Chapter 5
Foreman Nicanor had been way too pushy that afternoon about which areas of the North Retreat were “closed off for collapse risk.” He’d tried to steer me through only the freshly painted sheds, but his eagerness to keep me away from the riverbank—combined with the glaring discrepancies in the cattle counts on recent spreadsheets—was exactly what brought me out here in the middle of the night.
That first night, the old research station seemed to exhale mold, neglect, and buried secrets through its rotting boards.
Tactical flashlight in hand, I forced the rusted lock on the back door and slipped inside, ignoring the cold wind howling through the cracks.
My father always said arrogant men never covered their tracks—they hid everything where they figured no one would be smart enough or brave enough to look.
And Jurandir Falc?o was the undisputed king of Pantanal arrogance.
For the third night in a row, I was back at the old station.
I searched through the rust-corroded metal cabinets again and forced open each jammed file drawer.
I’d already rummaged through forgotten boxes, checked mold-covered invoices, and cross-referenced numbers until my eyes burned—without finding a single record that could explain the cattle count discrepancies.
Nothing. Frustration burned in my throat while the exhaustion from days of auditing weighed on my shoulders, making each new folder seem more useless than the last.
That’s when the flashlight’s wavering beam swept across a dark corner and lit up an old solid-wood table lying on its side.
What caught my attention wasn’t the furniture itself but the plank flooring beneath it.
Deep, parallel scratches scored the wood, showing that the heavy table had been dragged frequently—as if concealing some kind of access point.
And one of the floorboards sat slightly off-level.
I propped the flashlight on the floor, its beam trained on the floorboards.
I knelt, my fingers already grimy with dust and cobwebs, and dug my nails into the crack in the rotted wood. Using my body weight as leverage, I pried up the loose board. The wood gave way with a dry creak.
My breath caught when my fingers groped the bottom of the hole and touched something heavy—a bundle wrapped in thick black plastic, sealed with duct tape. I hauled the package to the surface, tearing at the wrapping with feverish urgency, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Inside were two hardcover ledgers and a stack of Animal Transit Permits—all stamped but left blank.
I opened the first ledger, the flashlight beam illuminating its yellowed pages.
The dates went back exactly ten years. The numbers.
The stamps from a shell slaughterhouse. The cattle lots diverted at dawn toward the Paraguayan border.
The meticulous records of million-dollar bribes paid to sanitary inspectors and politicians.
It was all there, written in the unmistakable handwriting of the holding company’s accountants.
Undeniable proof that my father hadn’t miscalculated the sanitary protocols, hadn’t been negligent, and didn’t deserve the disgrace Jurandir Falc?o had buried him under.
Sebasti?o Duarte had uncovered one of the state’s largest money laundering networks, and the supposed foot-and-mouth outbreak that decimated the herd and ruined our family was nothing but a criminal smokescreen—orchestrated by the Falc?o patriarch to cover his own tracks.
A hot tear—pure hatred—dripped onto the blue ink on the page.
The research station door burst open with such force that the rusted hinges cracked.
I whirled around, clutching the ledger to my chest, blinded by a flash of lightning that tore through the darkness outside.
Jo?o Bento stood in the doorway.
He was soaked. His dark shirt clung to the taut muscles of his chest; water dripped from the brim of his hat and ran down his clenched jaw.
His body blocked the only exit, filling the small cabin with a dense, predatory menace.
He slammed the door behind him, locking the storm outside—but bringing a far worse hurricane in.
“You don’t know when to stop, do you?” Bento growled, his deep, drawn-out voice cutting through the rain hammering the zinc roof. He stepped forward, eyes locked on the ledger I clutched against my chest.
“And you don’t know when to stop being your father’s guard dog,” I shot back, lifting my chin, refusing to back down even with my legs trembling from adrenaline.
“It’s over, Bento. I found it. I have proof that Jurandir’s been stealing cattle for years, siphoning the money, and framing my father to cover his own filth! ”
Bento advanced, closing the distance between us in two long strides. His presence was suffocating.
