“Does the fact that most of them don’t walk out of here alive, does that make you feel better?”
“It makes it worse.” I grimaced, shaking my head vigorously. “You’re using your sister’s death as an excuse to be an asshole, a monster.”
That got his attention. His pupils turned to tiny pinpricks in the amber. I regretted it, but there was too much anger and adrenaline rushing through me to back down now. I would not cower to him.
“What did you just say?” he said through clenched teeth.
Of course, now he was mad. He was upset. I practically had to throw rocks at him to get him to feel something.
I straightened up and looked him dead in the eye. “Sometimes I wish your sister died long before I met you, as at least then I could have had an idea of what kind of husband you were going to be.”
I didn’t see the hit coming. There was just a crack across my cheek, then stars, then black swirls at the edges of my sight. But I didn’t fall down. I think I was too stunned to. I just held my cheek, the skin throbbing, the bone screaming, and stared wide-eyed at Javier.
He had hit me. It was a slap across the face and I probably should have expected it, but he’d never hit me before. For all the painful, twisted things he’d done to me — that we’d done to each other — he’d never done this. It wasn’t his style to hit women, a slap or not.
I didn’t know what his style was anymore. But now, now I feared it.
I feared him.
He stared at me in a rage, nostrils flaring, his chest heaving, and he jabbed his finger at me while I stood there, holding my cheek, trying to breathe through the shock of it all.
“You do not disrespect my sister like that,” he growled, his voice rough and hard and frightening. “She is my family. She was my family. And that’s the one thing you obviously are not, because families do not disrespect each other.”
I had nothing to say to that. No protests. And the apology I had, because really, I meant Alana no disrespect, was caught in my chest, unable to come out. I just stared at him, wondering what this meant now that I was no longer family.
He watched me for a few moments, the two of us locked in our gazes, with so much anger that the air was electric between us. Then he winced as if pained, and turned away from me.
“Get out,” he said quietly. “Please.” He paused before screaming, “Go!”
I snapped to it and turned from him as quickly as I could, scuttling out of the room. I didn’t even look at Diego as I passed him and ran down the hall, hot tears burning behind my eyes.
I couldn’t stay inside, couldn’t stand to feel the walls constricting around me. I rushed out of the house and into the dying light. Through the kitchen window I could see Esteban laughing, his hand on Juanito’s shoulder, who was smiling. At the time I barely registered it, but I would go back to that image later and wonder why Juanito wasn’t in trouble.
I’d wonder about a lot of things.
But as it was, I could only think about myself at that moment and how I was nothing more than a wounded animal. My cheek throbbed but the pain inside was far worse. It was debilitating, hindering my actual movement. I practically staggered all the way to the pond.
The minute I was behind the cover of the palms and reeds, I collapsed to the ground, just feet from my usual spot. The look in Javier’s eyes, the sincerity in his words, kept flashing through my mind, stabbing me over and over again.
It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt me. It’s that he wanted me to hear the truth.
That horrible, bitter truth that seemed to be stuck in my throat, and I was unable to dislodge it no matter how hard I tried to fight.
The tears came, broken at first, just like me. Fragments of sobs. I felt like a little girl, curled up on the floor of the closet after a fight with my parents. My mind even wanted to hold on to the hope that Javier would feel bad for what he’d said, what he’d done, that he would show remorse, worry, that he would come out here looking for me. That he’d scoop me up in his arms and tell me that we would get through this. That we could survive.
That he loved me.
But I knew that wouldn’t happen, because he was right. I knew what I was getting into when I married him. I knew he wasn’t like most men; in fact, I’d never known anyone like him. So ruthless and cunning, but with tenderness, loyalty, and a twisted code of morals hidden deep inside him.
All the good in him vanished with Alana, and the Javier that was left was a walking ghost. And I had promised, for better or for worse, to stay by his side.
So I was stuck with a man who no longer wanted me to be a part of his life. But there was no way I could up and leave either. How do you leave one of the most powerful men in the country? You don’t. You stay and you keep quiet.
And the worst part was, as much as I was falling out of love … I still loved him something terrible.
Love was a terrible thing.