Forbidden Desires ✔️

~Chapter Twenty Six~

Narrator's POV

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"How long have you known?"

Rosalie and Christian sat at opposite ends of the dining table, both of their eyes deeply induldged into the others.

"Around a week, give or take." Christian looked down to his palms on the table, his fingers gently pinching the skin of the back of his hand.

Rosalie took a sharp breath and nodded, blinking back tears as she stared up at the ceiling.

"And you thought it was okay not to tell me? To lie to me?!"

Christian felt like shit for keeping secrets from Rosalie, but he didn't want his assumptions to be wrong before he told her.

"I felt like if I had told you, with no proof, then you wouldn't have believed me. That maybe you'd slam the door on me, and I would've lost you for good this time around. So yes, call me selfish. I kept a secret from you, but not once did I ever lie to you, Rose."

His eyes bore into hers, the stern look on his face was enough for Rosalie to drop her attitude and sit up straight, as her tears slowly but surely dried up.

"If what happened tonight, never happened at all... would you have still told me?"

With that sentence, Christian stood to his feet, and walked through to the hallway to grab his briefcase. Upon returning, he walked back past Rosalie, his body language cold as he pulled out the files that Claire was able to get printed for him and dropped them onto the glass table with a thud in front of Rosalie.

"I was on my way here to tell you, regardless. Although I never expected tonight to turn out the way it did."

Christian grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and a bottle of burboun, effortlessly pulling out the cork-stop before filling the glasses a quarter full, sliding one across the table to Rosalie.

"You're going to need that."

Rosalie's eyes followed Christian as he sat down on the chair next to her, waiting her to open the files.

When she did, part of her wasn't surprised. She had known deep down that something was off in their marriage, that he hadn't been the same man she was once in love with.

But what she didn't expect, was the final photo of Garrett stood by a beautiful woman, and a small child placed between them.

"This is um.. Lisa Monroe. Claire took leads into the PI lab, and ran a couple names through the data base. This is Samuel Monroe-Winslet.... Garrett's son."

Rosalie drew in a breath, her tongue pressed against her inner cheek, as she just nodded to every word Christian said.

"At first I just thought it was a coincidence, there were surprisingly multiple Garrett Winslet's all over social media, but we narrowed down our key word searches and we.. found these."

Christian passes over the pictures of the online statuses, the hand tattoos, the profiles, the timeline stamps, every single thing that he discovered, he gave to Rosalie.

She didn't know what to think. She was stunned, in shock. She started to question... who was this man? Did she even know him at all? Was any of it real?

Everything stared at her, taunting her. Her mind was soon going into overdrive.

Rosalie grabbed the burboun, and swallowed it whole, pointing to the bottle. "I'm gonna need another one of those."

Usually, this would've been the time where Christian would've told her it wasn't a good idea, but knowing how she must be feeling, after going through the similar things with lying and cheating with Janine, he poured out another and filled a glass for himself.

Rosalie slammed the laptop shut and threw the files back into the case out of sight, turning towards Christian.

"Was I even legally married?" She asked, her voice light as she stared into her glass, the realisation of it all finally hitting her.

"No, Amore. You weren't." Christian looked down at her lap and gently pried her hands apart, that had started to claw at each other mindlessly.

"Garrett had hired a fake priest, printed a fake template of a marriage certificate and.." Christian didn't even want to say it. How could a man even-

"And what, Christian?"

"He rewrote his vows off Pinterest."

Rosalie groaned annoyed, and drank her second burboun down clean.

"How about we-" Christian reached for the bottle, but the instant death glare Rosalie sent him, was enough to have him sitting back down on his seat.

"If it wasn't legal, how was I able to get my ID's changed over to Winslet?" 'Surely, there had to be a good explanation for that?' Rosalie thought.

"Garrett ordered some stupid backing card off the dark web from this guy, who is a suspect in one of our ongoing robbery cases. He's made millions for creating and selling fake ID's with a chip that let's you access almost everything you would need an ID for. Travel pass, legal permit, probably every elevator key in the city. There's a warrent out for his arrest."

Rosalie sat silent, soaking in all this crazy information.

"So I was married-not-married to lying, scheming, psycopath? Awesome. I'm certainly gonna get my divorce settlement share now."

"Oh and your pastor was actually a show front-man from Vegas."

Rosalie gave Christian a death glare, as he just smiled nervously back at her. "Too soon?"

She sat up straight and took the laptop from Christian and scrolled through Lisa's profile to see if anything else was there that they may have missed before, but Christian had pretty much covered all she needed to know.

"Oh and um, I put a word into the Judge in your favour, who is taking Garrett's case in two weeks. Better expect a fat check, mamas." Christian demonstrated his words by holding both of his hands wide apart, doing an awful attempt at the wiggle dance. "You can take me to dinner."

Even with all the hard found truths, Christian still managed to put a smile on Rosalie's face. "I'll buy you a McDonalds. Quit humping the air, you freak."

After the laughter died down between them, Christian scooted his seat closer, resting his palm againts Rosalie's cheek. "You okay though?"

She looked up into his eyes and smiled, pressing her cheek into the palm of his hand. "Never been better."

Her voice came out hoarse, her eyes glistening as they flickered between Christian's eyes and lips.

He slowly leaned in, a gentle peck to her lower lip was placed, before they both reached for each other, embracing one and other with fierce passion.

"I'd say this calls for a celebration, don't you?"

With lust dripping from her tone, and a new found energy to burn, she slowly carressed Christian's lower lip with her teeth, smirking as their eyes met once again.

"Definitely."