Before she knew what she was doing, Corinne’s fingers reached out to rub against the soft scruff. Paris blinked his eyes opened as soon as she touched him.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just really wanted to touch you.”
He grinned. “You don’t have to apologize for that, love. I like having your hands on me.”
She felt her cheeks heat. “So, I guess I have some stuff to tell you. It’s going to get heavy. So…” she bit down on her cheek, and her breath came out choppy. “It’s going to get intense. You can hate me and rage against me all that you want. Just please remember that I am carrying twins and full of hormones. I will definitely cry very easily during this conversation…”
Paris sat up and frowned. She could tell he was already stressing.
“Is this about your name? Are you going to tell me who you are, really?” he asked.
Corinne’s entire face flushed. “You know?”
“Yes, Corinne. I know that’s not really your name. I figured you would tell me eventually.”
“You’re not mad?” How the fuck could he not be?
“No, not mad. Confused, more like. I was going to ask you about it, but I was hoping you would eventually trust me enough to tell me.”
That he had respected her need for space, even though he had figured out she wasn’t exactly who she said she was, made her dizzy. How had she been so lucky as to find Paris? She didn’t know. She just hoped she wouldn't lose him before the twins were even born. The kids needed their dad, especially since he was proving to be the best kind of father.
“It’s bad,” she whispered.
“Okay,” he said simply.
“You’re going to hate me,” Corinne insisted, despite the supportive way in which Paris was looking at her
“Not possible,” he shot back, taking her hands in his. His fingers brushed across her knuckles, making her shiver. His touch was always so soothing. How did he magically have such a comforting touch? Was it because they were mates? Maybe.
If they were still mates.
There was every chance Paris wouldn’t want her anymore the second she told him exactly what she had done, who she had been, and why she was on the run.
“You don’t know that.” Her voice was barely audible, but Paris didn’t stop lovingly caressing her hands.
“I do,” he insisted.
“You say that now…”
“Have you killed someone?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“What? No. God, no!”
He shrugged, tightening his hold on her hands. “Then whatever it is, we can cope. I’ve told you, Corinne. You are my mate. Whatever problems or nightmares have been in your past, they’re mine now.”
She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. It would be easier to tell him all of this if she couldn’t see his emotions playing across his gaze, changing the green of his eyes. She never wanted to see anything but love when she met his look.
She had quickly grown addicted and attached to the way he looked at her, at the way it made her feel.
Safe. Loved. Cherished.
“I’m here for you, Corinne. Go on.”
She filled her lungs up until they ached and let the air out slowly as she spoke.
“My parents were Mireille and Arthur de Villiers.” Corinne didn’t bother looking at Paris. She knew that as an artist, he would immediately recognize the names.
After all, Mireille and Arthur de Villiers had been the most renowned forgers in the history of art forgery. They always worked together, and their talent and style could imitate anyone.
Vermeer.
Rembrandt.
Botticelli.
The list went on. And fuck, did it go on.
It was easy to steal a painting and replace it with a very convincing fake. No one was the wiser, sometimes for decades. Her parents had been working alone, when they had been caught by Gustave Comtois, one of the most notorious French gangsters ever to have lived. He was from an old, rich family, but he had kept accumulating wealth by doing some shady stuff.
Namely, keeping her a prisoner from the second she was born.
Gustave had taken Corinne—she had been named Genevieve back then—as soon as she was out of the womb. Her parents had to work for Gustave, creating fakes of the most renowned paintings. Gustave would have his people break into museums and private homes to have the paintings switched out.
The owners went on believing that they had a Johannes Galileo or a Picasso or a Monet, but they had no idea that their real piece of art had been stolen, replaced by a forgery made by Mireille.
Every time Mireille and Arthur would do a painting successfully for Gustave, they were allowed time with her.
She had always known that Gustave was a very bad man. You didn’t grow up in a locked room without thinking that your captor was the biggest jerk in the world.
Not that Corinne had any memory of his.
When she had been two years old, her parents had double-crossed Gustave. They had tried to go to the police, but instead of getting back their baby girl and getting their lives back, they had been killed.
Gustave had his men kill Mireille and Arthur de Villiers, leaving their toddler an orphan.
Not that the evil man had cared. Instead, he had hired all kinds of artists to come and teach Genevieve how to draw and paint. He thought that if she had her parents’ natural skill in her, then it could be coaxed and perfected. She would take their place, continuing their work until the day she died.
“I didn’t care. Not really. The painters who came to teach me thought I was Gustave’s reclusive daughter. I was always under watch, so it’s not like I could tell them what was happening. Besides, painting and creating was all I had. I was sixteen when I forged my first real painting. It was…” she had to close her eyes. “It was a Galileo painting.”
Paris hadn’t said a single word as she told him about her history. He had been quiet and had continued to squeeze and rub her fingers. But when she said one of his artist’s names, his grip loosened. Corinne didn’t want to look up to meet his eyes. She knew he must be furious, and she wasn’t even done.
“When I was eighteen, I seduced one of my guards. He wasn’t much older than me. He all but lived in my room, though it was more like an apartment. We played cards together, watched movies. I mean, I thought I loved him, but I know now that I was just confused. It was just because he was the only one there. He was the nicest of the guards I ever had. He was the one who dug around and asked all of Gustave’s other staff to find out how I came to be in his care.
“It was horrible. When Julien told me about it all, I felt sick. I had believed that Gustave was my dad. He wasn’t. I was twenty-one then, and I tried to escape. I was on the run with Julien for a few months, but Gustave caught us. Julien was…” she took a shaky breath. “Julien was killed, and I was brought back to my cage. Gustave was harsher and expected more of me then. To make up for the trouble I had caused him. I was sad and depressed for a good year or two after the failed escape…after Julien’s death. I was about twenty-four when I started to feel like myself again. I knew I had to find a way out, but I had to be smarter. My short time on the outside had given me a bit of an idea as to what Julien and I had done wrong the first time around.
“It took me a while to regain Gustave’s trust after that. Years, actually. I pretended that I was into the forgery. I started joking with him and thanking him for my education.” She had to pause, a wave of nausea assaulted her. “Gustave and I lived in the United States, in California. I knew that I had to get off of the continent if I wanted to get away from him for real. I decided to come to Europe. It’s easier to change from one country to the next here, what with the European Union. You hop a train, and boom. Different country. It would make blending into a new identity all that much easier, when I had to run again. I was barely twenty-eight, just a few months ago, when I escaped again. I made my own fake passport, and I managed to buy a plane ticket to Mexico. It was the cheapest flight I could take. From there, I took all kinds of buses through South America. I made my way to Brazil. From there, I took a job on a cruise ship, and I ended up in Portugal. I was in Spain for a bit, but my French is much better than my Spanish. Besides, I felt watched there. I knew it was damn well impossible that he would have found me. I changed my appearance and my name a bunch of times before I settled in Paris.