The Tycoon's Pregnant Mistress (The Anetakis Tycoons #1)(46)

She hadn’t been worth half a million dollars to him.

Pain splintered through her chest as she shattered. As everything she’d known as true suddenly turned black. Her heart withered and cracked, falling in pieces around her.

He hadn’t tried to save her.

The tortured cry that ripped from her mouth echoed through the room. She clamped a hand over her lips, but it was too late. Everyone looked her way. Theron flinched, and an odd discomfort settled over Piers’s face. She met Chrysander’s gaze, and she could see the truth in his eyes as he realized that she remembered.

As he started across the room toward her, she backed away, stumbling as she did. Oh God, she couldn’t face this. Tears blurred her vision. The image of his pale face only spurred her on.

Marley fled down the hallway toward the lobby. Chrysander called her name, but she didn’t stop. Sobs bubbled from her chest and exploded outward. She stumbled but regained her footing and pushed herself forward. Behind her, Chrysander cursed and called out to her again.

She was running for the exit, no clear destination in mind. She was nearly there when she met with a mountain. Stavros stepped in front of her and held her, and she exploded in fury, kicking and shoving. Her only thought was to get away, as far away from this place as she could.

She broke free but stumbled backward and fell to the floor. Stavros was down beside her, asking her if she was all right, and she knew she was trapped.

Pain cycled through her body, an unending stream of agony. She closed her eyes as Chrysander’s strong hands slid over her body. In an urgent voice, he demanded to know if she was hurt, but she was incapable of answering him. She curled into a ball, uncaring that she was in the middle of the hotel lobby.

Chrysander picked her up, and she could hear him saying her name. Curses fell from his lips, and then he barked orders for someone to summon a doctor. He strode away from the noise of the lobby, and a few moments later, he entered an empty hotel room.

As soon as he lowered her to the bed, she curled herself into a tight ball again and turned away from him. She flinched when he put his hand on her, his touch light and concerned.

“You must stop crying, agape mou. You’re going to make yourself ill.”

She was already sick, she thought dully. Utterly sick at heart. She closed her eyes, but still hot tears streamed down her cheeks, even as Chrysander wiped them away with his fingers.

She wanted to escape. Go some place where it didn’t hurt so much. Through the fog, she heard Chrysander conversing with the doctor. A moment later, she felt a prick in her arm, but she didn’t react. She didn’t care. And then she floated away, so grateful that the pain had receded. Her mind grew fuzzy as the veil of sleep descended over her. Oblivion. She reached for it. Embraced it and wrapped it around her as she slipped away to a place where there was no hurt and no betrayal.

Chrysander paced back and forth at the foot of Marley’s bed while the hotel physician administered the sedative. She was beyond distraught, and the doctor had moved immediately to prevent further upset.As the doctor stood and backed away from the bed, he looked at Chrysander, a grim expression on his face.

Fear tightened Chrysander’s chest. “Is she all right? Is the baby all right?”

The doctor motioned him across the room and away from where Marley now quietly lay. “Her injuries are not physical. If they were, perhaps I would be of use. Her distress is mental. If it is as you said, and she has regained her memory, it is that which has caused her immeasurable pain.”

Chrysander stirred impatiently. “What can be done? She cannot be left as she is. There must be something we can do.” The sight of her pale face and her eyes, so huge with devastation, twisted his gut painfully.

“You should return her to your home, to a place that is more familiar. She needs a doctor, not for her physical well-being, but one who can help her mentally.”

“A therapist you mean?” Chrysander asked grimly.

“This is a very delicate time,” the doctor warned. “She is extremely fragile, and remembering such traumatic events could cause an emotional breakdown.”

His face twisted in sympathy, and he reached out to grasp Chrysander’s shoulder. “This will be hard, but perhaps it is for the best. It is good that her memory returned, even if it causes her such distress.”

Chrysander wasn’t so sure of that. With her memory regained, she also knew that he’d tossed her out of their apartment, basically put her into the hands of her kidnappers. She would also recall the cruel words he’d thrown at her. And she would remember her own part in the whole mess.

He ran a hand wearily through his hair. Part of him wished she would have never regained those memories. They had started fresh, without past deceptions and betrayals. Something niggled at him even as those thoughts passed through his mind.

Wouldn’t she have greeted her memory’s return with guilt? All he’d seen in her eyes was hurt. Deep and horrific hurt. There was no guilt, no embarrassment over the fact she’d stolen from him. Just distress so keen that he still felt the knife deep in his chest from the tortured sound of her cry and the memory of her stumbling away from him.

An uneasy sensation took hold of him. He couldn’t help but think that there were things buried in Marley’s memories that he wasn’t going to like.

Fourteen

M arley was only vaguely aware of the things going on around her. After that first pass into oblivion, she registered being carried into a car. She heard Chrysander’s worried voice as he murmured to her, but she closed herself off from him, folding inward.