Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 61767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
“How could you?” His voice is broken too. It’s pain I hear now.
“You’re right.” It takes all I have to look him in the eyes. “I betrayed you.”
That seems to send a wave of fresh energy through him, and he begins his attack anew. I don’t know if either of us hears the screams for us to stop. I don’t know when either of us realizes Mercedes is in the room.
“What are you doing?” She’s screaming, wild, her eyes wide, face streaked with tears. “Stop! You’re going to kill him.”
I look at her. She’s behind Santiago, trying to pull him away. He has one hand on my shoulder to keep me up against the wall as he pounds my middle. My ears ring from the earlier hits, and I’m not sure my hearing isn’t delayed.
“You’re going to fucking kill him!”
“He deserves no less!” He shoves Mercedes back, and she stumbles over the toppled table, falling into the broken glass, screaming as it cuts into her palms.
Santiago stops when he hears her. He turns. And it’s when he takes a step toward her that I grab him by his shirt collar and haul him back.
“Not her. You don’t touch her!” I throw him sideways, but my desk breaks his fall, and his rage is back. He hurls himself at me, and this time, I do fight him.
“She’s not yours!” he spits. “She was never yours!”
Mercedes screams again, scrambling backward as we stumble toward her. “Stop! Please stop!” She’s on her feet, and this time, she doesn’t try to pull her brother away. Instead, she throws herself between us, into me, clinging with arms and legs around me to shield me from her brother.
My arms wrap around her instinctively, her firm, round belly pressed against mine. My eyes search her face, and my chest aches at the sight of it. Sad and broken. I did this to her. I broke her. She was right. She was never in my care. That was my own arrogance. I made her my prisoner. And I broke her.
Santiago tries to drag her away, but she clings to me. He's forced to release her, and she stands between us facing me, our eyes locked. Silence descends in this war room, a strange quiet passing between us. And I know without a doubt that the end that was coming is here. And that tether between us, that ever-precarious thing that I denied time and again, it has snapped. Gone. Severed for good. She feels it too. I see that much on her face. Hear it in the choked sound as her lip quivers, and she sobs quietly until we’re finally interrupted by Santiago’s voice.
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck. No.”
We both turn to face Santiago because we must. There’s a moment when the tips of Mercedes’s fingers search for mine, trembling over my thigh until I weave my fingers with hers. We stand, the pair of us, guilty, as Santiago takes in her state. His beautiful sister wearing the blood of our battle and the consequence of my arrogance.
She will bear the brunt of this. Like she said a long time ago, it’s always the women who pay.
Santiago’s hand lands heavy on the edge of the mantel. He needs it to stand. His eyes are locked on her swollen belly.
“Santi…”
He drags his gaze to hers, and that betrayal I saw earlier is double.
“It was my fault. Not hers. I am guilty. Not her.” My voice sounds strange. I never knew before today that you could hear pain.
Santiago drags his gaze to mine. I see what it costs him to do it. “You’ll marry her. Today.”
Mercedes shakes her head. “No, Santi—”
“You will marry her today!” he roars.
She pulls her fingers away from mine, that soft warmth gone. She takes a step toward him, and Marco, his driver and personal guard, appears in the doorway, confused momentarily at the sight that greets him, then shocked as his gaze settles on Mercedes.
“I won’t marry him,” Mercedes says. I see what it takes for her to steel herself. “You can’t make me anymore.”
It’s the wrong thing to say because her brother turns his rage-darkened eyes to her. But the instant he steps toward her, I am between them, shielding her with my body.
“Get the hell out of my way,” he tells me.
Marco comes into the room. I can take each of them separately. Probably not both at once, though.
“I am responsible, not her. You won’t punish her.”
Santiago’s gaze is cold, jaw set, eyes narrowed. “She will do as I say. And so will you. You will marry her. Today.”
I set my jaw too. How long have we been friends? How much have we been through together? His darkness I know. The violence that killed his father and brother. That ultimately took his mother. That claimed pieces of him. I was there for him through it all.