Chapter 17: My Dark Prince: Chapter 16

I ripped the door open to Doctor Cohen’s office, snarling. “She thinks we’re engaged.”

Doctor Cohen glanced up from his computer screen, which dinged before going black. A tweed jacket stretched across his shoulders, and his worn satchel already slung over his belly.

He looped his key fob around his finger, slamming his brows together behind his reading glasses as he stood from his desk. “What on earth did you tell her?”

“Nothing.” I threw my hands in the air, beginning to pace in his miniature office, not caring that he’d just finished his shift a few minutes shy of four in the morning. “I said something stupid about a flower arrangement, and she drew her own conclusions. Now she thinks we’re planning a wedding. We need to tell her the truth.”

He plucked a scarf from a hanger, slinging it around his thick neck. “You’re not telling her the truth.”

“She can’t think we’re together.”

He shouldered past me, bulldozing toward the door. “She can’t go to your house to recover knowing you lied to her about it, then chickened out.”

I followed him. “I have nothing to prove we’re together at my house. No pictures, none of her stuff, no—”

“Take care of it.” He took the stairs down to the parking garage, with me at his heels. “You’re a resourceful man – a billionaire, they say. I’m sure your people can fetch a few things from her house and make a dozen AI pictures of you two.”

“AI’s unethical,” I grunted, descending the stairs two at a time, blocking his path to the next flight down.

“So is sleeping with the majority of women on the continent.” He stopped, sneering at me. Someone must’ve gotten word about the shit fit I threw years back at this very hospital. “I don’t care about your personal preferences, Mr. von Bismarck. Miss Auer is my patient. Do not tell her you’ve lied to her. Her psyche is as fragile as she is. She will regain her memory back at some point and figure out on her own that you two are not together.”

“And then?” I felt my nostrils flaring. “She’s going to hate me again for lying to her.”

He shrugged, bypassing me. “Looks like she already hated you beforehand. Not much of a change, is it?”

Doctor Cohen disappeared into the next flight of stairs.

I kicked the wall, cursing in the four different languages I knew.

Godfuckingdammit.