Nagging doubts he’d silenced for years now crept out of the darkness. He was beginning to suspect he had every reason to despise Ignacio for his lies. “Is that why you drove away Valentina?”
He still remembered the heated shouting matches he’d had with his father when he was nineteen and desperately in love. Ignacio had point-blank forbidden the marriage, saying she was unsuitable as an Alvarez bride.
He’d wondered at the time if Ignacio was secretly behind her sudden change of heart. Now Amado saw the ugly truth unfold in front of his eyes. “You wouldn’t accept her as my wife, not because she was illegitimate, but because you didn’t want anyone to find out that I am, too?”
Ignacio hesitated. Rubbed a hand over his face. “If you’d married as a minor, they would have seen your birth certificate.”
The confession chilled his blood. He’d suspected the truth all along, but never been sure. Her change of heart had been too sudden, too final.
Now, he knew. The man who called himself his own father had driven away the woman he loved. “You chose your lie over my life.”
Amado shoved a hand through his hair. The injustice burned him. Years of lies that had warped his existence. His comfortable life here at Tierra de Oro came at a harsh cost, especially to the two woman who should have been closest to him.
“All this time, Marisa has been a silent shadow. She was the sister I never knew and who I knew nothing about. It’s not right. She was a real person.”
He realized his fist was clenched, but he couldn’t seem to unlock it. “She was my mother and you shouldn’t have swept her story out the door with yesterday’s dust.” His voice trembled with rage.
“She died so young.” His father shook his head. Amado resisted the urge to step forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “She never had a chance to become a woman.”
“She was a woman. You may not have wanted to accept it, but your little girl grew up. She bore a child.”
“I don’t…I don’t…” his father spluttered.
“You don’t want to think about that.” Amado’s words shattered the stunned quiet. “You never did. You just wanted her to be your little girl forever, which is probably why she ran away to New York in the first place. You can’t keep everything the same as it was in the nineteenth century. Like the estate, we must change and grow in order to keep living.”
“If only she’d never met that Tarrant Hardcastle.” The words dripped from his father’s tongue like acid.
“But she did. And now I must meet him, too.” The resolve formed in Amado’s mind as he said the words. This family was done with ignoring unpleasant realities. He wanted to face them head on.
For years, he’d tried to forget the pain of losing his fiancée. He’d always suspected that Ignacio had had a hand in Valentina’s leaving, but to hear him admit it—
Adrenaline flashed through his muscles and he struggled to keep himself under control.
He was done being played. Perhaps meeting his birth father would bring some reality back into this charade.
“I’ll meet Tarrant Hardcastle and make up my own mind about him.”
“He’s not your father. He didn’t raise you.”
“He bears half the responsibility for bringing me into this world, whether he wanted to or not.” He drew in a breath as anger heated his blood. “Now he thinks he can fold me to his bosom like a long-lost sheep?” He blew out a hard breath. “We’ll see. For now, I want to look into the face of the man who left my mother to die.”
He glanced at Susannah, who’d watched their exchange, her kiss-reddened lips parted in stunned silence.
He cursed the strong feelings Susannah herself had awakened in him. He couldn’t seem to get her out of his mind. Her solemn gaze haunted him, and her hungry passion.
And he had to admit that, along with the chaos she’d unleashed, came the fresh air of truth.
He drew in a deep breath and stared at her. “I’ll come to New York with you.”
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