Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
NICO
Seven hundred and thirty hours.
Six hundred and eighty-two of them have passed by.
The forty-eight-hour time bomb ticked inside my rib cage.
Every time she sobbed in my arms, pain splintered down my chest. Each teardrop that spilled brought me closer to detonation.
Her grief paralyzed me. I couldn’t sleep.
Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t fucking breathe. I couldn’t take her pain away no matter what I tried.
And I’d tried. Pulled strings. Got the best doctors.
Tried to prolong a life. Nothing had worked, and I couldn’t watch her suffer for another day.
The night before, I’d decided there was only one way to end the misery.
I had to give her relief. A release. Something she could build on to move forward.
One plan that stuck to its path. I needed to take myself out of the equation.
She could find the closure she needed to move on.
I knew she wasn’t capable of going through with it on her own.
She needed my help, and I’d do it. But what I wouldn’t do was use her again.
I was done holding on to the truth. Dying seemed so much more bearable than watching her suffer another second.
So, I’d disappoint Juan. Again. Walk the path of a coward. And end this charade two days early.
I found her in the living room. She’d never know, but that house was where I lived when I studied with Juan.
Close enough to her, but not too close that she’d notice.
It was also where Enzo had found me after Juan’s death.
Drunk and out of my mind with grief. I’d promised him that day I’d never let him find me like that again.
Some promises were simply not meant to be kept.
In New York, wheels were churning. Sealed letters delivered to my lawyers with explicit instructions, with devastating consequences if they were not followed.
I’d set forth a chain of events to be triggered by the woman staring out the bay window.
The same window I’d used to watch her a hundred thousand times to the power of ten.
My breath caught just as it always did. She was so fucking beautiful.
One day she was going to make some man think he’d died and gone to heaven.
Deep olive skin glowing reddish-brown in the sunlight, sharp features that would put any sculptor to shame.
Those curls. Those tight fucking curls another man would fist in his hands, her full and plush lips, color code nine-nine-seven-four-seven-e, I’d know, because I’d zoomed in on a picture and matched it to a hex code, lips that another man would suck and bite and.
… I must have let a sound out because she turned her head toward me and tipped those dusty mauve lips into a weak smile.
There was nothing in my head but silence roaring.
My feet were beyond me, but I couldn’t feel myself moving.
She matched my steps by closing the distance, and we met halfway across the room.
Behind her, the ocean. Behind me, nothing but doom.
My gaze dropped. She was yet again in one of my shirts.
She could have them all after I was gone, but tomorrow or the day after, she would be in another man’s shirt.
She winced. I’d twisted my shirt and her skin into a tight pinch.
Releasing my hold felt like what releasing her would feel like.
I swallowed the rush of agitation burning in my throat.
I tried to speak, but words didn’t spill.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “Let’s go up.
” My voice was calm, like I wanted to be. For her.
She frowned. Then, unsuspectingly, she took my hand and let me lead her upstairs. On the landing, she paused. The unmistakable sound of the front door clicking open made her frown.
I looked into her eyes and lied. “The cleaning lady.”
Money spoke. When combined with power, it screamed.
While I led her to our room, the same doctor who had attended to her mother would prepare everything downstairs.
She’d need sedation when I was gone. She’d need someone who spoke Spanish, and I needed that someone to be female.
Doctor Duque checked off all those points.
And some more. Such as keeping her mouth shut about the cause of death.
At the door, she hesitated. “She’ll hear us.”
That was the point. “You’ll be quiet,” I whispered in her ear before tugging her into bed. She won’t be.
I lay down, back against the headboard, legs stretched out. She stared at me like she wasn’t really sure what we were doing. She’d been a bundle of nerves. Losing her mother, being back here, not knowing what the next steps were. I knew she’d been struggling with the deadline too. Not anymore.
I curled my finger and gestured at her. “Come here, stella mia.”
