her. He recognized that he was and that he would have to admit that to Stefano if he was going to be honest and disclose everything to the man who would judge his fate.
Mon Dieu. Shadow Riders and the sacred, rigid rules they all had to live by. He would like to be deceptive in this one thing—that he was angry with Brielle for never giving him a chance to explain his side of things to her—but ever since leaving France, he had always strived to be as honorable as he could be. It was all he had left that he could like about himself. The one trait that had gained him entrance into the Ferraro family—the code Stefano held them all to.
“Once again, I tried to contact Brielle. When I didn’t get a response, I joined the service. I continued to ride the shadows and work on my speed and keep maps in my head because it was so ingrained in me, but to be honest, I had no intention of continuing as a rider for the Archambault family. I thought I might stay in the service.” He fell silent.
Stefano took over. “You were a member of an elite strike team.”
Elie had not disclosed that particular bit of information to anyone, not even Stefano. He had admitted he had been trained as a Green Beret and served for a short time in that capacity, but he hadn’t gone any further in discussing his career in the Delta unit. He said nothing. Stefano hadn’t exactly asked. He’d made it a statement. The Ferraros, like the Archambaults, had superb investigators able to ferret out anyone’s secrets.
“You left the service though, why?”
Elie had the discipline to hold himself very still. He’d needed his woman. He wanted to find her and plead his case. He’d worked on himself in those intervening years. Tried to find reasons for her to want to be with him. She had been dropped from the shadow riding program and maybe she would be happy with his choice to leave—although he still couldn’t step away from riding the shadows and practicing every day.
“I was injured. I could have stayed, but I left to find Brielle,” he admitted. “I wanted to plead my case again. I wasn’t quite as young or as arrogant as when we first met. I thought she would hear the truth in my voice and know I had really worked to be someone different for her, someone better than who I was when we first met.”
Stefano nodded. “But you didn’t find her. Why didn’t you use the Archambaults’ investigators?”
“I wanted nothing to do with that family.” Elie tried not to allow the old feelings of loathing to show in his voice. That angry, helpless fury belonged in his youth, not to the man he’d become. Holding grudges and letting his emotions control him wouldn’t show Brielle he’d grown in character. He’d shut the door on the Archambaults and become a Ferraro as best he could, taking on as many of Stefano’s traits as possible. “I should have swallowed my pride and gone to them, but I didn’t think of it. I went back to Chicago and made my way to Emilio and asked for a job as a bodyguard.”
“Emilio immediately turned over your résumé to me and I jumped at the chance to add you to our roster once I had you investigated. I did talk to Jean-Claude and he disclosed what had happened.”
Elie didn’t comment. He was always polite when the Archambaults came to Chicago on business. Always. He conducted himself the way a Ferraro would. He would never let Stefano down, no matter his ongoing opinion of the council members.
“I reached out to Brielle one last time before I resigned myself to entering into an arranged marriage. She had disappeared, and I knew that if she followed the dictates of the council, and there was a good chance that she would, she would have already accepted a husband. She was getting to the age where they would insist she marry and produce children for them.” Again, he had to work to keep bitterness out of his voice.
“How did you reach out to her?” Stefano asked.