Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“I didn’t know who you were or why I was so attracted to you,” she said, relieved to finally tell him the truth about that night. “But I knew if I didn’t go home with you that night, I would regret it forever.”
****
A lexandre gathered her in his arms.
“I wasn’t myself that night,” he confessed, aching to open his heart to her.
Raquel was honest with him, while he’d chosen to hold a part of himself back.
These past few days, he’d discovered that while he enjoyed the physical aspect of their marriage, he’d begun to rely on her emotionally, too.
Whenever she shared tidbits about her life, he longed to tell her about his past. But the prospect of trusting another person with intimate details of his life was frightening.
However, tonight, he wanted to bare his soul to her. He wanted no secrets between them. He trusted Raquel, he realized with a start. Trusted her implicitly, and believed she would never betray him.
“It was the day Leandro told me about the wedding,” Alexandre said, his eyes darkening with pain at the memory. “I was not just shocked by the news but angry, too.”
“Why?” Raquel whispered, her cheek resting on his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist.
“Because Carlos orchestrated the entire thing.”
She lifted her head, looking quizzically at him.
“You know Carlos adopted me,” he said, and she nodded. “What you don’t know is that he didn’t want to.”
She gaped at him.
“I strongly believe my mother intentionally got pregnant with me. She hoped my father would leave his wife and marry her, but when that didn’t happen, she used me to her benefit.
“My father, Rico, paid her to get rid of me in the womb, but she didn’t.
Instead, she used me to try and extort money from Rico.
But he didn’t care about her or me. Neither did it matter to him that if news about me got out, it would embarrass his family.
It drove my mother crazy when her scheme backfired, but she found a gullible prey in Carlos. ”
“Your grandfather doesn’t look like someone who can be extorted,” Raquel added, remembering the Monteiro patriarch whom she’d only met once. But once was enough to form a lasting impression—behind his warm smile, she’d sensed, was a man who was unyielding and ruthless, just like Alexandre.
“You didn’t know my mother,” Alexandre muttered with undisguised hate. “She was a snake—a manipulative woman who only cared about herself, and no one else. Liza went to Carlos and threatened to go to the press if he didn’t help her. It was enough to bring Carlos to his knees.
“Family is everything to my grandfather, and he would rather die than have the family name sullied. So he paid her. And kept paying. Month after month, year after year, till he too, got fed up with her manipulations.”
“Is that when he decided to adopt you?”
Pursing his lips, he looked away. He remembered that night—Liza complaining to Carlos how expensive raising a child was, and that Alexandre too, deserved a good life like Leandro.
The expense is crippling, Liza had said while he’d hidden behind his mother.
At twelve, he had been a boy on the cusp of teenage, awkward and unsure about himself. Of one thing he’d been certain—he detested being used like a thing to be bartered.
And bartered he had been.
For money to feed his mother’s greed. Silenced with hundreds of thousands of rupees in exchange for his custody.
Raquel remained quiet as he spoke of his heartless mother who handed him over gleefully, not even shedding a tear as she walked away while he had gazed longingly at her, his eyes awash with tears but too proud to cry.
“I told myself I would be better off with Carlos. At least I would get food on time,” he remarked wryly, but his attempt at humor didn’t fool her.
She knew the incident had hurt him terribly. “But Carlos wasn’t any better either, was he?”
“He wasn’t bad, although I did have a lot of rules to follow.”
“Like what?”
And he told her—he was told not to be seen or heard from. He told her about his small room in the servants’ quarters where the staff took care of him.
“I was glad I could go to school although it wasn’t the same one Leandro went to. I went to school with Lobo while my brother went to a boarding school out-of-state.”
“Did they... treat you badly?” she asked, her eyes moist with unshed tears.
“Sometimes, although it was just Rico who would beat me if he saw me around the mansion. With Erica it was mostly verbal abuse. Carlos, though he kept his distance, was kind to me. Leandro was the only one who tried to forge a relationship with me.”
His words surprised Raquel. But Leandro had surprised him too, when he’d first gone to live at the Monterio mansion.
“For almost a year after being adopted, I didn’t hear from my mother. Then she came back one night.” Alexandre burned with shame at that memory.
“Why?”
“The money was all gone, and she wanted more. When Carlos refused to pay her, she went to the press.”
Raquel stared at him in horror, while Alexandre vividly remembered what had transpired the night the news came out.
“Both Carlos and Rico were outraged by Liza’s behavior but it completely destroyed Leandro’s mother.
Erica was pregnant with her second child, and she ended up losing the baby.
She’d known all along about Rico’s affairs, but having his sexual exploits splashed all over the news was too much for her to take.
Their marriage broke down, and she held me responsible for ruining her life and the death of her unborn child. ”
“Oh, Alexandre!” Raquel grabbed his hands and brought them to her breast, her tears running free. “You weren’t responsible for what happened. You were just a child. They were wrong to hold you responsible for the sins of your father.”
“Weren’t you too, hated for the sins of your father?” he asked in return, shocking her into an uncomfortable silence.