She followed my instructions. Falling onto all fours and crawling toward me. Fuck. I wanted to fuck her. One last time. But I was a man. A selfish one at that. If I fucked her, I might have hung onto her, and unfortunately, that didn’t quite fit with my plans.
She settled on my lap and reached instantly for my shirt. I gripped her hand, bringing it to a halt.
“Why not?” she asked, frustrated.
“My father was jealous of yours.”
Her eyes widened, and she went rigid.
“It’s time for you to know the truth.”
No, she mouthed. Her words failing.
I gripped her ass when she tried to shove away. Kept her pinned to me. “It’s time.”
She shook her head desperately. Tried to struggle out of my hold. Gripping her jaw, I snapped at her. “Fucking listen, Anna.”
She gasped at my tone. “You need to hear this.” Her breathing was climbing.
I had to do a sequence of Fibonacci numbers in my head before I could continue.
“Juan Vales was a fucking genius. He was the top student in his batch. He had two PhDs. He was offered many opportunities. Multiple of them top positions that would have changed his career. Did you know that?”
Hesitantly, she shook her head.
I smiled. “That’s so typical of him, Anna. He was a humble man. He could have been a man of power. But he didn’t want any of it. All he wanted was his wife and children.”
A sob escaped from her.
“The world wanted your father, Anna. But his world was you. Your sister and your mamá.”
Silent tears streamed down her cheeks. I wiped them off with the pad of my thumb.
“They don’t make men like that anymore. So selfless and humble,” I told her quietly.
“We aren’t used to that. We’re greedy. So was my father.
Our market was growing in Europe. But it wasn’t enough.
He wanted more. But the cash coming in had to be laundered.
Whitewashed. Invested. The property market was calling in Spain, and my father took the call.
” Fuck. Reliving that shit was reminding me of the monster in my genes.
“He harassed your father. When he wouldn’t agree to do my father’s dirty work, he threatened his family. ”
She had crawled closer to me. I wasn’t sure if she realized what she’d done. “Do you remember that you moved away from Marbella for some time?” I traced her cheek softly. Wiping away the wetness that kept pooling. “You must have been around fifteen then, I think.”
She was quiet for some time. Her gaze was distant, remembering. “I think we did one school term, but just before Christmas we returned. Mamá didn’t like it.”
“Juan told me she had become worse. So he moved back, thinking my father would have given up.”
Something that sounded like a laugh dragged out of my chest. “He didn’t know my father.
He was like a dog with a bone. He knew Juan would change his business.
And he did. When he finally gave in because he had no choice, he made my father billions.
We took over the market in Spain, and we were on our way to taking it over in the rest of Europe. ”
Numbers didn’t help me as my heartbeat raced out of my rib cage.
I had to get this over with. There was no other choice.
“But it wasn’t enough for my father. The more money he had, the more he wanted.
When he got more, he hated the power Juan had over our finances.
Started becoming paranoid. So suddenly, when he’d considered me boring all his life, he found an opportunity.
I was good with numbers, he said. So I could learn from Juan how he did it.
How he became a wizard with numbers. Like it was something you could just copy and paste. ”
She backed away suddenly. Her body was shaking. “I don’t think I want to know any more.”
It hurt like a motherfucker to tell her the truth. But it was her right to know it. No matter how hard it was to hear it. I pulled her back onto my lap. “I know it’s hard, stella mia. But I promise you it will help you in the end.”
She reached for my heart. I popped out two buttons and placed her hand on my bare skin. She stroked it like the star was carved into it. I felt each dip with the hitch of her breath. It was too easy to stay like that. I forced myself to go on.
“You’d just had your eighteenth birthday when I arrived at your place. Juan was suspicious of me. Rightly so. He’d send you off to the beach every time I visited.”
“I remember that,” she said quietly, her eyes on my chest. “Even if I was mid-homework, he’d push me out the door with Mara. I was always so curious who the mysterious person was in his office.” A weak smile pulled at her lips. “And maybe also jealous. Because he always had time for you.”