He could never love her.
That filled her with such despair she could hardly stand it.
Below her, the energy between the three changed. Whatever Val had said had shocked Javiero into stepping back.
Val turned to walk away, rejecting them. Kiara caught at his arm, but he rebuffed her and walked around the house toward the helicopter pad while Kiara stood there, fingers curled against her mouth, devastated.
Her expression of anguish matched exactly the shattered hopes in Scarlett’s heart. She was so unutterably sad then, so defeated by this terrible, tangled history, she couldn’t bear it.
There was no hope for any of them. Her heart gave up and shattered into pieces.
Javiero had had one purpose in coming here—retrieve Scarlett and his son.
As he approached the island, his anger and resentment had climbed to levels he hadn’t experienced since his adolescence. This villa was a place he’d been forced to visit as a child, and being dropped here had always felt like being thrown into a dogfight.
First his mother would fill his ears with Val’s inferiority, warning him against trusting his half brother while stressing, “Be nice to your father.” In those early days, she had been certain there was a path to having her son recognized as Niko’s rightful heir if they could only flatter Niko enough and expunge the imposter.
Evelina had done the same to Val. They would glare at each other with suspicion, equally miserable to be left with a man whose idea of parenting was to “toughen them up.” Chores in the vineyard had been the easy part, all things considered. It had been hot and hard, and it had forced them into each other’s company, often requiring cooperation to get a task done. That had led to power struggles, but they’d also wanted to finish as quickly as possible. They had managed.
No, the truly hellish part had been Niko’s constant desire to test which one of them was stronger, faster, smarter. He would demand they count the number of cases and barrels they had moved, review their grades, and send them swimming to a buoy and back. He’d judged them on everything, including their looks.
“Val is the good-looking one. The other one is Javiero.”
Javiero didn’t care. He didn’t care. But who the hell treated any child that way, let alone one’s own?
His gut was churning as though he was still seven or nine or eleven. The fact Scarlett was forcing him to come to a place that held not one single decent memory did nothing to soften his mood.
Then, the cherry on top. Val was here.
As Javiero’s feet found the lawn, he ran straight into his tempestuous past.
Everything and nothing had changed. Val glowered and came at him like a feral dog, spitting warnings that Javiero should stay the hell away from his wife and child—as if Javiero had any damned interest in either of them.
Javiero was in a mood to rip his half brother’s throat out once and for all when Kiara thrust herself between them.
“For the sake of your children, bury the hatchet,” she cried.
Maybe it was childish to say Val had started it, but it was the truth. Javiero found himself churning up Val’s crimes, compelled to make one final effort at forcing Val to take responsibility for what he’d done.
“You set me up,” Javiero snarled. “You knew Dad would yank his support when you left, but you did it anyway.” Val had sentenced Javiero and his family to years of hardship. He wanted to kill him for that—he really did.
“I had to get away,” Val spit back, so bitter it was palpable. “If you had backed me up when you had the chance, I might have made other choices. You didn’t.”
This was supposed to be his fault? Javiero wanted to knock him into next week for having the temerity to suggest such a thing.
Then some flicker of a memory glinted in the recesses of his mind. A brief conversation that had seemed so insignificant he had buried it beneath a thousand others.
But that ring of blame in Val’s hostility made Javiero recall Niko’s question. What do you know about your brother and this teacher?
Javiero hadn’t wanted to know. Val had been a rival who existed to be derided. Javiero had been young enough that he hadn’t fully grasped what was being asked. Or what it meant.
He was a man now, though, hearing it and seeing it as an adult. Val had been a child. A rebellious pain-in-the-ass adolescent, but a child all the same.
The look in Val’s eyes today was one of infinite betrayal. Revilement.
As comprehension dawned, Javiero’s face nearly melted off his head. The ancient rumor that he’d dismissed as salacious and unimportant had had truth behind it. His vision of Val and their shared past broke open, leaving him reeling.
Val’s rejection of Niko’s fortune came into focus under a fresh light. Val hadn’t done it as a deliberate effort to harm Javiero. Val had escaped an untenable situation, plain and simple.
Niko was the one who had used Val’s quest for independence as a benchmark against which he had compared Javiero. Niko had used it as an excuse to yank his support and leave Javiero flailing. Javiero could blame Niko for his struggles and his grandfather’s early death, but he couldn’t blame Val. Not anymore.
Struck dumb, he watched Val and Kiara hold a sharp exchange that resulted in Val walking away from her.
A movement in his periphery dragged his attention to the terrace.
He couldn’t tell if Scarlett had heard, but she was so pale her lips had disappeared. Tears tracked her cheeks. Her hopelessness was so visceral, her heartbreak so tangible, he nearly buckled under the agony of it.
She turned into the house and he felt it as an indictment. Reflexively, he started to go after her.
Kiara stopped him with a distraught hand clenching his sleeve. “Javiero,
