Chapter 14
Angel
Ihadn’t had pabellón criollo since my mother died: it was her favorite, and Padre had all but banned anything that might remind us of her from the house. Why did Emma think of it? Did she look up Venezuelan dishes on YouTube?
I glanced around at my family; no one seemed to be the wiser about the meal. They were all grinning and lapping it up, as if this particular meal hadn’t been banned for more than twenty years. “Your wife is a hell of a cook, Angel,” my Tío Andre said in congratulations.
I glanced at Emma, who had a pleased smile on her face, but she didn’t say anything.
She hadn’t been addressed, I thought. She knows that she should wait until someone speaks to her directly.
My father had been wrong about her manners; she was doing admirably, and she would continue to do so, I was sure of it.
She was learning to be a proper hostess, which will be one of her main duties as the matriarch of our family. “Gracias, Tío,” I said.
“Where did you find the recipe?” Padre asked, eyes on Emma. His tone was soft, but dangerous.
Emma looked at him, and I could see the fear swimming in her eyes. “I was looking at Venezuelan recipes online, Padre,” she said. “I picked this one because it seemed relatively easy to do with my skill set.” Her tone was soft and sincere, but something about it didn’t ring totally true to me.
Luckily for her, Padre didn’t seem to feel the same way. “I will email you some recipes to try, if you’d like,” he offered.
Emma pushed her lips into a smile. “I would like that, Padre,” she said. “Thank you.”
Things settled once more, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father as he began to slump in his chair. He needed his pain medication soon. “Tío Gustavo,” my cousin, Stefan, said from farther down the table. He had seen Padre wince. “Are you feeling all right? Se le ve enfermo.”
The question was answered with a thump and a howl.
Padre tossed the blade that he always kept in his pocket, razor-sharp, at the hand that Stefan had been resting on the table.
The blade sank home into the back of his hand, pinning him to the table.
Blood gushed out of the wound and puddled on the white tablecloth, and Stefan screamed in agony.
Beside me, Emma tensed; I could feel it as surely as if I’d had my hands on her. I hazarded a look at her face and was surprised by the neutrality of it. She was perfectly blank. “Someone take him out of here,” I said. “Get him patched up.”
Two of my distant cousins, Ernesto and David, grabbed Stefan under his arms and hauled him out of the room.
We all looked at my father, who had gone back to his lunch as if nothing had happened.
Nudging Emma to follow suit, I picked up my fork and went back to my food… though it had lost a lot of its appeal.
When the meal came to an end, Emma and Lili took the plates back to the kitchen. “Let a staff member wash the dishes,” I said as Emma turned on the tap on the sink.
She adjusted the water so that it ran hot. “I’ll do it,” she said.
“Emma.”
She lifted her head, and I saw the tears gathering in her eyes. “Please,” she said, “let me handle this, okay? I need to be doing something.”
I reached out and brushed a tear that slipped down her cheek with my thumb, and she leaned into the touch.
Her eyes fluttered, and I was about to lean in and try for a kiss when someone cleared his throat behind me.
I turned, and Padre was standing in the doorway.
“Come see me in my office, mijo,” he said.
His eyes flicked to Emma. “Leave your pretty wife to sort out the kitchen.”
“Sí, Padre,” I said and moved to follow him. Before leaving, I told Emma, “Meet me upstairs when you’re finished.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgment before returning her attention to the sink.
Even in the middle of a pile of dirty dishes and pots and pans, Emma was beautiful.
If there wasn’t the risk of anyone seeing us, I would take her here and now.
Set her on the counter like I did on the island. The world and responsibility be damned.
What the fuck is wrong with you? I berated myself and rushed to follow after my father. He had already been violent today; keeping him waiting was not a smart idea.
Once we were in Padre’s office, he motioned for me to sit, and I watched him gingerly lower himself into his own chair. “Padre,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
He glared. “After Stefan?”
“Stefan is a moron for asking questions like that in front of everyone,” I said and knew that I was pushing my luck. “But now it is just you and me.”
My father’s face didn’t lose its hardness, but he said, “I hurt today.”
That much was obvious. “Do you need a refill on your pain medicine, Padre? I can see to it myself.”
He waved me off. “It makes me dull,” he said.
“That’s not what I wanted to speak with you about.
” It was a warning to stop pushing, and I nodded in understanding.
“You’re too soft with your wife. She insulted me today, and there were no repercussions for it.
” His tone was clear: he expected me to handle her if she made such an error again…
or he would handle her discipline himself.
The thought made my stomach turn itself into knots.
“She apologized, Padre; she made a genuine error.”
“Since when has that mattered?” he demanded. “You cannot allow yourself to be too indulgent of her weaknesses…you remember what happened to your mother because I was too lenient.”
Lenient wasn’t the word I would use to describe my parents’ relationship. My father was right in that he didn’t punish her; he would never lay his hands on her. But they were cold to one another. Everything between them had been perfunctory, at best. “Emma is strong, Padre,” I assured him.
He shrugged it off. “Strong or not,” he said. “She needs to be kept in line, and you don’t need to lose your head over her. Do you understand?”
My father was a firm believer that love was for fools.
It was a lesson that he’d instilled in all of his children…
not that I believed for a moment that he ever loved my mother.
He just didn’t think that anything that might be perceived as a weakness was worth it.
“I understand, Padre. I would never lose my head over a woman.”
