10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Iclimbed out through the back of the wardrobe, pulled the false panel into place, and shoved the hanging clothes over it.
I tucked the half-empty water bottle into a narrow space behind the wardrobe, closed the doors, and hurried to the vanity. My hands shook as I dragged a brush through my hair. I’d barely tied it back when the key turned in the lock.
Marta Mejía opened the door.
For one horrible second, I imagined her arriving two minutes earlier and finding the room empty.
“Good morning, Miss Isabella.”
“Good morning.”
Her eyes moved over my face. Marta had worked in the main house since I was sixteen. She was kind when kindness didn’t require disobeying anyone, but she followed my father’s rules without question.
“You look tired.”
“The dungeon kept me awake.”
Her gaze dropped briefly toward the floor, but she didn’t comment. Everyone in the house had heard something during the night. They had also learned not to ask about what happened beneath my room.
Marta stepped aside, leaving the door open behind her.
From seven in the morning until seven at night, I could move through the approved parts of the house and gardens.
My father considered that freedom. In reality, his household staff reported where I went, guards watched every exterior door, and Dona Teresa Alvarado—my governess since my mother’s death and my father’s most devoted jailer—made certain I never disappeared from sight for long.
Every night, the lock slid back into place.
“Breakfast is ready,” Marta said.
I followed her through the upper hall and down to the small breakfast room beside the covered veranda.
Cool morning air drifted through the arched openings.
Beyond the inner garden, the finca stretched across the lower slopes of the long-dormant San Vicente volcano, with rows of coffee plants, groves of banana trees, and cultivated fields spreading toward the foothills.
A guard stood near the garden wall with a rifle across his chest.
The view was beautiful as long as I ignored the men paid to keep me from walking into it.
Marta poured coffee while I picked at eggs, beans, fried plantains, and warm tortillas. I should’ve been hungry after the night I’d had, but I could barely force down a bite. Every time I tried, my thoughts returned to Lachlan.
Even before I saw him, the prisoner had sounded larger than life—fighting my father’s men, insulting anyone who came near him, and refusing to give them the satisfaction of sounding afraid. I’d expected the man attached to that voice to be intimidating. I hadn’t expected him to be so handsome.
He was huge even seated, his broad shoulders making the heavy wooden chair seem smaller than it was.
Sweat had dampened his dark-gold hair, and rough scruff shadowed the hard line of his jaw.
Bruises marked his face, and the cut on his right cheek was swollen and dirty, but none of the damage made him look defeated.
If anything, it only made the restraints around his wrists seem more necessary.
Blindfolded, injured, and parched, Lachlan had still kept himself under control. He hadn’t demanded water or begged for my help. He’d lowered his voice and held still so he wouldn’t frighten me. Even then, he’d warned me about the guards instead of focusing only on his own pain and thirst.
But there was nothing harmless about Lachlan Byrnes. He was dangerous enough that my father needed chains to hold him, yet he treated me as though I were the one thing in the room he had to be careful with.
For one reckless moment, I imagined what it would be like to watch him aim all that controlled violence at the men who kept me caged.
The thought should have frightened me. It didn’t.
When I kissed him, he hadn’t reacted at all.
The memory warmed my face.
Kissing a stranger chained in my father’s dungeon had been reckless, embarrassing even, and nothing I wanted to examine too closely. Lachlan had been dropped into my life without warning, bringing powerful allies, a promise of escape, and more hope than I could handle.
That didn’t mean I trusted him. He needed the hidden passage, information about the compound, and someone willing to help him escape. His promise to take me with him might’ve been just a calculated move.
But he clearly understood the danger I’d put myself in by helping him.
My mother had taught me that men showed their true nature when they were frightened, angry, or denied what they wanted. Lachlan had been all three, and he’d still worried more about my safety than his own suffering.
My father had revealed his nature long before I was born. When my mother refused him, he kidnapped her.
He had stolen Princess Eliana from Eslovenya, hidden her inside this compound, and claimed her as his own. When she gave birth to me, something went wrong. The midwife stopped the bleeding and kept her alive, but the damage meant she could never carry another child.
Of course, my father had wanted a son.
He resented my mother for failing to give him one and treated me as both a possession and a disappointment—the royal daughter born to the princess he’d stolen, but not the male heir he believed he deserved.
When I was thirteen, my mother tried to take me away from here.
