Free Claimed by Tara Crescent Page A

parent. Then, I guess he decided he wanted to meet me. I was put on a plane to Venezuela when I was seven and there he was, on the other end, a man who was a stranger to me.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing. It became the pattern. I would spend the two weeks of Christmas break every year with my father and the eight weeks of summer break with my aunt in Provence. The two weeks would always be quite strained. My father didn’t really want a child. I’d been an unhappy accident. So he repeated the pattern of his parents. Toys and gifts. Expensive baubles to buy love.”
    “The Ferrari was one such bauble?”
    “That was after,” I said. “When I was eighteen. Before that, there was the suicide attempt.”
    She stiffened. “You tried to kill yourself? Why?”
    “As a teenager, I’d learned I liked BDSM. I liked tying up women; I enjoyed spanking them. I liked my sex kinky and rough. One summer when I was seventeen, I was playing with Angela, this German girl who was also spending her vacation in Provence.”
    I smiled. I wasn’t remembering Angela at that moment. I was remembering playing with Ellie in the same barn. Her ready compliance, her cheeky smile as she held the position I wanted her to hold.
    “It was all consensual, of course,” I clarified, “but my aunt stumbled on the scene, and I guess it cut too close to my father’s sins.” I exhaled. It was more than that. I’d never looked like Dylan. From my research, I learned that the person I resembled more than anyone else had been my mother’s brother, the fiancé that my aunt had to give up because of what my father had done. Every time she looked at me, her wound was reopened. Each time I came home for the summer, her heart broke anew.
    It had taken me many years to fully understand why she’d reacted as she had. My father’s sins, my own resemblance to her lost fiancé, her fears that someone in the village would notice my appearance and put two and two together – it was no surprise she’d been distant. And when she’d stumbled upon that scene with Angela? Her control had snapped and long-held secrets had been disclosed. “So she revealed the entire truth to me and all the little bits and pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Why my father lived in strange and far-away parts of the world. Why there were always so many guards. Once or twice, I’d even spotted the scared looking girls. My father told me they were maids, but that had never seemed right. Finally, I understood everything, and I couldn’t live with it. It was my birth that had killed my mother. My father’s blood ran in my veins. Perhaps my aunt was right. Perhaps over the course of time, I too would become a monster like my father.”  
    “Pardon my French,” she interrupted. “But that’s bullshit. My mother was an alcoholic, but I’m not. Your father was evil, but you aren’t. We are not our parents. We are not responsible for their sins.” She looked deeply pensive for a second. “Can I tell you something?” she asked. “Something I’ve never told anyone?”
    “Of course, Ellie.”
    “I wanted to die the first year. If someone had offered me that choice, I would have taken it. Willingly, readily. If someone had told me that the only way out was dying in childbirth, I would have thanked my child for that. Because I wanted it to end so much.” She shook her head. “You didn’t kill your mother, Alexander. Maybe you freed her.”
    In my head, I knew I wasn’t responsible for Dylan’s sins, but when I heard her say that she would have considered death a blessing, it was hard not to feel culpable. And it was precisely why I’d given her the gun and I’d been prepared to die.
    I didn’t want to think about that. Dylan was dead and it was time for a fresh start. “When did your feelings change?” I asked her.
    “Ah, my thirst for revenge,” she said wryly. “It was after the caning Dylan gave me when Sylvia was around. That was the day I decided I would kill