It was true. It was easy to shut off different parts of myself; it always had been. “Go,” my father said after studying me for a long while. “I’m going to take a pain pill, so I’ll be leaving things to you for the evening.”
“Sí,” I said. “Buenas tardes, Padre.”
Emma was lying on our bed with a book in her hands. From the half-naked man on the cover, I guessed that it was some kind of romance. Her eyes were swollen from crying, but her cheeks were dry. “Are you reading anything interesting?” I asked.
She looked up from her book. “Not even remotely,” she said and tossed it onto the nightstand beside her. “Your sister let me borrow it, but the plot is keeping me from getting invested.” Emma pushed herself into a seated position. “Was your father upset about something?”
I shook my head. “He had a business matter to discuss with me,” I lied. She didn’t need to know about my father threatening her; it wouldn’t make things easier for her to know that. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“He threw a knife into your cousin’s hand,” she pointed out. “He wasn’t upset about that?”
“Not at all.” That wasn’t a lie. My father probably didn’t think about Stefan or his hand a second longer than when it happened.
“That’s…normal for family meals?”
I scoffed. “Family meals aren’t normal for us, mi esposa,” I said. “We haven’t sat around a table like that, without a formal reason, since I was a child.”
“Oh.” She blinked a handful of times. “Was your father upset about that? I didn’t mean to overstep or —”
I climbed onto the bed, and her words cut off into nothingness.
She stared at me, partly apprehensive and partly interested in where this might lead, and I noticed that she’d set her teeth into her bottom lip.
I reached out and pried that bit of flesh out gently with my thumb.
“You did exactly what I wanted you to do,” I praised her.
“You brought everyone together in a way that we haven’t in a long time. It’s the mark of a good matriarch.”
“But I messed up with your dad. I served other people before him, and he’s the big boss.”
“You’re learning,” I said. “That earns you some Grace.” I went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Nestled among my socks was a jewelry box. “In fact, I have a reward for you for doing so well.” I took the box out of the drawer and carried it back to the bed to hand to her.
Emma opened the lid to reveal a silver St. Christopher’s medal. Her eyes shone. She touched the silver medal with the pad of her finger. “It’s beautiful,” she said and glanced up at me, a touch shy.
I smiled; I liked her soft like this. I lifted the delicate chain out of the box and indicated that she turn around for me.
Emma lifted her sweet-smelling hair out of the way, and I clasped the chain around her neck.
When she turned back around, the medal shone against the gray of her t-shirt.
“The medal was my mother’s,” I said softly.
Her breath caught in her throat, and her hand came up to touch the medal. “Angel,” she breathed. “You didn’t have to give me this. It has to mean so much to you.”
It did. It was one of the few things that I had of my mother’s. “The chain isn’t the original; I had to replace it because it was damaged, but the medal meant a lot to her. It was meant to protect her. I’d like you to wear it.”
Her face glowed with happiness. “Of course, I will —”
“Never take it off,” I said, reaching out to stroke the medal. Emma shivered as if I had touched her. “Promise me that you won’t.”
“I promise that I won’t ever take it off,” she said.
I leaned in and pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat, delighting in the way she shivered beneath my lips.
“Aren’t you going to thank me, mi esposa, for such a lovely present?
” I nipped at her flesh, and she stretched her neck out in invitation, gasping as I made a path along all of the most sensitive places that I’d found thus far.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked, breathless.
My hands found their way beneath her shirt. Her skin was so soft and warm beneath my palms. “I’m sure you can figure it out,” I said. “You’re very clever, after all.”
She caught one of my hands and brought it to her breast. “Am I getting warm?” she asked, and I could feel her nipple pebble against my palm.
Pushing her down onto the bed, I situated myself between her thighs. “See?” I asked, teasing her through her shirt. “You’re such a clever girl.”
I plucked at her nipple, and Emma squirmed. “Don’t tease me,” she sighed. “Please.”
“What do you want, mi esposa?”
She could still be shy, but Emma was getting bolder in her desires, and it was a delight to make her talk to me. “Inside,” she murmured. Her hands went for my zipper, and I let her take it down for me. “I want you inside.”
I groaned and pushed her dress up. She was wearing the tiniest scrap of lace for panties: they shredded in my hands, and Emma moaned out a complaint. “Just trying to give you what you want, mi esposa,” I said and notched my cock against where she was wet and waiting for me.
“You didn’t have to –”
I seated myself in her tight, perfect heat, groaning.
“You feel so fucking perfect, Emma.” I snapped my hips into hers, and I felt her nails digging into my shoulders, holding on as I pumped into her.
“Touch yourself,” I commanded. She reached between us and circled her clit, and I could feel her squeeze down on me.
“That’s it,” I cooed at her. “Make us both feel good, mi esposa.”
Her breath hitched, and she bucked against me, on the edge of orgasm.
I buried my face in her neck, kissing all of those wonderfully sensitive places as I fucked into her all the harder.
The fingers of her unoccupied hand sank into my hair, knotted in the strands, and I hissed as she pulled tight. She was so close.
I bit down on her collarbone, and she wailed as she came. Pleasure set off like a bomb along my synapses, and I groaned as I sailed over the edge. My hips stuttered against her as I spilled inside. I would never get used to how that felt.
Collapsing against her, I sighed as she carded her fingers through my hair. “Thank you for my necklace,” she murmured.
I chuckled. “You’re welcome, mi esposa.”