Chapter 37
DEX
I wake up and find that Daniela isn’t around.
At first I don’t think anything of it. Maybe she went to the gym. Maybe she just left early. For what, though? To meet Cari at the flower shop? Maybe. But when I come back home later that evening, she’s still not there.
Her phone rings four times before going to voicemail.
Again.
I stare at my cellphone, willing Daniela’s name to light up. I miss my wife more than ever, and I only have myself to blame.
I asked her for some time and space, so I have to respect that, but when I get home later that evening, she’s still not there.
It hits me like a punch to the chest.
That this silence might not just be space.
That this emptiness might not just be time.
That she’s gone.
Not to Cari’s. Not to a spa.
Gone gone.
Left me.
My vision mists and the walls of the room close in. I feel like I’m suffocating. Like I can’t breathe.
It all comes back to me, how I told her I needed space, but what I really needed was her.
I told her I needed time, but all that matters is every moment spent with her.
I might have made it too easy for her to leave me.
I call her security detail in a panic. Only to be told that Daniela hasn’t left the apartment, as far as he knows.
“She’s not here, you idiot!” I yell down the phone.
“She hasn’t left the apartment, sir. I’ve been stationed in the lobby all day,” the guy says.
My blood runs cold.
“She fucking has! “She’s not in this apartment.” I nearly put my fist through the wall. Has this fucking idiot let her slip past him?
Asshole. Daniela gave him the slip. She got away, I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but I intend to find out. She didn’t want me to know.
I call Rio and show up at his place moments later, falling to pieces. A frantic, hot mess. I pace around his apartment. “She’s gone. She’s disappeared. Or something’s happened to her.” I stop and gape at Rio. But he’s calm, arms folded. Not feeling my panic.
“I’ll tell you what’s happened,” Rio says. “But I don’t know if you can handle it.”
My head whips to him. “You know where she is?”
“I just found out. An hour ago. I was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“She’s back in Brazil?” The words hit like bricks. I stumble back, bumping into the edge of Rio’s kitchen island, gripping it like it’s the only thing holding me up.
“She … w-what?” My voice splinters, I feel it sharp across my throat. “She’s gone back to Brazil?” My knees threaten to give way, and I brace myself, bracketing the counter with both hands, my knuckles white. “She left the country?” I choke out. “Without telling me? Without her security?” It’s like she was escaping.
Escaping from me.
Rio doesn’t answer. He looks at me, eyes wide with worry. “Take a breath, Dex. We can fix this. There’s also something else you should know. Something Raquel told me.”
My lungs struggle to work. I’m not sure I can take any more. “What?” I croak.
“The old man was going to do it anyway, get control of AO Eletronica. It was in the original contract, pages of fine print and bullshit, but this was his intention all along.”
I shove both hands through my hair, fingers digging hard into my scalp. The room starts to spin and I feel uncertain. Unsteady. Like my life is not worth living. “That sonofabitch. Greedy as fuck. I would never have married her had I known.”
“That’s just it. You didn’t know.”
I recall asking him for the contract. He never gave it to us. “Raquel knows a lot.”
“Don’t even ask,” Rio mutters. “She says she’s not supposed to say anything, but she thinks you need to know, she figured you’d be worried.” He clears his throat. “Daniela went to the Dominican Republic, likely for a quickie divorce.”
“What?”
What fresh hell is this? I hold my stomach, feeling like a wrecking ball’s hit me. The only reason she’d be getting a quickie divorce is because she’s not just divorcing me.
She’s planning to marry Oscar Ramos.
I press my palms to my face. I want to scream, but I can’t find the air.
Daniela hasn’t just left me.
She’s gone forever.
And now she’s planning to marry another man.
A corrupt man. A man who doesn’t love her.
“Dude.” Rio’s voice is soft. He’s by my side. “Calm the hell down,” he orders. “You fall apart like this, you won’t stand a chance. It’s all well and good getting the company back from the old man, I can take care of that. You need to take care of you.”
I suck in a deep breath, stand taller, nod as I see Daniela’s face in my mind’s eye. I told her I need time, but she took it to mean I’m letting go.
The fuck I am.
The fuck I’ll let her marry that sonofabitch. I need Daniela like I need air to breathe. I can’t function without her. I can’t imagine a day of my life without her by my side.
What have I done?
Instead of giving her time and space, instead of working around the clock with Rio and his brothers, I should have told Daniela what we were doing.
“What will you do, dude?” Rio asks.
I realize it in an instant. My father never expected me to fight for Daniela. He expected me to walk away, like I always do.
He thought that’s what I’d do again, but Daniela has changed me. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her, but damn it. I messed up. I was so desperate to fix everything. Desperate in the way her father must have been when he asked her to make that deal.
This woman has suffered enough, and I let her slip away from me. There’s only one thing left to do.
Win her back.
I look Rio dead in the eye. “It’s time I brought my wife back home.”