Chapter 2
The smell of imported tobacco, aged leather, and floor wax hung thick in the main office of the big house, creating an atmosphere so dense it almost made breathing difficult.
This room was the nerve center of Fazenda Falc?o, the altar of mahogany and power where my father had spent the last four decades deciding who thrived and who got crushed in the Pantanal.
I leaned against the edge of the thick glass window, watching darkness swallow the plain outside.
“The merger contract for our lands with the southern pastures is ready, Jo?o Bento.”
My father broke the silence, ice clinking against his crystal whiskey glass, the sound echoing through the room.
“Old Peixoto already signed his part. The official announcement of your engagement to Isadora will be the crowning moment of the auction at the end of the month.”
I turned slowly, keeping my expression completely frozen.
My father sat in his executive chair, his gray, calculating gaze fixed on me.
For Jurandir Falc?o, marriage never involved feelings—it was just another corporate transaction, one more line in the family’s balance sheet.
Isadora Peixoto was exactly what he demanded in a daughter-in-law: docile, raised in European boarding schools, with a weighty surname and enough land to expand our agricultural frontier.
She wouldn’t ask difficult questions or challenge the violent methods our empire used in the shadows.
“Isadora knows perfectly well that our engagement is a business arrangement, Father,” I responded, my voice flat, polished, and controlled. “I’ll sign the merger papers. You’ll have your market alliance.”
“Don’t take that martyr tone with me, boy.
” Jurandir took a sip of whiskey, pointing the glass in my direction.
“You’re thirty-four years old. You’re past the age of believing in passionate romances.
Love is a dangerous luxury men in our position can’t afford.
Money and the family name protect. Everything else is weakness. ”
I swallowed the rage threatening to tear through my throat.
For the last ten years, I had worn the skin of the submissive, cold administrator.
I had transformed myself into the perfect cog in this ranch’s machinery, choking down the old man’s atrocities while I planned, silently and meticulously, for the day when I would have enough power and proof to rip the crown from his head and purge the corruption from our lands.
My obedience was a farce, my submission a trap I was building around his own neck, brick by brick.
But my calculated planning and ice-cold patience had suffered a seismic shock just a few hours earlier, in the dusty courtyard of the corral.
“What worries me today isn’t your engagement to the Peixoto girl,” Jurandir continued, rising from his chair and circling the desk. His tone dropped, becoming dangerously soft. “What worries me is the insolent visitor the Veterinary Council decided to send us.”
My muscles locked beneath my cotton shirt. My heart gave a dull, heavy thud, sending a warning through my body.
“Doctor Rosário Duarte is only here to conduct a standard sanitary audit, Father. It’s a bureaucratic requirement from the federal government for renewing animal transport permits.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Jo?o Bento?”
Jurandir stopped in front of me, his eyes drilling into mine with barely contained fury.
“She’s Sebasti?o’s daughter. The girl who grew up eating scraps from our kitchen, whose father dared to defy me before he died. She came back with a diploma in her hand and a thirst for revenge in her eyes. That woman is looking for dirt, Bento. She came here to dig up our irregularities.”
“She won’t find anything,” I stated, holding the old man’s intimidating gaze without flinching.
My voice didn’t tremble, though my insides were on fire.
“The spreadsheets are bulletproof. Nicanor moved the problematic lots to the border. The veterinarian will cross-check the data, sign the health report, and be gone before the end of the week. I’ll personally make sure her work is quick and uninterrupted. ”
Jurandir narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing every inch of my expression. My father was an old fox and knew my weak points better than anyone.
“That’s what I expect,” the old man murmured, pressing his index finger against my chest, right over my heart.
“I know how you were when that girl came back. You still carry that idiotic weakness for her. Listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you: keep that little auditor under control.
If she starts sniffing where she shouldn’t, or if I notice you loosening the leash over some skirt from the past, I’ll handle the problem myself.
And you know my methods for cleaning up the ranch are permanent. ”
The air vanished from my lungs. The blood in my veins froze.
I knew perfectly well what the word “permanent” meant coming from Jurandir Falc?o. It meant Nicanor armed in the middle of the night, a convenient “accident” on a wooden bridge, or a drowning in a flooded river.
“No need to worry. I’ll keep Doctor Duarte in line,” I declared, forcing a cynical smile devoid of any emotion. “She means nothing to me. Just an inconvenience I’ll swallow and dispatch.”
Jurandir seemed satisfied with the coldness of my response. He patted my shoulder and returned to his mahogany desk.
“Excellent. Go rest. Tomorrow we’ll have a full day with the buyers from the slaughterhouse.”
I left the office and closed the solid oak door behind me.
The moment the lock clicked, the ice mask I’d been wearing crumbled. I braced both hands against the hallway wall, panting heavily, fighting the irrational urge to go back into that room and pummel my own father’s face until he bled.
I stormed out of the main house. The Pantanal night had fallen completely, blanketing the ranch with stars and the constant drone of crickets and cicadas. The air was stifling, heavy, thick with humidity from the river that cut through our property.
I went down the veranda steps and headed toward the darkened yard.
I sucked in a deep breath, but the only thing my lungs found was her scent. Ten years had passed. Ten damned years I’d spent torturing myself daily with the memory of the day I’d been too much of a coward to fight for her.
The moment Rosário climbed out of that truck this afternoon, my sanity was reduced to ashes.
I’d expected to see the frightened girl I’d kissed behind the hay sheds, someone vulnerable, but the woman who slammed the truck door and faced me head-on at the corral was a force of nature.
She was stunning. Her red hair pulled back, her posture straight, fury sparking in the green eyes that had once looked at me with nothing but sweetness.
Every word she hurled at my chest was a precise, well-deserved blade.
Her voice still echoed in my head, mingling with the sick, animal attraction that had almost made me grab her by the waist right there in front of the ranch hands and kiss her until I’d torn all that bitterness from her mouth.
I stopped near the wooden corral fences, looking toward the old research station almost a kilometer away, where I’d had her set up for reasons of “technical safety.” It was an excuse.
I’d put her far from the main house because I knew that if she slept under the same roof as me, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from breaking down her bedroom door in the middle of the night.
A single yellowish light glowed in the station house window.
She was there. Awake. Alone, surrounded by the danger my father represented, focused on destroying the family that had ruined her life.
I couldn’t do a single thing to defend her openly.
If I showed the slightest sign of protection, if I let on that I was on her side, my father wouldn’t hesitate to unleash the dogs on her to punish me.
I was trapped.
I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets, clenching my fists.
My plan to destroy my father’s corruption from the inside out required time, a cool head, and patience.
But Rosário’s presence here was a time bomb with the timer running too fast. The possessive instinct and the desperate need to touch her were waging a bloody war against my survival instinct.
She hated me, and she had every reason to.
Yet as I watched the small light in the distant research station window, my cursed heart—the heart of an heir damned by his own blood—beat with a dangerous, uncontrollable rhythm.
I was no longer the frightened eighteen-year-old boy who’d followed Jurandir’s orders.
I was the administrator. I was the wolf who knew every trap in that forest, and if the old man thought I would let him touch a single strand of red hair on the woman I loved, he was about to discover that the monster he’d created had much sharper teeth.
I adjusted my shirt collar and breathed the night air in deep. Rosário Duarte’s trace still hung in the air. My self-control had died at the corral, and the hell of Fazenda Falc?o was only beginning to burn.