Chapter 42

He picked up his wine glass and drank, tasting nothing, remembering the rage that had burned inside him. “I got an acceptance from Oxford University years earlier than I should have,” Anger inside him, hot all this time, leapt up again. He stopped abruptly, gritting his teeth, hating the memory of how vulnerable he’d been “It still didn't matter. And that’s when I realized how little I mattered to him. To either of them.”

Anna's fingers abruptly dug into his knee, an expression of pain and sorrow flickering over her features. But again, she didn’t speak, leaving him space to talk.

“So I stopped,” he went on, taking another sip of wine. “And then I set about making sure that the world knew who I was, that I was alive and Vincent was dead. And that everyone would have to deal with it.”

Which was what he’d done. He’d made the world acknowledge him, forced it to notice that he existed, and notice it had. Every woman he bedded and every company he helped make a success