Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ANNA
Debo imaginado a todo...estaba cayendo en la misma enfermedad que me correspondía por herencia genética.
I must have imagined the entire thing. Made things up to make life easier. Maybe, just maybe, I was falling into the same illness that was genetically mine to claim.
I sat on his bed, wearing his shirt, legs crossed under the weight of his sheets. When I shifted, and I did it enough times to test it, his scent washed over my skin. Teak and cider. The scent was as male as he was.
My phone rested between my ear and shoulder while I waited for Mamá to come to the phone. She’d stopped trusting her phone. So for over a week I had to call the general line and wait for them to coax her to speak to me.
I played with the buttons on his shirt. I’d woken up early again.
Dread stringing through my body, oxygen abandoning me and leaving me behind apprehension.
This time I hadn’t found him. He’d been away from me for three days.
His locked office door was proof of it. He may have married me, but it was abundantly clear that he didn’t want me in his life.
Yet somehow, my stupid mind had a hard time believing it.
But of one thing, I was sure. I’d never be able to go through with it without his help. My panic a few days ago had made that all too clear. My head immediately throbbed with one question. What had happened for him to go down this path?
Commotion crackled through the phone. Mamá’s nervous voice carried through the line.
“How do you know it’s her?” I heard Sonia’s calm reassurance, and after some back and forth, she finally picked up the phone.
“Anna?” Her suspicion was tight and unfortunately so familiar I didn’t even pause for a breath.
“When I was small, you lied to me. You told me you hadn’t changed a single thing in Yaya’s paella recipe, but you did. You added white wine to it.”
She let out a relieved sigh. “Anna.” Then she laughed. “I never told your Yaya that.”
I smiled. “Is that why you never made it when she visited?”
“Of course. Anyway, my mamá would always think hers was better.”
We fell silent. Mamá reminiscing about her mother.
I thought about how strange life was. I remembered everything about Yaya.
Her yearly visits. Her weathered face and cracked lips.
Her gray hair pulled so tightly into a bun that it stretched the skin of her face.
How her dark skin had lighter tones around her wrinkles.
Her hands were always warm and her hugs warmer.
But somehow, I couldn’t remember anything about how Papá had been.
He was a censored image in the video playing back my memories.
“What were you doing, Mamá?”
“Sleeping.” Her voice was dull again. Every time I called, I felt her fading away like thick paint peeling off under the weight of heavy rain.
“Did your Italian friend visit you again?”
“He left.” She fell silent, and I knew she was listening to someone no one else saw but her. Then she muttered. “I’m telling her, anyway.” Then her tone rose to a normal range. “He was here for three days. But he said he’ll bring you with him and come again.”
My pulse skipped a beat. Three days? Desperation was making me turn dreams into reality.
“I’m glad you married him.”
The air shattered in my lungs.
“Who, Mamá?”
“Your father would have liked that.”
I choked out words through the painful lump in my throat. “Who, Mamá?”
She let out an irritated sigh. “?Por Dios, hazme caso! Your husband.”
“What’s his name?” I choked on the ball of dread collecting in my throat. My vision blurred as words spilled from my lips, firing questions like gunshots. “What does he look like? When did he start visiting you? How did he kno—”
“You’re not Anna!” Her scream punctured through the line. The next instant, the line went dead.
I stared at my phone. Mind toppling over each thought.
Too many questions to keep locked behind my mouth.
Jumping to my feet, I raced through the house.
Yelling his name and combing room by room.
Magda and Isidora rushed into the living room, staring at me like I’d lost my mind.
I didn’t care anymore how much the truth was going to hurt.
I was done with his games. If he wanted me to crash and burn, he’d achieved it.
The doorknob to his office almost came off as I yanked at it and pushed it open at the same time.
It burst forward and took me with it. I stumbled into the room, gasping for breath.
He was seated on the sofa. Hands clasped.
Head bowed. When he lifted his head and his tired eyes found mine, the truth hit me like a physical blow.
I staggered back a step from it. The door slipped from my hold and fell into its frame with a thud.
“Where’ve you been?” Air dragged through my lungs.
He just stared at me as if the world was about to end.
