Chapter 9
The dust kicked up by the truck’s tires swallowed the view in the rearview mirror, but I didn’t need to look back to know what I was leaving behind.
The humiliation still burned on my skin like live coals.
Jo?o Bento’s words from the auction microphone echoed in the closed cab, bouncing off the windows and shredding what was left of my naivety.
A pathetic mistake. A cheap fling.
I gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel until my knuckles turned white and numb.
I wasn’t crying. The shock of betrayal had drained every tear from my body, leaving only bone-dry emptiness, a cold and crystalline hatred.
Bento wasn’t his father’s hostage; he was his masterpiece.
I was the fool who believed one passionate night could erase a lifetime of cowardice.
The dashboard beeped. A single bar of cell signal blinked on the radio’s green display. I was nearing the property line, just a few miles from the state highway.
I connected my phone to the sound system and dialed my mother’s number with adrenaline-shaky fingers. It rang twice before she answered.
“Rosário?” Aparecida’s voice burst through the speakers, shrill, trembling with a panic that made me clench my teeth. “For the love of God, tell me you’re already on the road.”
“I’m in the car, Mom. About twenty minutes from the highway.” I tried to keep my tone steady, swallowing the sharp knot in my throat. “The audit is over. I’m leaving that house forever.”
“I warned you, Rosário!” Aparecida shouted, desperation cracking through the line, ignoring every attempt I made to calm her.
“You should never, ever have gone back to that cursed ranch! Your father died because he started asking too many questions, because he dug into the filth and blood Jurandir hides. You’re going down the exact same path as Sebasti?o! ”
“They’re not going to touch me, Mom. Bento already put on his horror show up on that stage to discredit me and clear the field.” I floored it, the truck bouncing over the holes in the dry dirt road. “Jurandir doesn’t own the world. I’m getting out of here alive.”
“He owns that land, Rosário! Step on it and don’t stop for anything, do you hear me? A lie rides on horseback while the truth goes on foot. Don’t underestimate that man’s evil—get out of there now!”
“Mom, I’m almost at the...”
A colossal metallic crash cut off my sentence.
My truck was thrown violently to the left. The rear impact whiplashed my neck against the seat, and my phone flew from its holder on the console, slamming hard against the dashboard.
“Rosário?! Rosário!” Aparecida’s scream echoed weak and distant from the floor of the truck before the call cut out completely.
I looked in the rearview mirror, panic finally exploding in my veins. A massive black truck with a modified front grille pulled alongside in the dust. No headlights—just a dark mass of steel crushing into the side of my vehicle.
I spun the wheel with brute force, trying to keep control on the gravel, but my attacker’s vehicle was heavier and surgically precise. The pickup slammed into me again, this time ramming two tons of steel directly into the driver’s door.
The metal crumpled with a deafening screech of twisted iron.
My tires lost contact with the packed earth.
The truck skidded out of control, crashed through the barbed wire fence, snapping the aroeira posts like toothpicks, and plunged down the embankment, jerking to a brutal stop beneath twisted branches.
The smell of dust and boiling radiator smoke filled the cab. My face throbbed where the seatbelt had slammed into it. I groped the floor blindly, searching for my phone among the glass shards and dry grass pouring in through the shattered window. My fingers found the cold device.
Before I could turn on the cracked screen, the driver’s door was ripped clean off from the outside.
Nicanor stood there, blocking what little remained of the late afternoon light. Jurandir’s foreman smiled, baring stained teeth, his heavy breathing mixing with the smell of cheap cigarettes, sweat, and gunpowder.
“Thought the party was over, little doctor?” Nicanor mocked, shoving his thick, calloused hand through the gap in the crumpled door.
“Get your hands off me, you bastard!” I screamed, kicking his chest with the sole of my boot, fighting with every ounce of strength in my body.
The wounded lioness tried to fight back, but his brute strength was overwhelming.
Nicanor ignored the kick and grabbed my ankle in an iron grip, dragging me with savage force out of the shattered cab.
My body slammed into the dry earth. I scrambled to my feet, staggering, holding the phone up like a useless weapon.
The foreman didn’t waste time. With one swift, precise blow, he struck my wrist, disarming me and sending the phone flying into the gravel. Without taking his cold, empty eyes off my face, he raised his riding boot and stomped on the device, crushing it in a crackle of shattered glass.
“The old boss sends his regards,” Nicanor declared, pulling a thick calf-roping rope from his leather belt and grabbing my wrists before I could land another blow to his face. “He figured the big city would be too noisy for an auditor to live in now. Jurandir told us to give you a quieter ride.”
“Let me go! You won’t get out of here alive if you touch me!” I screamed, thrashing frantically as the rope burned against my skin, digging my nails into his arm until I drew blood.
“Scream all you want, woman. Jo?o Bento’s too busy with his fiancée to hear you from here,” Nicanor laughed, wrenching my arms behind my back with a sharp pain that made me clench my teeth to keep from begging.
“We’re heading deep inside, doctor. To the flooded lowlands.
Where the river swallows everything when it rises and nobody ever finds what’s been lost.”
I was dragged mercilessly through the dry mud and cutting grass, fighting in vain against the steel grip of the man who had orchestrated my father’s ruin ten years ago. The red dust of the Pantanal filled my mouth, mingling with the taste of blood, while cold sweat beaded on my forehead.
The auction, the applause, and Jo?o Bento’s public betrayal had all been necessary theater.
The perfect smokescreen to throw the world off the scent.
Jurandir Falc?o’s true sentence wasn’t my dismissal or my humiliation—it was my complete and permanent disappearance.
As I was hurled violently into the back seat of Nicanor’s car, heading toward the dark waters and oblivion, the only thing still alive in my chest, beyond even the terror, was a fierce, unbreakable vow: I would survive those murky waters to destroy every last one of their empires.