Chapter 16
Each breath tore through my throat like inhaling ground glass.
Nicanor's limp body floated in the dark, muddy water filling the room, his blood staining the murky surface around my boots, but I no longer saw him. My brain had switched off the killer instinct the instant the foreman lost consciousness.
The only thing that mattered in the universe was huddled against that rotting wall.
I turned my head slowly, the muscles in my back still trembling from the massive adrenaline surge. Light from the helicopter spotlights hovering outside sliced through cracks in the wood, cutting through the gloom of the prison in white, ghostly beams.
Rosário was there.
I saw the woman I loved drenched, covered in mud, shaking uncontrollably in the storm.
Her knees were drawn up, her body pressed against the wall as if she wanted to melt into the wood and disappear.
But what destroyed my soul, what buckled my knees until they gave way in the filthy water, was the position of her hands.
Rosário was cradling her belly.
She was protecting our child. The child I hadn't known existed until a few hours ago, when I read that letter written in the blood of her desperation. The baby my father had ordered drowned.
The air vanished from my lungs. I dragged myself through the muddy water on my knees, ignoring the pain from the deep gash on my arm. I just needed to touch her, feel her skin, her warmth, to convince my terrified mind I hadn't arrived too late.
“Rosário…” My voice came out as a ragged moan. The sound of a man who had descended into hell and found his fallen angel.
I lifted both trembling hands toward Rosário's face. My knuckles were scraped raw, stained with mud and the blood of the man I'd almost killed, but I would have given my life to dry the tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
The instant my fingertips grazed the wet fabric of her shirt, the entire world split in two.
Rosário didn't sigh with relief. She didn't collapse into my arms.
My lioness let out a strangled, muffled scream and recoiled with terrifying violence.
Her body slammed against the wall, her face contorted into a mask of pure terror and absolute revulsion.
Rosário looked at my filthy hands, then at my eyes, shrinking back as if my touch were poison—as if I were just an extension of the monster floating in the water.
“No!” she gasped, her voice breaking, her hands clutching her belly even tighter as she tried to get away from me at all costs. “Don't touch me. Stay away from us!”
The blow was clean, surgical, and fatal.
I froze mid-movement. My hand hung suspended in the frigid air.
The terror in her eyes wasn't panic from the captivity or the foreman.
She was afraid of me. Rosário was looking at the man who had humiliated her on the auction stage, at the submissive heir of Jurandir Falc?o who had thrown her to the lions to save his own empire.
To Rosário, I wasn't the rescue—I was the executioner.
A pain infinitely worse than any physical wound engulfed my chest. The realization of the ruin I had caused paralyzed me.
Before I could pull back, the sound of heavy boots splashing through water came from the floor above.
The broken door was thrown wide open. A woman entered the flooded room, followed closely by Henrique and tactical security men sweeping the perimeter with powerful flashlights.
She carried a thick, waterproof coat in her hands, with the posture of a lioness ready to tear apart anyone who dared cross the path of one of her charges.
Maria Rita took in the scene: me kneeling in the water, hand extended, and Rosário cowering in terror against the wall.
She advanced through the mud, ignoring the filth and danger, and positioned herself directly between me and Rosário. Her body formed a wall of steel. The look she shot me from the corner of her eye dripped with disgust.
“Get your hands away from her,” Maria Rita ordered, her voice grave and cutting, without a hint of hesitation. “Your jurisdiction is over, Jo?o Bento. You've done enough damage.”
I didn't respond. Horror had severed my voice—the horror of what I had become in the eyes of the woman I loved.
I lowered my arms slowly, letting my hands fall into the dirty water beside my body. The arrogant heir who always thought power solved everything accepted the sentence in sepulchral silence.
Maria Rita immediately crouched beside Rosário. Her tone shifted dramatically, transforming into something warm, maternal, and full of healing.
“Shh… calm down, dear. It's over. The nightmare is over,” the stranger whispered, wrapping Rosário's trembling shoulders in the thick, dry coat and pulling her into a protective embrace—one I would have given my soul to offer.
“We're here. You're safe. The Postal Box found you. No one will hurt you two anymore.”
At those words, Rosário's fortress finally crumbled. She buried her face in Maria Rita's shoulder, sobbing convulsively, clinging to the stranger with the desperate strength of someone grasping a lifeline in an ocean of despair.
Maria Rita helped Rosário rise from the muddy water.
The security men immediately cleared the way. Henrique stopped near Nicanor's body, making sure the foreman was handcuffed and immobilized before he even woke, but the lawyer's attention never strayed from the extraction operation.
As they struggled toward the door, passing inches from me, Rosário didn’t turn my way. She kept her head down, supported by the woman who had come to do what I—chained by fear of my father—had so miserably failed to do.
I stayed on my knees on the flooded floor of the cell.
The helicopter rotors sounded distant. The icy water soaked my pants and the cut on my arm began to throb, but I didn’t move. I watched, helpless and silent, as the love of my life and the child I didn’t deserve were taken from me.
The revulsion in her eyes was the harshest punishment the universe could have given me. And I knew that to even earn the right to look into those brown eyes again, I would need to destroy every last stone of Jurandir Falc?o’s empire, starting the very next morning.