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)
After tucking himself back into his pants, he turns me to face him and slides my panties and leggings back up. He kisses me.
“Do you understand?” he asks seriously. “Do you understand that I love you?”
My heart flutters, missing a beat. “Why?” I hear myself ask. What a stupid question.
He looks momentarily confused. “I forgot you are unaccustomed to being wanted. Being loved. That ends here and now.”
Before I can process, he lifts me in his arms and carries me upstairs to the ensuite in our bedroom. There, he runs a bath, and as it fills, he strips off my clothes and his and we slide in together. I sit with my back to his front, his long legs cradling mine. He wraps his arms around me and holds onto my hands. I take in the differences between us, my pale skin against his olive tone, his muscle against my softness. I twist in his arms and face him because I need more so I sit on his lap to study his face. When I lay my hands on his shoulders and he captures my wrists to stop me, I shake my head.
“Let me see you.”
“Madelena,” he starts, sounding older.
“Camilla told me what they were,” I cut him off. “I need to hear from you.”
“Camilla?” He stiffens. “Why would you talk to her?”
I meet his eyes. “I didn’t have much choice when she ambushed me in my bedroom.”
“She came to your house?”
“Along with everyone else after the service. But it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t scare me.” I shift my gaze to his scars, those precisely drawn lines. I slide the tips of my fingers over them and when I subconsciously start to count, I stop myself. I don’t want to know the number.
“Tell me what they are.” I meet his eyes. “What you did.”
His lips tighten into a line, and I watch his throat work as he swallows. He searches my face, then touches my cheek.
“Tell me, Santos.”
“After Alexia’s murder, after I killed her father, the Commander made a deal with my father. I’d work for him for five years rather than spending the rest of my life in prison. He could arrange for that. He made sure my father and I both knew the extent of his power.” Santos sighs deeply, and I know it’s taking a great effort for him to hold my gaze. “The work I did for him was ugly work—the kind that leaves your hands stained forever no matter how much you scrub at them. Thiago and I, we were his enforcers. We… I hurt a lot of people, Madelena. Maybe if you knew what I was capable of, you wouldn’t be here like this now. You certainly wouldn’t let me touch you, not with these hands I hate so much.”
He turns his face away, but I turn it back. “I’m here, aren’t I?” I bring those hands he hates to my lips and kiss them. “And I love these hands that make me feel so safe.”
He looks confused. “I don’t deserve you. I know that.”
“Are you so unaccustomed to being wanted?” He just watches me, eyes so full of tenderness. “Tell me the rest, Santos.”
He takes a deep breath in. “There were criminals we dealt with, of course. But these lines are for the others. The innocent ones. The pawns in the games of evil men. Every night I came back to that wretched house after I hurt one of the innocents, I would carve out a line in my skin. I did it to feel their pain. Their terror. To keep a part of them in my own skin because they deserved that, at least, and I deserved to be made to remember.”
I hold his face in my hands and lean toward him to kiss him softly on the lips. I then shift my position to lay my cheek against his chest as he cradles me.
“It doesn’t change anything,” I tell him. “The Commander was responsible.”
“No, sweetheart. I could have chosen a different path. The one that would have landed me in prison.”
“He’d have found someone else.”
“Doesn’t matter. I chose selfishly. I can admit that. I try to make amends now, financial amends. It won’t bring anyone back, but I try. And he can’t hurt anyone anymore. Thiago and I made sure of that.”
“You made him disappear.”
“What’s the saying? Live by the sword, die by the sword? When my five years was up, he decided to add another five. He could do that. He held all the power. But he made a mistake. Overreached. You see, Thiago was as trapped as I. Alone, he and I would still be the Commander’s dogs. But together, we were stronger than him. I knew there could always be another five years, and another after that, and another after that. And I was finished.”