“Give me that, Rosário,” he ordered, extending his large, calloused hand, his brown eyes burning with an intensity I couldn’t read—fury or dread, I couldn’t tell.
“Over my dead body!” I retreated until my back hit the edge of the metal table. “This goes to the Federal Police tomorrow morning. Your cardboard empire is going to crumble, and your father is going to rot in a cell!”
“My father will kill you before you reach the highway!” he exploded, his voice tearing through the cabin with raw desperation that shattered the mask of arrogance he’d worn since I arrived.
Bento grabbed my shoulders hard, pinning me against the table.
“You think you’re dealing with chicken theft?
! This is a death sentence, Rosário! If Nicanor or my father find out you touched those books, I won’t be able to hold them back! ”
“I don’t need some coward holding me back!
” I screamed, shoving against his hard chest with both hands, but he didn’t budge an inch.
Tears of rage spilled over, mixing with the dust on my face.
“You knew all along! You knew what Jurandir did to my father, and you chose to keep your head down, keep the inheritance, and throw me out of that hallway like I was garbage!”
“I did that to make you leave!” he shouted back, losing control completely.
His fingers dug into my waist, pulling my body against his.
“I humiliated you so you’d be disgusted by the sight of me, climb into that damn truck, and vanish from this ranch before the old man put you in a coffin like he did Sebasti?o! ”
The air rushed out of my lungs. The ledger slipped from my fingers, hitting the wooden floor with a dull thud, completely forgotten.
I stared at Jo?o Bento’s tortured, rain-soaked face.
The violent truth laid bare in his eyes shattered in a single second every theory, every defense, every wall of ice I’d built over the last ten years.
He didn’t hate me. He had sacrificed our love and accepted the role of villain to keep me alive.
“Bento…” His name escaped in a fragile whisper, my hands instinctively rising from his chest to clutch the wet collar of his shirt.
“I tried to hate you,” he gasped, pressing his forehead to mine, his hot, ragged breath washing over my lips. “I swore I wouldn’t touch you. But I can’t, Rosário. I look at you and all I want is to burn the whole world down if it tries to touch a single hair on your head.”
The last spark of sanity shattered.
I didn’t wait for him to make the first move. I pulled his face down and crushed my mouth against his.
The kiss exploded with ten years of accumulated fury—separation, lies, and repressed desire.
Bento let out a deep groan, a sound of pure surrender, and his hands seized my nape and hips with animalistic possessiveness.
His tongue invaded my mouth, hot, demanding, desperate, tasting my tears and stealing my breath.
I rose onto my toes, digging my nails into his broad back, feeling his muscles flex beneath the damp fabric. The chemistry between us wasn’t some gentle romance—it was a wildfire consuming everything in its path.
He lifted me off the floor with ridiculous ease and set me down hard on the cold metal tabletop. The rattle of instruments was swallowed by another crash of thunder outside.
“You drive me crazy,” Bento growled against my throat, scattering bites and feverish kisses across my sensitive skin while his quick, desperate hands tore off my jacket and started unbuttoning my shirt.
“Then shut me up,” I challenged, arching my back and yanking at his leather belt with blind urgency.
Our clothes were discarded on the dusty cabin floor, lost among the shadows and incriminating papers.
The cold of the storm didn’t exist in there.
His skin burned against mine, his broad chest covered in dark hair pressing against my bare breasts, sending shocks of electricity through me that made me gasp and bite his shoulder.
When we were finally bare before each other, bathed in the ghostly light of the lightning, Bento paused for a fraction of a second. He hovered over me, bracing his weight on his forearms, and looked at me with an adoration so deep, so raw, it made my heart ache.
“I never forgot you. Not for a single day of my miserable life,” he confessed, his voice thick with emotion as he brushed a damp strand from my face.
“Don’t think, Bento. Just… make me forget everything,” I begged, spreading my legs and pulling his hips against mine.
