Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“All. Of. It.” I demand.
“All of it?” He asks. I nod. “Okay. All of it.” He takes a minute. “She made an agreement with that bastard, and she needed an event. Something to get you and Brutus into a position where you’d have to make a deal.”
“Our mother is not a murderer.”
“No?”
No. She’s not. Is she? My chest tightens, betrayal twisting my heart. “Why Alexia?”
“Well, I was supposed to do the deed, but got squeamish. Believe it or not, murder makes me nauseous.”
I snort.
He tries for a cocky smile but just turns a little green. “So, she did it knowing you’d think it was Alexia’s father. She positioned her the way she did. Wrote what she wrote on her stomach.”
I watch and listen… and I can’t fucking breathe.
“Voila!” He makes a grand arm gesture. “The Commander had his enforcer.”
I stare at him, trying to make sense of this. “Our father found out,” I say. “That’s why the change in the will. That’s why that cryptic letter.”
“Your father. Not ours. But yes. That’s why. Thiago?” He holds up his wrist where the bracelet sits. “New bracelet. That fucker knew it all. He was going to blackmail us. We were to meet at the lighthouse, but then your wife showed up.”
“You could have hurt her then. Killed her. You didn’t. Why hurt her now?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “It was her or you, and like I said, I wasn’t going to lose you again.” He must see the confusion on my face. “Mom’s phase two wasn’t what you thought. At least you didn’t know the whole of it. You needed to get her pregnant. Then we’d get you out of the way. I’d marry Madelena, adopt the kid with Augustine blood in his veins.” He raises his eyebrows to make sure I’m following. “Exactly to the letter as Brutus Augustine’s will states. She hated him by the end. Did you know that?”
I process this. I did in a way. I didn’t understand why but their relationship over the last few years of his life had deteriorated to the point they had separate bedrooms and rarely were in the same room together.
But my own mother? “She wouldn’t do this.”
His face goes dead serious, and I see something in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. Not in his. Resignation. He’s given up.
“You don’t know her, Santos. You don’t know anything about her. Now,” he staggers to his feet, starts to root around in his pocket, and pulls out a pocketknife. He flips it open, and I watch him and prepare for an attack.
Except it doesn’t come.
Instead, he turns the knife around and holds it out for me to take it. I look from it to him, and I understand.
He expects me to kill him, and he wants to die.
“And you don’t know me either, brother,” he says.
I look at that knife again and take it. I step toward him. He draws a deep breath in and waits for the attack.
But I close the switchblade and tuck it into my pocket. I take hold of my gun instead.
“Turn around,” I tell him.
He looks at the gun, then at me, and he knows I’m not going to kill him. I won’t give him the gift of death.
“Turn around, brother.”
He swallows. I watch his throat work. He nods once. Does he know what I will do? He must. He’s seen me do it before. That whole murder makes him nauseous bullshit? It’s exactly that. Bullshit. And torture never bothered him.
He turns slowly. He hangs his head.
I aim the gun at the back of his right knee. And I shoot.
37
MADELENA
A gunshot pierces the heavy stillness of the chapel. Father Michael hears it too. I see his head snap to the stained-glass window. I’m sitting on the front pew, wrapped in a heavy duvet. He is lighting all the candles on the altar. When we got here, he left me in the chapel, locked the door, and disappeared for a few minutes to bring me dry clothes. I’m not sure whose they are, but they’re about three sizes too big. I don’t care though. They’re dry.
I try to get to my feet. I need to get to Santos, but my ribs ache.
“He could be hurt,” I say. “We have to help him.”
He shakes his head, keeps hold of my hands as he crouches down before me. I’m shaking, and although it’s not cold in here, I don’t know that I’ll ever feel warm again.
I can still hear the echo of water, hear my scream beneath the surface. Feel my terror as Caius held me down, as he drowned me.
“Santos can take care of himself, Madelena.”’
“Caius…”
He shakes his head. “Shh. Your baby is under stress already.”
Did the baby even survive? I don’t feel anything. But I’ve never felt anything.
An eternity later, someone tries the locked door. I watch Father Michael hurry down the aisle toward it as I hear Santos’s voice.