"Get your filthy fucking hands off her before I rip your godamned head off!"

Anastasia spins in his arms, rotating towards me in shock before a cloud of contempt storms across her face. Hidden from her view, Jack flashes me a smug smile, reading the situation with the lightning pace his sick mind has always operated under. He's perverse, psychotic and dangerous… but he is, undoubtedly, oh so very clever. I've had a few scathing letters from this prick over these years, opened only to sneer at and then systematically destroyed. Taylor did a cursory sweep of his life a few years back and reported to me that he was no real threat, just a whack job who was at that time, unemployed but well educated.

I see it in his cold eyes and feel a shudder rip through my spine.

He despises me.

Loathes what I've become.

Loathes what he hasn't become.

"What are you doing here, Christian? You obviously tracked my cell to find me, another broken promise in a long list. What do you think turning up here is going to achieve?"

Of all the things in life that have wounded me, her voice is the most weaponised.

The coldness in her tone is earth shattering and I can't help but die a little inside.

"Anastasia, please. You have to listen to me. There's so much you don't know, fuck, there's so much that I don't know but you have to give me the chance to explain… it's…. it's all wrong. Everything you think, everything I thought. Please, give me the chance to explain it to you."

My voice is desperate.

And I don't care, for the first time, I don't care how I project myself.

She has always been my greatest weakness and my strongest strength.

"Leave," she whispers, and I see the chasm of agony that I've caused her in her dulled blue eyes. She's not sparking like she used to and another gut wrenching spasm of agony erupts within me. "I don't want to see you, not here, not anywhere. I don't want to hear from you, ever again. This is my place of work and you're not welcome. Leave."

She hisses the last word and Jack, fucking Jack, places a sympathetic hand on her shoulder that she doesn't remove and smiles his sick smile at me, letting me know that he is inches away from stealing the only joy I've ever known.

The snarl tears from me before I can prevent it.

Her shriek is lost to me as I, ensuring not to even brush off her, storm to where they stand and rip his fucking claw from her precious skin and send him careering backwards with a jaw-crunching punch. He tumbles to the ground with a pleasing thump and a cheering groan of pain, trying to stem the violent flow of blood as it squirts from his nose. Ana's small hand pounds my back as I move forwards, hatred in my heart, to finish the job and her touch, her seismic touch, has me halting in my steps.

I turn to face her and the loathing in her face ages me thirty years.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she whispers, tears shimmering unshed in her eyes. "You've devastated my personal life to a point where it's beyond any repair, but you're not satisfied with that are you? Now you're here to decimate my professional life. What is wrong with you? How sick are you? Jack has never done anything to you! He's my boss, he's-"

"My former foster brother, Ana. Jack and I were in a foster home together and he's hated me since the time we were children. He's dangerous, provably psychotic and will stop at nothing to exploit any opportunity to hurt me. He's written hate mail to me over the years, on and off again, and the depths of his loathing for me… they're unprecedented. His only interest in you is to harm me. He may not have known who you were when you first came here, but he sure as shit knows now and I will not let him harm you in some sick ploy to get to me. I won't."

Her mouth drops open and I am gripped by an impossible sadness.

What have I done to this beautiful girl?

To my Ana?

I've dropped nothing but bombshell after bombshell into her life and far from running for her life, she always remained behind to rebuild our life together after the wreckage, brick by brick from the rubble of my fucked-up existence. She looks from a staggering to his feet Jack and to me and I can sense that she believes me, and the relief is overwhelming. Her tired lips move soundlessly for a moment, as she gazes between the two of us, before a small voice drops from her rosebud mouth.

"Is this true, Jack?"

Her voice is cold again.

Business-like.

Devoid of any emotion.

He pulls himself completely upright, using the reception desk for support and wiping the last trails of blood from his nose, nods curtly. What else can he do? He knows I can prove what I'm saying in mere minutes. Despite my mind-numbing flaws, I am still a man of considerable means and he knows I'd move mountains to prove the truth of my words if I thought it would get Ana out from under his poisonous grasp.

She nods slowly, and I see her wither a little internally.

"I see," she says quietly. "Then, please accept this altercation as my formal notice to quit, with immediate effect. I am no longer willing, in any sense, to continue on as a pawn in the sick, twisted chess game of Christian Trevelyan-Grey and associates."

Her voice breaks on her last syllable and she turns to leave.

