Chapter 7
The metallic click of the car’s engine shutting off sounded like the cocking of a gun in the deathly silence of the garage.
I sat petrified in the passenger seat, my eyes fixed on the vehicle’s dark dashboard. The air inside the armored cabin had grown thin, entirely consumed by the hatred radiating from the man sitting beside me. My hands, still stained with his mother’s dried blood, trembled uncontrollably in my lap.
Eduardo didn’t look at me. He flung open the driver’s door with such violence that the car’s frame shook, and he stepped out, slamming it shut with deafening force.
The crash made me jump in my seat. A sob tore through my throat, dry and painful.
I unlocked my door with numb fingers and stepped out into the cold garage.
The early morning air of S?o Paulo was already heavy with the scent of rain and dampness, foreshadowing the storm brewing in the dark sky outside.
I stumbled after him. My legs felt like lead, faltering with every step. When we entered the mansion through the side entrance, the deathly silence of the house hit me like a wall of ice.
Lurdes, the housekeeper, was standing near the kitchen, holding a dish towel. When she saw me, her eyes narrowed with a blend of revulsion and barely concealed triumph. She took a step back, as if my mere presence would contaminate the air she breathed.
Eduardo strode with long, heavy steps toward the main entrance hall.
I stopped at the threshold of the hallway, my pulse hammering.
The sheet was no longer there. Dona Eleonora’s body had been taken to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
But the mark of the tragedy remained. The police tape encircled the immense pool of dark, clotted blood that stained the white marble at the foot of the staircase.
Eduardo stopped in front of the tape. His broad shoulders rose and fell with heavy, gasping breaths, as if he were fighting an invisible monster inside his own mind.
“Eduardo…” I whispered, my voice breaking, choked by the tears I could no longer hold back.
He spun on his heels. The movement was so abrupt, so charged with primal fury, that I instinctively took a step back.
The face of the man I loved was transformed. The veins in his neck bulged beneath his skin; his brown eyes, once so gentle, now burned with a dark, devastating fire. The prince was no longer there. There was only the wounded heir, the predator ready to annihilate the threat.
“Don’t say my name,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous, echoing off the immense walls of the hall. “Don’t you dare say my name with that same mouth you used to swear you loved me.”
“I love you!” I screamed, the pain tearing at my vocal cords, taking a blind step toward him. “I didn’t do it! Please, look me in the eyes! You know who I am, Eduardo, and that I wouldn’t be capable of hurting a fly, let alone your mother!”
“I don’t know who you are!” he exploded, his thunderous scream causing the crystal chandeliers to tremble slightly on the ceiling.
He lunged toward me. Terror paralyzed me. He stopped just inches from my face. The heat radiating from his body exuded pure rage, and the look he gave me made me feel like the tiniest, most repulsive creature on the face of the earth.
“You fooled me completely, Maria Rita.” He spat out the words, each syllable dripping with poison.
“You played the victim—the poor, naive girl who needed to be saved from the evil world. And I fell into your trap like an idiot. I brought you into my home. I gave you my fucking name! And how do you thank me? By killing the only person who tried to open my eyes!”
“She slipped!” I pleaded, clasping my hands in front of my chest as if I were praying.
“Liar!”
His scream hit me right in the face. Eduardo raised his arm and pointed a trembling finger toward the pool of blood.
“My mother is dead! And her blood is all over your hands and your clothes! Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I’m going to buy this pathetic accident story when half the staff in this house knew she was planning to expose you today?!”
“They hate me! Lurdes hates me! They’re making things up so you’ll hate me too!”
“It’s over, Maria Rita.” His voice dropped a few octaves, turning cold and sharp, each word a death sentence delivered with the calm of an executioner. “The charade is over.”
He strode past me and opened the heavy double doors of solid oak at the main entrance.
The icy wind from the street swept into the hall, carrying the first heavy drops of rain that were beginning to pour down on S?o Paulo. The sound of the storm outside sounded like a somber lament, but the cold was nothing compared to the chill that gripped my stomach.
