Chapter 8
The sound of the silver pendant hitting the leather of my boot was the most deafening noise of my life.
The tiny metal bounced on the wooden stage and came to rest, carrying with it every promise, every kiss in the dark, and the only chance at redemption I’d ever had.
Rosário didn’t run. She didn’t bow her head.
The woman I loved walked down the aisle of guests with her spine straight, parting the sea of curious stares with the majesty of a queen who had just abdicated a rotten kingdom.
I watched her silhouette shrink into the dust beyond the tents while my chest was crushed by an invisible vise.
The primal urge to leap off that stage, chase after Rosário, grab her, and confess that every word I’d spewed into the microphone was a farce dictated at gunpoint nearly made me give in.
My entire body strained toward the exit.
“Jo?o Bento.”
Isadora’s voice came low and urgent beside me. Her fingers—nails perfectly manicured—dug into my forearm through the fabric of my shirt. Her touch was light, but it anchored me to the brutal present.
I drew a deep breath, pulling in the thick air heavy with smoke, barbecue, and expensive perfume, and looked toward the back of the shed.
Nicanor was there. The foreman leaned against the aroeira pillar, arms crossed, a cynical smile on his grimy mouth, his right hand resting casually near the holster at his waist.
The warning was clear. The truce held—as long as I kept playing my part.
I bent down stiffly, picked up the broken chain with the silver falcon, and closed my fist around it until the metal bit into my skin.
“Show’s over,” I murmured, my voice hollow, stripped of any trace of humanity. I yanked my arm free from Isadora’s grip and descended the wooden steps.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a feverish blur.
I smiled at investors I despised. I shook the sweaty hands of bought politicians and ranchers who saw the union of the Falc?o and Peixoto families as the perfect opportunity to expand their own borders.
With every glass of champagne raised in my direction to toast the engagement, I felt the poison of my cowardice burning in my stomach.
When the auction finally entered the open bidding phase, Jurandir gave a subtle nod toward the office at the main house.
I walked through the corridors with the lethargy of a man being led to slaughter.
When I pushed open the double mahogany doors, I found my father already seated in his executive chair.
Isadora’s father, a rotund, soft-spoken man named Otávio Peixoto, sat in the chair beside him.
The leather folders with the holding company’s documents lay open on the glass desk.
“Come in, my son.” Jurandir flashed a wide smile, pouring three glasses of whiskey. “The speech was... pragmatic. I’m glad you’ve finally understood the priorities of this house.”
“The papers, Father,” I demanded, stopping in front of the desk, ignoring the crystal glass he held out to me. I didn’t look at my future father-in-law. My capacity for social performance had been exhausted on stage. “Where do I sign?”
Otávio laughed, trying to break the tension, and pushed the thick letterhead pages toward me.
“The haste of youth. But Jo?o Bento is right, Jurandir. Let’s seal this merger and ensure our southern pastures operate under the same banner starting tomorrow.”
I picked up the gold pen that Jurandir slid across the glass.
The metal was cold. I scanned the clauses, the absurd numbers, the shareholding division that made me, officially, the irrevocable administrator of an empire built on fraud and extortion.
My name beside Isadora’s. My life sold in a thirty-page contract.
The memory of Rosário’s warm touch, her skin prickling under my hands, the silent promise we’d made in the dark—it all crashed against my conscience. I was about to nail my own coffin shut.
“Sign, Jo?o Bento.” Jurandir’s voice hardened, shedding its false cordiality, a veiled command echoing in the silence of the room. The old man knew I was hesitating.
I touched the pen tip to the paper and scrawled my signature on the first page. Then the second. The third...
Each stroke of dark ink was an iron door slamming shut, locking me inside my family’s hell. I signed the merger terms, the transfer of bank guarantees, and finally, the engagement contract. I was handing my soul, my body, and my future over to my father.
I tossed the pen onto the desk with a sharp snap.
“It’s done,” I declared, turning away immediately, before the disgust made me vomit on the Persian rug.
“Jo?o Bento.”
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob.
“The veterinarian has already packed her bags. Clarindo tells me she tossed them in the council truck and took the dirt road toward the highway,” Jurandir said, savoring each word, swirling the ice in his glass. “A very sensible attitude on her part.”
Air filled my lungs for the first time in hours. I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the cold wood of the door.
She took the road...
The image of the truck kicking up dust toward the city of Aquidauana formed in my mind, bringing a wave of relief so deep and painful that my legs trembled.
She was hurt. Rosário would hate me until her dying day.
She would weep with rage at the sound of my name and scrub our kiss from her memory with the disgust reserved for the worst traitors.
But she was alive.
My abject lie on stage had achieved its purpose.
By destroying her publicly and accepting the engagement, I had severed the bond.
I had removed the target from her back. Jurandir no longer had any reason to hunt her.
Nicanor didn’t need to dirty his hands with blood in the corral.
I had bought her passage back to the real world with the currency of my own future.
She would go back to Campo Grande. She would keep being the brilliant, fearless, free professional she’d always been. Rosário would live, breathe, move on, and find someone who wasn’t drowning in his own mess. Someone who deserved her.
“Good,” I replied without turning around. I forced my voice to stay neutral, hollow. “Case closed.”
I opened the door and left.
I walked through the deserted corridors of the west wing to my room. I locked the door and let my body slide down the wall until I sat crumpled on the cold floor. The main house trembled with the loud music coming from the auction tents, celebrating my defeat and the old man’s victory.
I opened my clenched fist. The falcon pendant lay in my palm, dented and dusty. Dried blood from where the chain had cut into Rosário’s skin stained the silver.
I was drowning in absolute, irreversible misery. The Falc?o empire was legally mine now, but I had never felt so poor, so small, so broken.
I pressed the small metal bird against my chest, right where my heart should have been beating.
The tears I’d refused to show anyone escaped, hot and silent, washing the dust from my face in the dark.
I had killed any chance of being happy, but the unshakable certainty that my lioness was on the road—driving away from us, speeding toward the safety of the city, free from my father’s clutches—was the only thing keeping me breathing.