Turns to run.

I cannot let that happen. There are some moments that are seemingly insignificant in life, but yet, they are everything. This is such a moment. I know, I don't know how I know, but I know that if I let her leave now, she's lost to me forever. Panic seizes me in a clamp of calamity. Terror paralyzes me. I cannot lose her. Not without her knowing what I'm not and who I really am. Jack doesn't try and halt her gait as she stalks to the door and I linger behind her only long enough to turn to him and whisper in a voice that I don't recognize as my own.

"This isn't over Hyde, you bastard. Your life is no longer your own. Believe that."

He stares back at me with the same blankness that creeped the fuck out of me as a kid and I turn my back on him and all the associated memories that go with him, and unashamedly sprint after Ana's retreating back. I don't care if I have to send a singing quartet, scrawl the truth on the banner of a blimp or take over every news outlet in the country.

She has to learn the truth.

She's striding down the sidewalk at a furious pace. I don't see, but I can sense Taylor gliding alongside me as I run to catch up. She snarls as I emerge beside her, but I don't care.

"Ana. Please, please, have one coffee with me so I can explain everything."

She practically combusts with well-earned rage.

"Coffee? Are you fucking completely past the bridge of sanity?"

I deserved that.

"Anastasia, you don't understand. There's so much that you don't know. I got it wrong, I got it about as wrong as wrong can be and I am so, so sorry. But there are some facts that I believed for a long time to be true, and I've just learned that they're not. Please, Ana, let me tell you the full story. If you do, if you just listen to what I have to say and then decide that you never, ever want to see me again… then I'll respect that. I give you my word, I'll respect it. I'll disappear from your life and you will never, ever have to see or hear from me again. Ever."

There's desperation in my every syllable.

And I don't care.

She has to give me a chance to explain.

She has to.

But what if she doesn't?

I shove that thought down, I don't have time for that kind of shit right now.

"I don't have to see or hear from you ever again as it is," she snarls, "That's what restraining orders are for. You know any good lawyers? I think I'm in need of their services."

She doesn't stop power walking, so I don't have the time to lick my wounds.

"I will give you the number of the best attorney in town. I'll give you whatever you want if you'll please… just listen to me. Just hear me out, for the sake of what we were. Ana, for the sake of what we had, please listen to what I have to say…"

She stops.

I practically fall over my feet at the abrupt change in pace.

Taylor is still unseen, but I can feel him.

"There's nothing you can ever say that will make me not regret ever laying eyes on you," she says quietly, looking at me disarmingly straight in the eye. "You were everything to me, Christian. You were my whole life, my whole world. And you betrayed me in the most inhumane of ways. You fucked another woman, you had an affair with another woman, and you know what the worst part is? I can nearly get over that. I can nearly forget about you and move on. Because you're a fucking man, Christian, and that's what you do. I can chalk it up to experience and try to move on. But… today? What you did today? Lying about the death of my mother to cover up your two-timing ways?"

She takes a step back on the quiet sidewalk and shakes her head.

"There can be no understanding, there can be no forgiveness. Ever."

She turns to walk away and before I know what I'm doing, my arm shoots out and my hand grasps her wrist, not painfully, but tightly. I gaze into her eyes and feel an impossible pain bloom where my soul should be. I didn't have time to plan how I would tell her, but I don't think telling her on a sidewalk was ever a subconscious option. But needs fucking must.

"Anastasia. I never fucked Autumn, I never had an affair with her. I never touched her or allowed her to touch me. I was being blackmailed. She was threatening me, and I'm not fucking proud of it, but I buckled under her threats. Because her threats were hovering above the one person I love in the world, like an axe. Her threats were hovering over you, Anastasia. I wasn't lying to you today in the cemetery. I truly and honestly believed that, on that night, years ago, I was the one who drunkenly took your mother's life. I've just learned today, an hour ago, that I wasn't. It was Elena. It was Elena driving the car. She drugged me before hand so that she could take twenty percent of my company that I had previously refused to hand over. She was driving us home after getting what she wanted when she crashed into your mother's car. I was in the passenger's seat and out for the count. She saw her chance. She switched us, and waited for me to wake up behind the driver's side and take in what I'd supposedly done."