He didn’t need to be told twice. Jo?o Bento’s last barrier of self-control shattered, and the Pantanal beast he’d been trying to tame finally broke free.
His mouth crushed mine in a voracious, desperate kiss.
His teeth sank into my lower lip, tugging with a force that made me gasp, the taste of rain and sweat mingling on our tongues.
His large, rough hands didn’t ask permission—they demanded.
He trailed hot, wet kisses down my neck, scattering quick bites that made me arch my back, until his mouth found my breasts.
The eager press of his lips and teeth grazing my sensitive skin ripped a sharp moan from my throat, a sound immediately swallowed by the violent drumming of the storm on the roof.
The desperation was palpable. Bento’s hands descended possessively, gripping my thighs hard, his fingers digging into my skin with brutal urgency as he spread me wider. He slid his hands lower, gripping my ass firmly, lifting my hips off the wooden floor and molding me perfectly against him.
With a ragged, firm thrust—no turning back—he entered me.
A long, hoarse cry tore from my throat, echoing off the station walls. The sensation of absolute fullness obliterated the past, the fights, the danger surrounding us. His body was exactly where it had always belonged.
The rhythm that followed had nothing reverent or slow about it. It was fast, wild, completely unrestrained. Bento moved with deep, relentless thrusts, slamming his hips against mine in hot, desperate friction. The slap of skin on skin merged with the roar of the rain and our own moans.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking my heels against his broad back, holding him to me so I could answer each thrust with the same animal hunger.
I clawed at his shoulders, pulling the dark hair at his nape, crying out his name into the darkness.
Bento bit the sensitive skin of my shoulder, then the curve of my neck, marking me as his with every inch he could reach, while he gripped my thighs and pulled me against him with a force that drove me to the edge of madness.
The unbearable tension low in my belly expanded, my inner walls clenching around him in a dizzying rhythm. The constant friction, the stolen kisses, the bites, and Bento's crushing weight on me were the perfect storm.
“Rosário... my Rosário...” he gasped between ragged breaths, pressing his chest against mine, his jaw clenched tight as his own pleasure neared its limit.
The climax hit me like a tidal wave. My entire body contracted in spasms of pure ecstasy, and I screamed—really screamed—my vision going dark at the edges as I sank my teeth hard into the hot skin of his shoulder to ride out the shockwave.
Seconds later, Bento stiffened. He gave one last brutal thrust, throwing his head back with a muffled, guttural roar. He buried himself deep inside me, gripping my ass desperately, spilling all his heat, his surrender, his very essence into me as he trembled violently against my body.
We collapsed together onto the metal table, panting, covered in sweat and completely ruined.
Bento buried his face in the curve of my neck, his heart hammering erratically against my breasts until his breathing lost some of its urgency.
When he pulled away, he reached for his shirt on the floor and pulled a thin silver chain from the inner pocket—a small falcon pendant dangling from it.
The metal gleamed in the flickering lantern light, but it was the vulnerability on his face that made my chest ache.
“It was mine. Now it's yours.” His hoarse voice was nearly lost beneath the rain as he circled behind me and fastened the clasp at my nape.
The cold pendant settled between my still-warm breasts, sending a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the chill.
“When we turn in this evidence, I won't bow my head to my father anymore.
I won't hide what exists between us.” Bento pressed the small falcon against my skin and covered my fingers with his, making me feel the weight of that promise.
“Not Jurandir, not the Falc?o name, not this ranch—nothing will make me abandon you again.” “Promise?” The word escaped as a whisper, full of hope, as I searched his eyes for any shadow of hesitation.
“With everything I am.” Bento's lips brushed my forehead with a tenderness that hurt more than any brutality.
I wrapped my arms around his broad back, stroking the warm skin in the darkness while the rain continued to wash over the old research station.
That night, without defenses or barriers between our bodies and souls, we crossed the point of no return.
The evidence of Jurandir's crime lay forgotten on the floor, and in the absolute heat of that storm, the seed that would change the war and our destinies was planted in the silence of the Pantanal.