Sometimes the memory returned in pieces: the jeep sliding across loose dirt, my mother fighting the wheel, the edge of the mountain road disappearing beneath us. I never understood why the crash had taken her and left me alive with only a few minor injuries.
All I knew was that she’d died because she tried to escape with me.
For the last twelve years, I’d told myself survival required patience.
Patience had kept me alive.
It had also kept me here.
Lachlan Byrnes might lie to me. I might lie to him. Neither changed the fact that my father wanted him alive, and powerful men outside these walls were searching for him.
For the first time since my mother’s death, the compound had been disrupted by something Father couldn’t control with a locked door.
I was going to use that disruption to help Lachlan escape.
I would find a way through the walls, the guards, and the drainage system beyond the lower grounds. And when his people came, I wouldn’t remain behind and wait for him to decide whether I was worth taking.
I was leaving with him.
Marta set the coffeepot down. “Would you like your books brought to the veranda this morning?”
“No. I thought I’d bake something for Father.”
Her brows rose. “Oh?”
“He hasn’t been home in more than a year.” I made myself smile. “I want to make his favorite pastel de tres leches for after dinner. He always liked it with coffee.”
Marta’s expression softened. “He’ll be pleased.”
That was the point.
“Would you bring my recipe basket to the kitchen? The brown one beside the bookcase. My cookbook, notes, and apron should already be inside.”
“Of course.”
By the time I reached the main kitchen, Marta had placed the basket on the long worktable.
The room had already filled with the normal morning rush. Pans clattered, water ran, and women moved between the pantry and the ovens while discussing lunch, dinner, and the unexpected number of men my father had brought home.
No one questioned my presence. I’d spent years baking because Father considered cookbooks, sugar, and flour appropriately harmless interests for a woman.
I tied on my apron and began the cake.
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks in the mixer while I beat the yolks and sugar until they turned pale and thick. I measured the flour and baking powder as one of the cooks gathered the evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and cream for the soak.
For a few minutes, I let them see the version of me they expected: the dutiful daughter making her father’s favorite dessert because she was happy he’d returned.
The performance turned my stomach, but it gave me access to everything Lachlan needed.
The kitchen door opened behind me, and conversation died.
Dona Teresa entered with her hands folded at her waist and her mouth already pinched in disapproval. She had governed my life since my mother’s death and treated every independent thought as evidence that Eliana had ruined me before she died.
Her gaze moved from the batter to my recipe basket.
“What is all this?”
“I’m making Father a tres leches cake.”
“Why?”
“To welcome him home.”
Dona Teresa gave a humorless laugh. “Marcela returned with a Syndicate captain. You offer cake.”
Heat crept up my neck, but I lowered my eyes.
“Father likes it.”
“Your father likes women who make themselves useful.” She glanced at the basket again. “Perhaps sweetness is the only thing you have left to offer.”
“Yes, Dona Teresa.”
She waited for me to react.
I kept stirring.
Eventually, she turned to Marta. “Make sure she changes before dinner. Senor Delgado will not want a floured mess near his table.”
Then she left as abruptly as she’d entered.
The room slowly came back to life.
I poured the batter into the pan and slid it into the oven. While the women turned their attention to preparing for the day, I opened my recipe basket and moved my cookbook aside.
A sealed bottle of water went beneath it.
Then a couple of bananas, two pieces of soft bread, and a clean cloth.
I waited until the woman beside me crossed to the pantry before taking a small paring knife from the worktable. I wrapped the blade in the cloth and tucked it inside my apron.
The knife wouldn’t open metal cuffs.
But it was more than I had yesterday.
When the cake had cooled, I pierced the top and poured the sweet milk mixture over it and the sponge absorbed every drop. One of the women carried it to the refrigerator to chill for dinner.
“It looks beautiful,” Marta said.
“Thank you.”
I smiled brightly enough that she believed me.
Then I untied my apron and folded it over the hidden supplies in my basket.
“I need to get cleaned up.”
The women laughed, and no one questioned me when I carried the basket out of the kitchen.
I’d nearly reached the covered service arcade leading back toward the residential wing when Rafael Duarte stepped from behind one of the stone arches.
“There you are, mi nina.”
“Good morning, Rafael.”
Relief softened his features before worry took its place. “I came to your room earlier…before it was unlocked and found it empty.”
My fingers tightened around the handle.
Only a few people knew the servant passages still existed, and Rafael had helped my mother hide in them from my father.
His expression turned grim. “You went below.”