I gulp down a huge intake of air.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing. She told me to go, that there was nothing we could do for the woman in the car and that my life would be over if the cops came and breathalysed me. So, I did, I left. I knew… I knew Carla was dead. I could see her, she was beyond any help. We drove away and months and months later, I was still seeing your mother's face in my dreams every night, and the morning after one of those dreams… you fell into my office. And I knew straight away who you were, who you were born to. You are, in character, like Ray… but in appearance, you are your mother's daughter. I was stricken. It was like the gods were punishing me, or toying with me, or both."

She's staring like I've never seen anyone stare before.

"I was drawn to you. I was compelled by you. I had to get to know you better, I had to see how the daughter of the woman I believed that I had killed, was faring in life without her mother. I… cowardly thought that, if I could just help you, then maybe Carla's death wouldn't be so… without meaning. I never intended to fall in love with you, Anastasia. I didn't believe myself capable, it was never a thought that I ever had. I didn't know what love was until you. And then, the further I fell in love with you and you I, the more terrified I became. I resolved time and time again to tell you who I was, what I'd done. But I fell at the finishing line every single time, because I knew that once I told you everything, you would walk away from me and the pain of that knowledge paralyzed me."

A father and son argue about ice-cream as they stroll past us.

Oblivious.

"As the days, weeks and years passed us by and the thoughts of losing you became more and more untenable, intolerable… I convinced myself that you were never meant to know. That we were meant to be and that telling you would only cause both of us pain. I could never bring your mother back, but I could make her daughter happy, make sure she was loved and protected. I reasoned with myself that that was the better trade, the better option. That your mother would have wanted you to be happy. I was a coward, Anastasia, a most disgusting coward. I told myself that this would be the only thing I ever kept from you, and it was…"

I feel my insides glaze over with ice.

"Until Autumn came into our lives. She was there that night, Ana. She saw me behind the driver's side of the car that crashed into Carla's. But she either didn't care or couldn't be sure of my identity until… until you arranged for her to tune my piano. She knew then for sure who I was, who you were, and what I had done. She is a cold hearted and conniving tramp, but she is not unintelligent. She saw her opportunity and she took it. She threatened that, unless I declared to the world that she was my love interest and allowed her to amass all the social and monetary benefits that go with that title, she would reveal everything. She would tell you everything. I couldn't bear the thoughts… the idea that you would find out after so long… so I thought… I thought the idea of my having an affair would be an easier pill to swallow than the truth…"

Shame floods my face and my heart.

"I was a fool, Anastasia," I whisper. "I was weak and spineless. My love for you consumed me and nothing else mattered but protecting you from a truth that you should never have had to hear. But now I know that said truth is a lie and that all this… all this pain… has been for nothing, to no end. I didn't kill your mom, Ana. But I swear to you that I thought I did, I really thought I did and I've lived with that crushing guilt for years. And you were the only salve to that guilt. You were the light that came out of that unbearable darkness. What I've done is stupid, cowardly and unforgivable… but, please, you have to know I did it all for you, for us, for love…"

I close my eyes.

"And I am so, so sorry, Anastasia. You will never know how sorry I am, for everything, for all of it. I can explain better if you'll let me, but please not here, not in the middle of the street. Please, Ana, one coffee and then you never have to see me again, I promise."

I open them slowly and her face, her beautiful face, is a mask of oceanic blankness. She stares at me and stares and stares some more. I am desperate to know what she's thinking, desperate to know how she's feeling. Her wrist is still in my hand and the touch of her soft, supple skin is like a veritable high. She's real, she was never a figment of my imagination. She feels the same, she smells the same… but she's not the same. She doesn't vibrate with that youthful zest for life, her eyes don't reflect my image with the same adoration that used to ooze from them and her bones are a little too close to the surface of her skin for comfort. She's a shadow of herself, and yet, she's survived better than I ever could if the situations were reversed.

Not that Anastasia could ever do to me as I've done to her. She would never so weak, so spineless or so cruel. She would have just told me, scratch that, she would never have been so fucking selfish and stupid as to get involved with me in the first place. God, how could I have fucked this up so badly. This, the only good thing I ever had or ever will have, ruined. Because of my own fucking spineless stupidity.

Her lips part and I brace myself.

Physically.

Mentally.

I prepare myself to have what's left of my heart ripped from my body through the tones of her sweet, sweet voice.

She licks her lips and takes a deep breath as my heart hammers painfully.

"One coffee."