Chapter 6
The smell of rain and wet earth seeped through the cracks of the research station, announcing that the violent night had finally come to an end.
The gray morning light began casting shadows inside the rustic cabin, illuminating Rosário's naked body as she slept on my canvas jacket spread over the old metal table.
I pulled on my pants and still-damp shirt in absolute silence.
Her breathing was soft, her chest rising and falling with a peacefulness that stood in brutal contrast to the storm we'd weathered.
I knelt on the dusty floor and gathered the ledgers documenting Jurandir's fraud that he'd hidden there.
I slipped the documents into the leather lining of my saddle, making sure the target on her back shifted squarely onto mine.
When I pushed open the wooden door to breathe in the cold morning air, my blood ran cold.
Jurandir Falc?o stood ten paces from the entrance.
He wasn't alone. Nicanor waited just behind him, mounted on his bay horse, a twelve-gauge shotgun resting casually across his right leg.
My father wore his usual black rain cape, and the smile curving his thin lips was the spitting image of the devil waiting to collect a debt—with interest paid in blood.
“Quite a productive stormy night, wouldn't you say, Jo?o Bento?” Jurandir asked, his soft voice cutting through the heavy silence of the pasture.
I stepped down from the porch and pulled the door firmly shut behind me, blocking any view of the cabin's interior.
“What are you doing here?” I growled, adjusting my belt buckle, every muscle in my body coiled for a fight.
“I came looking for my administrator who vanished in the middle of the storm. Looks like I found him playing charity case for the government inspector,” the old man mocked, jerking his chin toward the closed door.
“I warned you to keep the girl under control.
I didn't tell you to roll around in the mud with her to stroke the inspector's ego.”
“There was no audit in the middle of the night. We were just taking shelter from the lightning,” I lied, holding his cold, calculating gaze without blinking.
Jurandir let out a dry laugh, utterly devoid of humor.
“You think I was born yesterday, boy? You think I don't know what that woman came looking for in these ruins?” He stepped forward, the amusement draining from his face, replaced by cold, absolute authority.
“If you or Nicanor lay a finger on her, I swear to God I'll kill you both and hand this entire ranch over to the Federal Police today,” I threatened, clenching my fists, ready to draw the pocketknife in my pocket if the foreman so much as twitched.
Jurandir didn't flinch. The patriarch didn't know the meaning of fear.
“You're not going to kill anyone, Jo?o Bento. Because you're weak. You've got your mother's soft heart.” Jurandir spat on the wet ground. “And it's exactly because of that soft heart that you're going to do exactly what I tell you.”
“I don't take orders from a criminal.”
“No?” My father spread his arms wide, gesturing at the vast flooded lands around us.
“The noose is tightening. The federal bank gave us just over a month before they call in the collateral.
If the merger contract with the Peixoto family isn't signed at the auction in five weeks, and if Isadora doesn't have a ring on her finger in front of the entire state elite, Fazenda Falc?o goes bankrupt and loses everything.”
“Then let it all go to hell,” I said.
“And the three hundred families of workers who depend on my land? They go to hell with us too?” Jurandir played his trump card, knowing exactly where my conscience was weakest. “When the bank padlocks the gates and the police come knocking, Clarindo, the ranch hands, the cooks—all those people you claim to protect like a good little boy will be thrown out on the highway with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
You're going to let hundreds of innocent people starve and lose their homes because you can't keep it in your pants around some maid's daughter?”
The air rushed out of my lungs. The weight of that responsibility crashed down on my shoulders like an anvil.
“Take your rightful place as heir, Jo?o Bento,” Jurandir commanded, his voice booming like a final clap of thunder.
“Accept the engagement to Isadora publicly and take control of this ranch like a man. Get the veterinarian out of my way, and I guarantee the herd and the workers come out of this unharmed.”
“And if I refuse the ring?” My voice came out raw, scraping against my throat.
My father glanced at Nicanor and gave the slightest nod. The foreman thumbed off the safety with a metallic click that turned my blood to ice.
“If you refuse, Nicanor walks into that cabin right now. We shoot her, bury the little doctor at the bottom of the creek with stones tied to her ankles, sink the briefcase, and tell the highway patrol her truck skidded in the rain and the river swept her away. No body, no evidence, no problem for the veterinary board to worry about.”
Pure terror flooded through me, paralyzing my legs.
My father wasn't bluffing. He would execute her in cold blood while she slept.
Unarmed in the yard, I'd take a twelve-gauge blast to the chest before I could close the distance and disarm Nicanor.
Rosário would die because of me. Our kiss, our lovemaking in the dark—it had just signed her death sentence.
I looked at the closed wooden door behind me. On the other side of those rotting boards, the woman I loved slept peacefully, exhausted and utterly vulnerable, convinced that I was her safe harbor and that this dawn marked our new beginning against his empire.
To save her life, I would have to become the arrogant monster she hated most in the world. I would have to push her away for the next few weeks and shatter her heart in front of everyone at the auction—if that was the price of keeping her alive.
“Deal.” The word left my mouth tasting of ground glass and absolute defeat. “I’ll announce the engagement to Isadora on stage. I’ll take control of the land. But you and Nicanor never come within an inch of her skin again.”
Jurandir flashed a victorious, sadistic smile, adjusting the collar of his thick rain cape.
“You’ve been a good boy. The elite cattle auction is in five weeks, at the headquarters.
Until then, keep the little doctor busy with the audit and away from the police.
On stage, you’ll announce the engagement and make it perfectly clear what her place is.
I want the veterinarian driven out of here as soon as the merger announcement is made to the press. ”
He pulled the horse’s reins, turned the animal around, and disappeared into the morning fog, followed closely by his armed watchdog.
I stood alone in the mud, my knees going weak.
The lightning storm had ended, but the true destruction of our lives was only beginning.
I took a deep breath, choking back my burning tears and the irreparable disgust I felt for myself, and turned the rusty doorknob.
It was time to walk in and murder the heart of the only woman who had ever owned mine—in cold blood.