“Where’ve you been, Nico?” I snapped at him. When he didn’t answer, I throttled toward him, planted myself between his legs, and shook him by his collar. “Tell me where you’ve been!” It was part sob and plea.
His lips wouldn’t budge. I put my hand to them and pried them apart.
Squeezed his throat and tried to choke out the truth.
When that didn’t help, I shook him by the collar of his coat again.
Oddly, he let me abuse him. What was wrong with him?
“Por favor,” I screamed into his face. “Por favor,” I sobbed and collapsed onto his lap.
“Tell me, please.” I sniffed at him. How did one smell after an eleven-hour flight?
I didn’t know, but he smelled like it. Like teak and cedar.
Like lies and fucking secrets. I gripped his hair and stared into his eyes.
“You went to see Mamá.” I shook him. “Didn’t you? ”
He went rigid beneath me. Solid stone that radiated heat. “All this time you’ve been visiting her. You’re her Italian friend, aren’t you?” I shook him hard, my nails digging into his hair. “Speak to me, dammit.”
When he didn’t, I leaned back, balancing on his knee with my hands on his tensed thighs.
If I couldn’t get through to him like this…
I yanked his shirt off me. Cold air rushed over my naked body.
But his heated gaze had already put me on a pedestal.
A spotlight that flushed my skin. His thick lashes hid his emotions.
Like curtains, they closed off the stage, hiding the play behind them.
But I knew how to read him. His hands curled around the edge of the sofa.
Furiously drumming out numbers. He knew what I was coming for, and I’d do anything to get the truth out of him.
If I put my hand on his chest, I’d find his heartbeat racing.
Instead, I yanked at his coat. He allowed me to do it.
I yanked at his tie, and it fell to the floor like a black snake.
I pulled at his shirt, untucked it from his pants, but that was all he allowed before he gripped my hand and brought it to a stop.
“What? Scared I’ll destroy your fucking asset?
” Bitterness poured out of me. I hated him.
I hated that even though I was doing it to get answers, I still ached to have him inside me.
That I’d do it even if I didn’t want the answers.
And when I showed my hatred of him, when I glared at him, with every ugly feeling that boiled inside me, I knew right at that moment he hated me too.
He hated the power I held over him. He hated that he didn’t want to give me the truth, but that he was too weak to stop me.
Putting my hands flat on his chest, I pushed him away.
But then I yanked his belt off, ripped the zipper down, and pulled him out.
He was a monster in my hand. Thick, veined, and pulsing red with fury.
I proved my raging insanity to myself by dragging his tip to my opening and pushing down in one go.
It hurt so badly that it felt like he’d burned my fucking insides.
Liquid gathered in my eyes. He dropped back to the sofa, head rolled to the ceiling.
His arms embraced the back, hands fisted.
I rolled my hips. The moan that I’d kept caged inside throttled out.
It was too loud. It probably reached Magda and Isidora’s ears, but I was so far beyond control that I couldn’t give a damn.
I was going to make this man tell me everything.
Even if it was going to end me. I couldn’t bear these secrets anymore.
He had to tell me. Rolling my hips, I rode him.
I was a wild animal using him to get myself off, and he was solving a mathematical equation.
The idea of it pissed me off. That he thought he could count something and get away with it.
The only way he was getting off was with me.
I snaked my hand behind his neck and yanked his head up. His jaw flexed. His thick lids started to fall. “Don’t you dare,” I muttered and, falling forward, swallowed his muffled breath.
He tried to shove me off. But he was weakening, and I was going mad.
I picked up speed at an insane rate. An inhuman sound ripped from his chest. He grabbed the nape of my neck and bit my lip.
I tasted blood, and instead of turning me off, it dripped into my veins like liquid heat.
My vision went black, and I exploded around him.
Screaming, moaning, and shaking, I thrived on his helpless grunts buried in my mouth as he jerked inside me.
When I fell from my high, the walls still echoed my screams, the air still breathed of sex and hate.
That moment bit into my skin, but when he finally spoke, I wished he hadn’t.
Instead of answering me he came for my worst fear.
I’d hidden it behind a concrete barrier and under a gaping hole in my memory.
But he so easily dug it out to smash my chest open.
“There was money missing from the accounting.”