“Hm.”
“And I’ve treated her with kid gloves.”
“She thinks you’re sweet.”
His eyebrows rise high on his forehead.
“Exactly. Where’s my brother, Santiago?”
He comes to sit on the bed. “You don’t have to worry about him. He won’t hurt you again. He won’t get near you ever again.” His expression darkens.
“Did you do something to him?” I ask when I remember the scene I glimpsed as he carried me out of that house.
He sets his jaw and studies me. “I’m going to ask you something, and I want the truth.”
I nod.
“Did you run because you wanted to get rid of the baby? Is that why your brother arranged for that idiot doctor?”
“What?”
“I know how you feel about me, and honestly, I don’t blame you. Having my baby inside you—”
“Our baby. It’s our baby. Stop calling our baby yours!”
“Fine. Our baby. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s not what you wanted.”
I stop to consider this. He’s right. I wouldn’t have chosen a pregnancy, not right now. But I am pregnant. And things are different. Everything is different.
I reach out and touch his arm only to feel his muscles tense when I do. “I never wanted to get rid of our baby. Not for a minute. That was Abel. And I don’t know. Maybe he thought he was helping me in his warped mind. Maybe I gave him the impression even—”
“Don’t you dare take the blame for what your brother did and do not make excuses for him.”
“I don’t know. I mean, when I called him, I was scared. But Santiago, I already love this baby. It was never my intent to hurt him or her.”
He remains silent, face unreadable.
“Did you hurt Abel?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
I’m relieved. Should I be? I mean, maybe Abel did get that doctor thinking I wanted it. But the zip ties? Those men? I can’t think about that right now. “Did you mean what you said?” I ask Santiago before I can stop myself.
“What did I say?”
“That you came for me? Not just for the baby.”
He studies me, a momentary flicker of emotion in his eyes, a single second of something I can’t quite name there. “You would rather have died than stay with me.”
I look down, unable to hold his gaze. Because I know what that emotion is. It’s hurt.
It takes all I have to look back up at him. “I just wanted you to come for me. With the aspirin, I mean. I didn’t think it through. I didn’t…when Colette told me you have my father—”
“Ah. Colette.”
“I just…I felt betrayed. After everything that happened, the progress we’d made, you were keeping that from me. And you never came back, Santiago. For days after you got that call, you didn’t even call or talk to me. I got angrier the longer I waited, and I was going to confront you, but then I saw the sheet, the stupid bloody sheet, and I remembered what you said you’d do with it on our wedding night. That you’d show it to my father. I was burning it. Not the pictures of your father or brother. I went out to the chapel so no one would find me to stop me. And then you got so angry. What you did…” I feel my face heat, and I can’t hold his gaze. “And then locking me in my room.” I look up at him. “You can’t do that anymore. I can’t stand that. Punish me any other way but not that again. If—”
“I won’t.” He cuts me off.
“I’m just…if I’m going to stay, I won’t be put back in that room.”
“If?”
“I mean it. I can’t do that again, Santiago. Send me away if you can’t stand to see me, and when the baby comes, we can work something out—”
“Are you completely daft?”
“What?”
“Or just hard of hearing?” He takes my hands in his. “I came for you. For you.”
I swallow hard.
“You are my wife, Ivy.”
“In name.”
“No. Not in name. Not anymore. Not for either of us. And you know it.” There is a long moment of silence between us before he continues. “What exactly did Colette tell you?”
Shoot. “I don’t want to get her into trouble.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Nothing. She just thought I knew that you’d taken over my father’s care. Have you?”
“How did she know that?”
“This isn’t about Colette, Santiago. Did you take over my father’s care?”
He nods.
“How long ago?”
“Since my poisoning. Your father was poisoned too, Ivy. That’s what caused him to go into cardiac arrest and eventually a coma. Someone tried to kill him, and I can guess who.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. “You think it’s Abel? You think he tried to kill our father?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
"Doesn’t it?”
I shift my gaze momentarily away, then back to him. “How is he? My dad?”
“Awake. Alert. But weak.”
“Can I see him?”
“In time.”
“What happened between you? Why do you hate him? Hate us?”
He winces at that last part. It’s just a twitch, but I see it. “Chambers is dead,” he says instead of answering me. He stands.
“Chambers?” It takes me a moment to place him. “When? How?”
“Found his body a few days ago. His maid too. And his family is missing. You and your sister will stay inside The Manor at all times. I’ll arrange for her schooling until she can return to classes. Your brother—”
“You think Abel killed him?”
Santiago stops pacing, looks at me like he’s waiting for me to catch up.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “As bad as Abel is, he’s not a killer.” But then I remember the lipstick. “Oh my god.”
“The poison that was used to poison me came from the tube of lipstick I found on the driveway of the house Hazel took me to. Abel’s safe house. I’m still trying to make sense of the things we found inside, all those files, names of my—”
“Wait, Hazel? What? When?”
Just as I ask, his phone rings. He checks the display, swipes, and puts the
