“You broke my heart.” I wipe my cheeks, my vision clearing as I glare at him. His face is scratched, little trails of blood on his cheeks. “How could you? He never hurt you. He didn’t do anything to you. You—”
“Lucretia.” He swerves onto an exit and takes a hard right, the tires screeching as he floors it back toward his estate. “You have to believe me. I didn’t kill your brother. Your mother is just trying to fuck you up.”
“The way you do? The way you always twist the knife?” I spit back at him.
“Yes!” He meets my gaze, his eyes wild as blood rolls down his temple. “That’s exactly what she’s doing. She threw the meeting somehow. We’ve been betrayed. Vincenzo voted against me.”
I’m even more lost than I was before. “Vincenzo? I don’t understand.”
“He threw in with your parents and the Manchellos. They orchestrated the entire thing, set me up.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Sarita is going to be coming for my head. She can take it without consequence.”
“Why did Vincenzo—”
“I don’t know!” he roars and slams his hand against the steering wheel. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I don’t know.” He sounds broken, and maybe he is. He treated Vincenzo like a surrogate father, looked up to him, and now he has his knife between Mateo’s ribs.
I can relate. I feel the same searing pain. The man I love, my husband, took away the one person who ever cared for me. How can this be real? How can my life have turned into this? Nothing but desolation and regret, shame and fear. I cover my face with my hands and weep.
“It’s all going to be all right.” Unwinding my seatbelt from his wrist, he clicks it into place. “I know you don’t believe me. You have no reason to. But I didn’t kill Ferdinand, Lucretia. I swear to you on my parents’ souls. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove it to you.”
I don’t want to believe him. I want to go for his face again, to inflict the pain on him that’s tearing me apart inside. He should hurt the way I hurt.
“Lucretia, please.” Broken, so broken. He’s a wounded animal.
So am I. Because of the lies, the heartbreak, the million cruel words from my mother, and the violence done to my brother. Maybe I’m like him—broken beyond repair. I can feel my sharp edges, all of them still cutting me, bleeding me out. I’m lost.
“Please, please, Lucretia.” His voice is pleading, desperate. It’s something I’ve never heard from him. It’s so raw and real that it makes me take a breath.
‘I swear to you on my parents’ souls.’ He would never make that declaration on a lie. Unless every single word he’s ever told me was a falsehood, one he created to lure me closer to him so he could strike the final blow. I press my hands to my ears, trying to silence the roaring in them, the cacophony in my head. Who’s telling the truth? No one? Is the foundation I thought I’d built with Mateo nothing but an illusion?
What do I do? I’m still in shock, still spinning from what my mother said. Still torn apart.
“How many times has she hurt you, Lucretia? How many times?” he cries. “When I came for you that day, you were broken. She had broken you so she could use you, could sell you to Horatio. I want to kill her for what she’s done to you!” He slaps the wheel and falls silent, his entire body humming with tension.
He’s right. I was broken. I thought I’d never recover, never be able to dream again, to hope again. But maybe I can be whole again. Maybe the missing parts of me fit into the missing parts of Mateo. Maybe together, we can make one. I just have to trust him like he asked me before. It’s a decision, one that only I can make. Do I keep holding onto my past and hoping for a mother who loves me and a brother who’s gone, or do I move forward? Do I make the choice to keep going? It’s hard, and it hurts, but growth always does.
“I … I believe you.” I reach out and take his hand.
He squeezes my fingers. “Thank you.” He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it, murmuring thank you over and over.
When we pull up in front of the house, he turns to me and kisses me hard, his hands on my cheeks as he claims my mouth. I meet him, giving him my sorrow and my pain, my tears still flowing as he kisses me like it’s the last time.
“I love you so much.” He presses his forehead to mine. “Don’t ever doubt it, even if you doubt me.”