Chapter 4
The taste of rain mixed with dust and her fury still burned in my mouth.
For a split second, while my lips still held Rosário's pinned against the rough wall of the storage shed and her body trembled against mine, I let myself forget who I was.
I wasn't the administrator of a multimillion-dollar fraud.
I wasn't Jurandir Falc?o's shackled son, or Isadora Peixoto's bought-and-paid-for fiancé.
I was just a man holding onto the only fragment of truth that had ever existed in my life.
But reality in the Pantanal is brutal and rarely forgives distraction.
A flash of lightning tore across the sky outside and sliced through the small window, illuminating the vast expanse of flooded pasture. The white, lethal light revealed the silhouette of the main house in the distance, looming like an inquisitor's tribunal.
My heart seized in my chest. The image of my father sitting behind that mahogany desk, swirling his glass of whiskey and promising “definitive” methods to silence the veterinarian, slammed into my mind with the force of a collision.
The panic was primal and suffocating. If the old man suspected, even for a second, that the council auditor was my greatest weakness, Rosário wouldn't leave this ranch alive.
Jurandir wouldn't fire her—he'd make her disappear into the dark waters of that river.
The attraction that had dragged me into her arms wasn't romance; it was a death sentence with my name on it.
I pulled away from her abruptly, as if the wet skin I'd worshipped had suddenly turned to burning coals.
Rosário blinked, dazed, her lips still parted and swollen from our savage kiss. Her chest rose and fell erratically beneath her soaked shirt. There was raw vulnerability in those green eyes, a silent, desperate question crying out for safe harbor.
I needed to destroy that look. I had to make her hate me enough to stay away, pack her bags, and leave before the slaughterhouse was ready.
“That was a mistake.” My voice came out rough, cutting, slicing through the sound of the storm.
I saw the exact instant the confusion on her face transformed into shock. Rosário stepped back, pressing her shoulders against the tree, her breath catching visibly.
“What?” she whispered, her trembling voice competing with the wind.
“You heard me. It was a colossal mistake. A lapse in judgment fueled by this ridiculous storm adrenaline.” I clenched my fists so tight my nails dug into my palms, forcing every muscle in my face into the mask of cold arrogance I'd spent ten years perfecting.
“Don't get confused, Rosário. What happened here means absolutely nothing.”
The color drained from her face, only to flood back in a wave of heat and fury. The vulnerability vanished instantly, swallowed by the wounded lioness.
“Doesn't mean anything?” she repeated, a bitter, dry laugh escaping her throat. “You grab me, kiss me like a desperate man in the middle of nowhere, and now you're putting on this untouchable boss act? You're pathetic, Jo?o Bento.”
“I'm a realist, Doctor.” I turned my back on her, striding toward my horse, which was neighing in fear at the thunder. “The rain's letting up. Get on your horse and head back to the main house. Write your report, finish this audit, and get off my land. Playtime's over.”
I didn't wait for her. I swung into the saddle and spurred the animal forward, tearing through the mud toward the main house, my stomach churning with disgust at the man I was forced to be.
We rode back to the main house in a silence loaded with gunpowder.
When we finally reached the corral, I handed the reins to the ranch hand without a word.
Rosário dismounted a few meters behind me.
She didn't look my way, walking with her spine straight and her steps hard toward the attached office, the field bag pressed against her soaked body.
I headed to the main house, took a quick shower, and tried to focus on my tasks. The hours that followed dragged on like medieval torture.
I locked myself in the administration office, trying to focus on the soy export contracts, but the spreadsheets made no sense.
My skin still tingled where she'd touched me.
The smell of rain mixed with her perfume haunted my shuttered office.
Every time my eyes drifted to the window, the dread that my father or Nicanor might have seen something sent cold sweat down my spine.
Late that afternoon, the inevitable happened.
I was walking through the long, silent corridor of the main house, heading toward the archive room, when I saw her.
Rosário stood before the heavy wooden door of the records room, holding a clipboard.
She'd already showered and changed. She wore dark jeans, clean boots, and a polo shirt with the council emblem.
