‘Besides, I hated school.’
‘Really?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Oh, I loved it. Not school, but learning. In another life, I should have been an academic. Give me a pile of textbooks and a long test at the end of it, and I’m set.’
His laugh is throaty.
‘No skipping classes for you?’
‘No such luck. I had a tutor.’
‘Of course you did.’ His voice is droll, and again I’m reminded of our first meeting. His cynicism is most apparent when we touch on the trappings of my position. I push up a little and reach for my wine, taking a small sip. The breeze is warm, rustling over my hair, and I relish the sensations—cold wine, satisfied body, warm flesh. ‘And of course you did not need to work to support your family,’ he adds, so I feel almost a hint of guilt in my chest.
I shake my head before lying back down again. ‘You didn’t drop out, though?’
‘No.’ He studies me. ‘A teacher saw me working at mechanics.’
Great. Now I have to imagine Santiago as a grease monkey, his head beneath the bonnet of a car, dressed in a white singlet and form-fitting jeans. My mouth goes dry.
‘He realised I’d been ditching school to work and hauled me into his office. I was surprised he cared, at the time. The school was not known for its academic reputation, and no one had given much of a care about what I did until then.’
Something about the throwaway comment makes my heart ache for him.
‘What about your parents?’
His smile is tight, cautiously dismissive. ‘That’s another story.’
‘I’d like to hear it.’
He shakes his head once; it’s obvious he doesn’t intend to elaborate. ‘The teacher’s specialty was maths. He set me extra work. Pushed me. I had an aptitude.’ His expression bears the ghosts of the past. I perceive the pain that dogs him and wonder why I didn’t comprehend it at our first meeting. Because he’d come in all guns blazing, and all my instincts had been askew, thanks to the way he’d made me feel.
‘About three months after he started working with me, there was a phantom-stock-market game. Do you know what this is?’
‘Like playing the stock market with fake money?’
‘Si.’
‘And you were great at it?’
‘I earned over a million euro in the first week,’ he says. ‘So, yes, you could say that.’
My eyes widen. ‘Seriously?’
His head shifts in a single nod. ‘I was fifteen and had never had enough money in my life. We were dirt-poor, Princesa, and suddenly I’d been given the keys to a world beyond my comprehension.’
> ‘But that was just pretend. How did you take that and turn it into all this?’
‘I found investors, charged a scaling percentage of what I earned for them. It was their money, their risk—all the up side was mine.’
I shake my head from side to side, admiration filling me.
‘I was able to diversify, invest in properties then major ventures, such as this.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘Once I was given the keys, it was.’