Chapter 36 #2
I glared at him. We weren’t going down that path. That’s not what I’d asked, and I didn’t give him permission to provide me with fucking answers to that. “No.” I shook my head instantly. I stumbled off him, his thickness slipping out, cum dripping down my thigh. “No,” I said again.
He continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, eyes intent on me. “Only person who could have—”
Anger burned in my stomach. I held out my trembling hand. “Don’t you dare tell me that. It’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie, stella mia, let me te—”
“NO!” I snapped while backing away from him. My feet tripped on his jacket, and I fell to the floor. He buckled his pants. Started to rise. “Don’t you dare.” My hands shook as I dragged his jacket on and muttered incoherently, “I don’t want to know. Keep your lies.”
“Fuck’s sake.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s hard enough to tell you. Let me—”
“Stop it.” I shook my head, stumbling back to my feet. “I don’t want to hear it. My papá was a good man.” My voice climbed with each word, and at the end of it, I was screaming.
He staggered to his feet, shirt still untucked.
I need to get away from him. From this house.
He caught it in my eyes. Spinning around, I fled.
Feet thundered behind me. But I was lighter.
Crazier. Faster. I fled from him. Fled from the house.
Fled from the thought that my papá, the man I’d looked up to, the man I’d loved, the man who was the biggest part of me even if I couldn’t remember him, could be anything but good.
He was fucking gold, and I didn’t want to hear anything else.
I got to the sidewalk in front of his house before the tight set of his arms wrapped around me, lifted me off my feet, and tossed me over his shoulder.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Do you want me to kill every fucking man in New York?” A palm whipped to cover my naked ass.
“Because that’s what I’d do if anyone saw you like this. ”
His words hadn’t even hit the air fully before his next victim turned up. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, man?”
I groaned. I didn’t even know how it was possible, but he went ice-cold. Violence vibrated from his body. His voice was deadly calm when he spoke. “Mind your own business.” He strode toward the house.
“Put her down, man.”
Nico made to turn. “No.” I sank my nails into his back and pulled my head up. A middle-aged man bravely walked up to us.
“Stop.” My voice cracked. He wasn’t convinced. I held out my hands. My breasts chose that moment to slip out of his coat. Underneath me, he growled like a caged gorilla while I fumbled to hide my assets. “Sir, I’m okay. I promise.”
He wasn’t convinced and searched for his phone in his bag. “I’m calling the police.”
I groaned. My mind ran wild trying to come up with something.
Anything. Because of my actions, a man was going to be killed.
“You aren’t going to embarrass us, are you?
Embarrass me? My husband and I were just playing a game.
” I wiggled my finger and showed off my wedding band to him.
I sat up straighter. Wrapped one hand behind my back and brought the other to the front to hide the view.
When I wobbled, I dropped my hand instinctively to his shoulder to steady me.
“He loves me.” My tone dripped with honey. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
Nico opened his mouth, and I rushed my hand covering my ass to clamp his mouth shut. He bit my palm. I winced but covered it with a painful grin.
The gentleman stared at us. Assessing the gorilla and me. His hand lifted off the phone, slowly. With a shake of his head and a muttered, “Stick to your bedroom,” he walked away.
My hand dropped from his mouth. “Please don’t do anything to him.”
He was moving toward the door. “Too late.”
“He won’t call the police.”
“Fuck if I care. No one gets to see you like this.” His palm left my ass, and I thought it was to put me down, but instead the air whipped, and he whacked me hard.
“?Hiyo de puta!”
He dropped me down at the entrance hall.
I spun around and made for the bedroom. Slamming the door shut and locking it, I made it a few feet into the room before my legs turned to rubber.
I dropped to the floor, my ass burning, my emotions overwhelming.
Wrapping my hands around my knees, I burst into painful sobs.
The door flew off its hinges and slammed against the wall.
I stared at the opening where he stood. He might as well have just walked in.
Not taken a door off its literal hinges.
He advanced toward me. I looked him in the eye and asked him in a broken voice.
“What do you want me to do so you won’t hurt him? ”
“Forget the fucker,” he growled. “I need you to listen to what I was saying.”
“No.” I backed away from him, sliding against the wall.
He dropped to his haunches in front of me. “Your Papá was a—”
“Por favor, no.” Backing away, I blocked my ears with my hands. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Jesus Christ, stella mia. This is not the time to unleash your fucking Spanish fury.” He hooked a hand around my ankle and yanked. My head dropped to the floor like a brick and dragged along when he pulled me to him.