Eduardo turned to me, pointing toward the darkness of the street with his arm outstretched.
“Get out of my house!”
The world around me spun. The air vanished. I blinked, my vision blurred by the incessant tears, trying to process the meaning of those words.
“W—what?” I stammered, panic completely overwhelming me.
“Are you deaf?” he growled, taking a step toward me. “I told you to leave. Now. Get out!”
“Eduardo, please… Where am I supposed to go? It’s the middle of the night, and it’s raining! I don’t have anyone in this city—I don’t even know my way around!” I ran up to him, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket with my dirty hands. “I’m your wife!”
He looked at my hand clutching the expensive fabric of his jacket as if I were a poisonous insect. With a violent, merciless jerk, he yanked his arm free from my grip. The force of the movement sent me stumbling backward, and I fell, landing on the hard marble floor.
“You’re not my wife,” he hissed, looking down at me with such contempt that it tore my soul into a thousand pieces.
“You’re nothing but a murderer, and I’m going to make sure you rot in jail.
But until the police return with the arrest warrant, I won’t breathe the same air as the woman who killed my mother. ”
“At least let me get my things!” I begged, crawling backward, trying to get to my feet as the terror of being thrown out onto the street suffocated me. “A coat, my documents! My purse with my cell phone, Eduardo, please!”
“Your things?” He let out a bitter, dry laugh, devoid of any humor. “Nothing in this house is yours, Maria Rita. The clothes in that closet, the documents, the phone… everything was bought with my money. The money you thought you’d inherit by killing my mother.”
“Don’t do this to me!” I screamed as hysteria took hold of me. “I have nowhere to go!”
“You should have thought about that before you pushed her down those stairs.”
I screamed. I struggled. I begged for mercy, calling his name, reminding him of the perfect morning we’d had, of the love he’d sworn to me.
But he was deaf. Blinded by the pain and the poison his housekeeper had so carefully planted.
With one last rough shove, he threw me out the doorway.
My body slammed into the rough cobblestones of the entrance ramp. The stones scraped my knees and the palms of my hands, opening small cuts that stung on contact with the dirt and the icy water.
I raised my head, my hair matted against my cheeks, the rain falling relentlessly on me.
Eduardo stood in the doorway, dry, impeccable, unreachable. My prince had turned into my worst nightmare.
“Roberto!” He called over the security chief’s radio, his voice filling the emptiness of the early morning. “Throw this woman out the gates. If she tries to come back in, call the police for trespassing.”
“Eduardo, no! Forgive me if I did something wrong, but don’t leave me out on the street!” I crawled toward him, holding out my bloodstained hand in the dim light of the porch.
He looked at me one last time. There was no love there. There wasn’t even pity.
“You’re dead to me.”
The double oak doors slammed shut with a monumental crash, locking from the inside.
I remained kneeling in the rain, the sound of the wind howling in my ears. Two tall security guards, wearing black raincoats, appeared almost immediately. They grabbed me by the arms, without any gentleness, and dragged me down the steep ramp toward the property’s exit.
My feet stumbled over the stones. I no longer had the strength to fight back. The emotional shock and the biting cold had numbed my muscles.
When we reached the sidewalk, the security guards let go of me. The impact sent me tumbling sideways onto the wet asphalt. Behind me, the heavy wrought-iron gates closed with a grinding mechanical noise, separating me forever from the fairy tale that had lasted less than a few hours.
The electronic lock clicked, locking shut.
I lay there, sprawled on the sidewalk in Morumbi.
The early morning was dark, starless, swallowed up by a brutal storm.
The rain in S?o Paulo fell like blades of ice onto my exposed skin.
The light-colored dress, made of fine fabric, was torn, stained with dirt, and soaked with the blood of the woman who hated me; it clung to my trembling body.
I was alone. Without money, without a coat, without a destination, and without hope.
The cold seeped into my bones, but the pain tearing at my heart was a thousand times worse.
The man who promised to give me the world had just thrown me into the abyss, and there on that dark sidewalk, as the rain washed away my tears, I wished the cold would end my suffering before morning came.