Sleeping Love Read Online Free Page B

will prove that this is not some elaborate hoax. You belong to me, Sabrina, and I am not letting you walk out of that door again.’
     
    She glanced at the certificate and the signature that he pointed to.
     
    It is definitely my writing. Blind panic filled her mind. She didn’t know what to do. What if Raoul is the man who beat me so badly I lost my memory? What if he really is the man who put me in the hospital seven years ago? Maybe I had tried to leave him, and he’d become violent. Too many questions. I need to get out.
     
    ‘Do what the hell you want, but I am still leaving, and there is nothing you can do,’ she shouted, wasting no more time in turning the door handle.
     
    But to her dismay she was not to get very far. Raoul leaned over and raised his hand above her head, slamming the door shut hard. Sabrina gave a yelp of fear and turned around to face him, finding her back pressed against the door with no means of escape. Raoul’s dark eyes looked down at her threateningly. He closed the distance between them, sweeping his arm around her waist when she made a gesture to duck out from under the cage of his arm. He pushed her back against the door once more and restrained her there.
     
    ‘I am going to keep you here even if I have to tie you down. I want to know why you walked out on my life. We were in love. I have spent years wondering what happened. I never once thought you were dead. Did you leave me for another man? Your absence has tormented me. One moment we were happy and the next you were gone from my life. I didn’t know what to think. At first I thought you had left me. Then when I saw there had been a struggle in your study, I was terrified.’ Raoul’s tone grew more intense with anger, leaving Sabrina trembling.
     
    ‘The police believed you were murdered, and I was their main suspect. I was an obvious target after someone told them that they had heard us arguing that night. The police even dragged the lake on the grounds looking for your body. How the hell do you think that made me feel? Even our own friends began to suspect me, and the English press went out to get me. I spent two nights in a jail cell while the police questioned me. I thought I was going to lose my mind. The only thing that stopped them from charging me with your murder was the lack of a body and help from my old school friend in the police, who believed in my innocence. I lost friends. I nearly lost my business, but worst of all I had lost you. I hid myself away in this Chateau like some kind of recluse. Here I could be close to you. I wasn’t sure I was going to pull through, and I spent some dark nights alone wondering whether or not I should carry on life without you.’
     
    Sabrina’s eyes filled with unexpected tears as she listened to Raoul’s impassioned speech as he recounted his pain at her disappearance. Their appearance only seemed to fuel his anger even more.
     
    ‘I want answers, Sabrina, and after everything you have put me through these last seven years, you are going to give them to me, darling wife. So yes you will stay, and yes I will make you a prisoner if I have to.’
     
    Sabrina would have retorted, but both fear and confusion about her disappearance from the Chateau caused a flurry of broken images to twist inside her mind. She could see herself standing talking to someone. Music played in the background, and there were people dancing in Venetian masks. It looked as though she was attending a Masked Ball. She was unhappy with someone and kept saying, ‘I know what you are doing, and I won’t let you get away with it. You won’t stop me.’ Her emotions at the time were fearful, but she was determined. The image played over and over in her mind.
     
    ‘Sabrina,’ Raoul sternly called her name, but his voice sounded vague, distant, beyond the memory taking prominence in her mind. ‘Sabrina,’ Raoul’s voice was more gentle this time, but it was the touch of his fingers on her cheek