“My papá was good,” I snapped at him. He was trying to poison my mind. I wouldn’t allow it.
“Of course he fucking was,” he shot back.
“Nothing you say will chan—” I spread my fingers and stared at him. “What?”
He yanked both my hands away from my ears. “You’re missing out on his memories because you think he’s done something you wouldn’t like. Stop fucking doing that.”
My entire body trembled. “Are you saying he didn’t?” Hope sparked in my chest.
“You know he didn’t. If you stopped being a coward and looked deep into your memories, you would know he was a good man.”
I frowned. He was both pissing me off and easing my mind. I bit my lip. “He’s not a thief?” My words trembled.
He shook his head.
“But you said that he—”
He lowered his head to my face. Hands braced on either side of me, lips a breath away from me.
“Juan Vales was a good man, Anna,” he breathed.
“But don’t take my word for it. Stop blocking your past. You know he was a good man.
Better. He was the type of man who set an example.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Including me. Capisci?”
We stared at each other. His words took shape, forming into a solid reality. Smoke in my vision. A gap in it.
“Who’s your teacher, Papá?”
I was six. Both of us at the piano, in front of the open window, the cream curtains flying high in the strong wind.
“No one. I learned it myself.”
“How? You teach me.”
“You don’t need me. But I wanted to teach you because you’re so talented. So I taught myself first.”
“Why?”
He smiled. “Because I know, mi solecita, that you’re too stubborn to let anyone else near you.”
“I am not.”
“Ah… I must have made a mistake.”
I giggled.
“Come on, let’s play again.”
I stared outside and crept closer to him. “But the angry clouds are coming.”
“So let it. The music will always be louder than the storm.”
Very slowly, I placed my palm on his chest. I felt each thud of his heart as if it were racing outside his rib cage.
“He was the best,” I sobbed.
“He was,” he confirmed.
Magda cleared her throat. I couldn’t make myself dismiss his gaze, burning with something dark and soft. He was magnetic, and he had my full attention.
He exhaled slowly, his breath lining with tension.
Like I’d pushed him to the edge of his control.
Then rose to his feet and walked away. I stared at the space he’d left behind while I heard him talking to Magda.
I was aware of what I must have looked like.
Fucked-up hair and wearing his coat. Right after yelling his name and then screaming it out in his office before flying out the door.
When he came back, he lifted me off the floor and brought me to his bed. A steaming cup of chamomile tea sat on the nightstand.
He must have told Magda to prepare it before coming after me. It left a hole the size of a sinkhole in my plan to kill him. He had already taken everything away from me. Why couldn’t he give me one thing? So I could hate him fully with my complete chest. But even that he made me do half-heartedly.
He gripped my chin and yanked my face toward him. “Only one person could have taken it.” The missing money. “My father told me it was Juan. But it wasn’t. I never doubted him for a second.”
“Who did then?”
His throat bobbed. He took a step away and tucked his hands away in his pockets. Regret shone in his eyes. “My father.”
“Your father stole his own money?”
He scoffed. “Yes.”
“Why?”
His phone rang, breaking the tension in the air. It wasn’t his usual ringtone, and he didn’t even blink before picking it up.
“Tell me,” He said, his tone authoritative as he walked away.
I stared after him. How could he walk away from me when we were having the most important conversation we could ever have?
My stomach twisted with anger. Why would the Don steal his own money? Why would he blame my father for it? Why wasn’t he answering my questions? Why?
I geared up when his footsteps approached. “I can’t believe you’d just walk away from me. I need to know—”
He held up his hand to silence me. Something had changed. The tension in him had tightened in the last few minutes. “I’ll tell you soon enough, stella mia. Drink your tea and get dressed. We’re going somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you. I promise.” He looked like he carried his heart in his eyes. “But get dressed, first.”
His tone did something to me. I think I knew what it was. But I buried it deep down in that chest with the rest of my dreadful memories.
“I’ll get our bags.” He hesitated, biting back words he wanted to say. Melancholy hummed between us. I shuffled away from him as if it were a disease that would infect me. “Hurry.”
Then he turned and walked out. But it felt like the weight of the world was resting on his shoulders, and somehow, I knew wherever we were going, it was nowhere nice.