Her red hair was pulled into a tight bun at the top of her head.
When she saw me turn the corner, her posture stiffened. The corridor was narrow, lined with a worn Persian rug and lit by yellowed sconces that gave it a dungeon-like air.
“You're not authorized to be in this wing of the house, Rosário,” I fired off before I'd even reached her, keeping my tone hard and unyielding.
“I have a court order giving me unrestricted access to any document related to the Falc?o herd's health records,” she shot back, turning to face me and blocking my path.
Her gaze was sharp as broken glass. “The records from three years ago aren't in the support room, and the foreman told me the archive key is kept exclusively by the administrator. So open the door.”
I stopped less than a foot away from her. The oxygen seemed to evaporate from the corridor. The physical proximity demanded a titanic effort not to look at her lips.
“This file contains tax documents from the holding company—confidential information that has nothing to do with a health inspection,” I said, my voice dropping an octave. My chest rose and fell in the same breathless rhythm as hers.
“Are you afraid of what I'll find in there, Bento?” She raised an eyebrow, challenging me, her voice dripping with venomous scorn. “The shortfall at the north retreat is just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it? What else does the impeccable heir help sweep under daddy's rug?”
“I'm afraid you don't know your place,” I shot back—a calculated slash.
I saw the gleam in her eyes waver, but I needed to keep hitting until she backed down.
“You're meddling in grown-up business, playing detective on land where the rules don't apply to people like us. And frankly, your insistence is bordering on obsession.”
Rosário let out a bitter laugh, shaking her head in disbelief. She crossed her arms, pressing the clipboard against her chest, her green eyes brimming with a hurt that was killing me inside.
“You're unbelievable. This morning, under that tree, you devoured me like I was the only water in the desert. And now you act like I'm a parasite. What are you, really, Jo?o Bento? The repressed lover or Jurandir's lapdog?”
“Forget our kiss. It was a lapse in judgment from someone who was cold and stranded in the middle of nowhere!” I raised my voice, making sure any shadow of affection was strangled right there.
I leaned dangerously close to her, using my height to intimidate her.
“I'm marrying Isadora next month, Rosário.
My future involves capital expansion, merging empires, and a woman of my class.
I'm not going to drag my family's reputation through the mud over a pathetic slip-up with some ex-cook's daughter.”
The hallway fell absolutely silent.
I could have ripped my own heart out with my bare hands if it would have hurt less than watching those words hit her. The color drained completely from Rosário's skin. Her lips trembled for a fraction of a second, humiliation written plainly across the face I loved so much.
But she didn't cry. The resilience that had carried her through hardship won out. The wounded lioness swallowed the pain and raised her chin, sinking her claws into my weakest point.
“You know what the biggest difference between us is, Bento?” Her voice was a cutting, icy whisper. “I left this ranch without a penny to my name, without a father, and through the back door. But I owned every choice I made. I'm free. While you...”
She stepped forward, jabbing her finger into my chest.
“You're drowning in money. You strut around like you own the world, pretending you're the big bad wolf.
But you're nothing but a coward. A spineless weakling on Jurandir Falc?o's leash, terrified of his own shadow and incapable of having a single genuine feeling without daddy's permission.
You're so much smaller than I imagined, Jo?o Bento.”
The blow was clean and lethal. My breath caught in my throat.
Rosário shoved my shoulder hard, pushing past me, and turned her back.
I stood frozen in the dimly lit hallway, watching her walk away with hard, determined steps. The irrational urge to run after her, to pin her against the wall, to confess everything about the threats and beg for forgiveness screamed in every cell of my body.
But my feet didn't move.
I swallowed hard, tasting my own cowardice as it scraped down my throat. Rosário's safety had cost me my pride and her love. I had destroyed the only bridge between us, choosing to be the villain of the story so she could survive.
Alone in the dark hallway, as the sound of her footsteps faded into the main house, the excruciating realization of the monster I'd been forced to become confirmed my worst suspicion: the Falc?o empire didn't belong to me yet, but it had already begun to devour my soul.