Darkest Sins (Perfectly Imperfect #9)

Prologue

Present day

The Leone Villa, Boston

(Kai 34 years old, Nera 24 years old)

He’s here.

My eyes are not yet adjusted to the surrounding darkness, so I can’t discern anything except the general shapes of the furniture in my living room. Nothing moves. No sounds, other than my breathing.

Nothing.

But I know he’s here.

It’s a sixth sense that seeped into my bones years ago, since the first moment I met him. His presence creates an imperceptible shift in the air, stirring the very atoms around me. I don’t have to see him or hear him move to know he’s there. My body and mind can feel him. Always could.

I close my eyes and slowly start turning, hearing nothing but my heartbeat. It’s faster than normal, but steady. I’ve nearly completed the turn when my heart flutters. There. When I open my eyes, darkness is still the only thing that greets me, but it doesn’t matter. I know he’s directly in front of me.

My heart always knows.

“Long time no see, tiger cub.” The deep, raspy voice washes over me.

Hearing it is like being swaddled by a thick fluffy blanket. I’m safe and secure, in a place where no one can do me harm. For a few rapid beats, I let it just sink in, absorbing the vibrations of his tone. The sound is different from the last time I saw him, his voice is more raw somehow, but it’s him. How many sleepless nights have I spent curled up in my bed, trying to relive the specific timbre of it? Probably hundreds.

The reading lamp on the side table comes to life, its dim glow partially illuminating the huge male frame leaning back in the recliner. For the most part, his face remains in shadows; only two silver eyes seem to glow in the surrounding murk.

It’s a punch to the chest, seeing him again after all this time.

“I thought you were dead,” I choke out.

He inclines his head to the side, and more of the light falls onto his face, allowing me a glimpse of his tightly pressed lips, and more . . . A scar on his left cheek—an uneven line of raised flesh, beginning at the corner of his mouth and curving up toward his ear. Another mars his skin above the left brow, and two more are visible across his chin, somewhat obscured by the dark stubble covering his jaw. None of those marked his face the last time I saw him.

The urge to run to him overwhelms me, but I snuff it out. My feet stay rooted to the floor, my eyes locked on the man who was once everything to me. Too many nights I’ve lain in bed imagining what it would feel like to see him again. I knew it would hurt. But I didn’t expect that it would hurtthis much.

Time is a tricky thing. Hours. Days. Years. The human brain has a limited capacity for storing information, and, as time passes, slowly and without notion, it forgets things. Sounds. Smells. Words. Situations. Memories peel off and are swept away by the winds of time, like dried leaves fluttering on the breeze just before the onset of winter. And when the spring arrives, the only thing left is a vague awareness of their past existence.

Time.

They say that time heals all wounds.

It’s all lies and a crock of bullshit.

Time didn’t take away my memories of him, even though I wished for that on numerous occasions. I still remember every single thing about this man.

“Did you miss me?” he asks in that husky voice, the tone reminding me of a brewing storm, the instant before the first crack of thunder.

Misshim? No, that word doesn’t describe the anguish and despair of the past four years. The desperate hope I felt while scouring every dark corner, praying for a glimpse of him. And then, the inevitable disappointment and agony upon discovering he wasn’t there. Because I’ve always felt his eyes on me, even when I couldn’t see him, the sudden certainty that he was truly gone was crushing. Horror gripped me when I finally accepted that he must have died and I’d never see him again.

“It’s hard to miss a man whose name I don’t even know.” A nearly physical pain squeezes my chest. All this time, he let me believe he was dead.

A corner of his lips tilts up, making the new scar on his face more prominent.

“I missed you, too, cub,” he whispers, raising a big black gun, fitted with a suppressor. “Do not move.”

My breathing stops.

The muffled gunshot wheezes through the air.