didn’t matter. He had her now. And he was going to get his part of the family fortune. Even if he was not going to have it all in its entirety. He would not be made a fool of by Diego. He would not allow his brother to win.
He might not be able to ensure his loss, but he could ensure he did not take it all.
And with Camilla on his arm tonight, he was likely to paint a very convincing picture of the entire scenario. It would be clear to anyone with eyes why he would have been tempted away from that pale, fragile woman he had found himself engaged to, drawn to this bright, vibrant creature.
She might not have the fame of Liliana Hart, might not possess a newsworthy family, but any man would be able to see why she was a temptation.
“The car is waiting,” he said, leading them both out of the house and toward the limousine that was waiting for them.
She stopped. “That seems a bit expected,” she commented.
“Please forgive me my expected limousine,” he said. “The sad thing about events like this is we must endeavor to be expected. We must fulfill the expectations of those in attendance. Otherwise, there is precious little point in attending at all.”
His driver opened the door for both of them, and they slid inside. Then, when they were safely ensconced, on the road and headed toward the city, she turned to him.
“Did your father do as expected?”
“No, my family has always made it their mission to do as little that was expected of them as possible. I have tried to be different. I was not taught the difference between right and wrong. Nobody attempted to teach me the value of integrity, and yet because of the deficit of it in my life I figured it out all the same. A man cannot live by his own rules, Camilla. A man must answer to a higher power. It is simply the way of it. If not, then he is bound to the whims of his own heart, his own desires. That ends in bad places. Dark places.”
“Your father was cruel to you...”
His chest tightened, the words screaming in his head, begging to be released while his whole body tensed for a battle to hold it back. There was something about her. Something that made it seem so easy to share things he had never told another soul.
Perhaps it was because when he’d first spoken freely to her he’d seen her as a boy. A member of his staff. He’d barely seen her at all.
In the darkness of the car, he physically couldn’t see her, and perhaps that was why he wanted to speak to her now. It was like confession. Whether or not it would be good for his soul, he couldn’t say.
“It is not that. Yes, my father was cruel to me. He was cruel to everyone he encountered. But my father killed my mother, Camilla.” The next words were torn, from somewhere deep inside him, with a pain he had no idea he still possessed the ability to feel. “It was not an accident.”
Camilla was frozen, her heart turning brittle in her chest, cracking from the inside out. His father had killed his mother? It seemed impossible. Impossible words issued from the most beautiful lips. He was every inch Prince Charming to her Cinderella tonight, and yet, she had not felt a sense of enchantment when she had descended down the stairs toward him.
Instead, she had only felt a sense of dread, a sense of being deficient. Because she could never be the woman he had chosen for himself in the first place. She could never be that kind of sweet, delicate beauty she knew that men like him—all men—preferred.
But now she questioned that feeling. She had assumed, of course, that she was the only one carrying around dark feelings. She was the only one beset by misgivings of any kind. Because how could a man who looked so sublime in a custom-made tux be carrying around any sort of weight in his chest?
And yet, his was the greatest of all.
“How do you know?” she asked, her words muted.
“I saw it,” he said, the words rough. “I saw him with my own eyes. You wonder how I can be so certain that Diego did not kill his wife. Because I spent my childhood with a man capable of such a thing. And while I think my brother is morally bankrupt, not unaffected by the life we led here at the rancho, I don’t believe he’s a killer. I looked into the eyes of a man who would do such a thing. I had been left to live with that man in the aftermath, while the local government bent over backward to cover it up, corruption and payoffs raining while Justice died a sad, horrible death alongside my mother. Diego is a villain. But he is not a killer.”
“Did Diego see...?”
“No,” he said, the words sharp. Hard. “I was the only one who was there that day. My father did not see it, either. I was frozen, up in a tree. I was...eight years old, I suppose.”
She could tell that he remembered everything. From his age to his exact position in the tree, his specific vantage point. But that he was going out of his way to keep it vague. To keep it easy.
That he was doing what he had to do to protect himself.
“I had been playing out in the olive groves, and I heard the sound of approaching horses. A chase. A game, I thought at first, except when I realized it was my father and my mother I knew it could not be. My father did not play games. At least, not the kind that anyone but himself could win.”
“Matías...”
“He shot her.” There was a very long silence after that. The only sound in the limo the tires on the road. She said nothing. Could do nothing but simply sit and wait. She was...horrorstruck. She wanted to hold him and she knew she could not. Should not. He wasn’t hers. And of course he never could be. But she wanted him to be. Oh, she wanted him to be now.
“She fell off the horse,” he said finally, his tone distant, pained, “or, the horse fell, and there was screaming. I do not think it was the gunshot that killed her, but the fall from the horse. When I said she broke her neck falling from a horse...that was in the official report, and I know they were covering up some of what happened. But I do think there was truth in it. The way that the horse toppled over after.” His words were hard, flat. “And I could not move. I was afraid that if I did he would kill me, too. I did try to tell the police. But the police chief said I was not to repeat that story. It was an accident. A terrible riding accident, as to be expected when people spent so much time with horses. An acknowledged risk, you see.”
Camilla pressed her hands against her chest, as if that might do something to calm her thundering heart. As if it might do something to dampen the horror she felt. “I’m so sorry. How could they do that to you? How could they do that to a child?”
“I don’t tell you this to make you sorry for me. It is done. There will be no justice for my mother, and there never can be. All the evidence is long gone and buried. Every police officer involved in the investigation moved on, retired. And my father is dead. My father is dead, so he cannot be arrested. I hope, very much, that he burns in hell for what he has done. As it is, he was killed by something so mundane as a stroke while he was in the company of no fewer than three prostitutes. If that end would have brought him shame, I would have considered it a partial form of justice, but the man had no shame at all. And so, I can only hope there is justice in the afterlife for him. For he did not suffer enough in this life.”
Her thoughts jumbled together, her heart full of immense pain. It was all starting to make sense. His need to redeem the rancho.
This
