Chapter 7 - The Scars of Devotion
He took two steps toward the sink.
Emma was still standing there, but she was shaking so hard that her hip was bumping rhythmically against the stainless-steel cabinet. She slowly turned her head, her slate-gray eyes wide, dilated, and glassy with a terror that broke Julian’s heart into a million irreparable shards.
She looked at him as if he were an apparition—a glorious, terrifying dream sent to mock her right before she died of exhaustion.
“Julian?” she breathed.
The word was a fragile wisp of smoke, carrying five years of loneliness, five years of starvation, five years of wondering what she had done to deserve being cast into the dark.
Julian’s face fractured. The terrifying, monolithic mask of the billionaire tycoon crumbled, revealing the raw, bleeding boy who had once knelt on an apartment floor and promised this woman the stars.
“Em,” he choked out.
He stepped directly into the dirty puddle pooling at the base of the sink, not caring that his eight-thousand-dollar hand-welted leather shoes were submerged in greasy water. He dropped to his knees right there on the wet stone, bringing his towering frame down until his eyes were level with hers.
“Oh, God, Em… look at what they did to you,” he whispered, his deep voice breaking completely.
He reached out with his large, warm hands. He did not hesitate. He did not care about the slime, the grease, or the smell of lye. He plunged his hands into the gray, dirty dishwater, found her small, ruined hands beneath the surface, and lifted them gently into the warm evening light.
The entire terrace gasped.
Emma’s hands were horrifying to behold. The fair, rosy skin was cracked like dry parchment, the knuckles swollen and purple from inflammation, the pads of her fingers shredded by wire sponges. Tiny fissures along her thumbs were weeping blood, mingling with the detergent suds that clung to her wrists.
Tears, hot and unstoppable, spilled from Julian’s eyes, tracking through his dark stubble. He brought her ruined, soapy hands to his mouth, pressing his lips against her bleeding knuckles, kissing each raw finger with a reverence that felt like a sacred liturgy.
“I’m sorry,” he wept against her skin, his broad shoulders heaving with ragged, uncontrollable sobs. “I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t know. I swear to God on my life, I didn’t know. She told me you were happy. She told me you were traveling. She stole my letters… she stole everything from us…”
Emma stared down at him, her chest heaving as the walls of her five-year nightmare began to buckle. The reality of his touch—the familiar warmth of his lips, the rough scratch of his stubble, the cedarwood-and-smoke scent that belonged only to him—broke through her defenses.
“You… you didn’t leave me?” she sobbed, her voice rising in a broken, childlike wail. “Jennifer said… she said you had a new life in London… she said I was just a debt you had to pay off…”
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“Never,” Julian roared softly, rising from his knees and pulling her violently into his chest.
He wrapped his massive arms around her, crushing her lace-clad body against his bespoke black suit. He buried his face in the hollow of her neck, inhaling the scent of her hair beneath the smell of dishwater, while his hands gripped her back as if he were holding a drowning child. Emma collapsed against him, her face pressing into his silk shirt, her raw hands clutching the fabric of his overcoat as five years of unspeakable agony poured out of her in wracking, gut-wrenching screams that silenced every single person on the estate.
