“No,suegro,you didn’t need to specify that,” I say compliantly, shoving back from the desk so I can stand up and pace. “You’re not incorrect that I…” I cough. “Lost my temper the other day, and I behaved in a way that I regret, however—”
“However,nada!” Ernesto bellows. “Do not forget who I am,niño. Do not forget that I have no problem coming afteryou, just like all of thosependejosare trying to come after her. The piddly laws of your small country are no match for what I’ve got in my arsenal.”
“Underst—”
Ernesto ends the call before the entire word exits my mouth, and I toss the phone onto the desk.
“Goddammit, Isla,” I growl, raking my hand through my hair as I march out of the office.
I furiously speed-walk the entire way from the east wing to the west wing, and once I arrive at her chamber at the end of the hall, I throw the door open without knocking.
And of course, she’s not in there.
I slam the door shut and spin on the balls of my feet, stomping away in search of her.
After descending the wide staircase, I cross the house, and the sound of conversation that’sway too fucking chippergrates on my nerves. The closer I get to the source of it, I’m able to decipher that it’s Isla and Mrs. Maisely doing some fucking thing in the kitchen, and I hook around the corner in the large dining room into the hall that leads to the kitchen’s service entrance.
Gripping the doorframe, I stride into the kitchen and find the both of them, clothing and hands covered in flour while they appear to be rolling outcookies,andwhat the fuck?
“Duchess,” I snap.
Both Isla and Mrs. Maisely jump as they look up at me.
“I demand an audience with you,” I hiss, pushing against the doorframe and pivoting back out of the room. “Clean yourself up and meet me in the library.Alone.”
It’s pushing five in the evening, and I decide that’s late enough in the day for a drink, so I pour a stiff glass of scotch from a crystal decanter while I wait for her. Three minutes later, I hear the soft pad and shuffle of bare feet crossing the marble and then the oriental rug in the library, and I whip around to point at her with my glass.
“Sitdown,” I bark.
Isla immediately plants her spectacularly round ass on an ornate, emerald green couch in the center of the room, but shoots daggers at me with her seething russet eyes.
“What is your problemtoday, Malachi?”
I stride across the library, suspending the crystal tumbler at the level of my waist as I stop in front of her and tower my height over her defiantly upturned face. “I just got off the phone withyour father.”
She’s leaning forward toward me for all of two seconds before sitting back against the couch and arching one elegant, black eyebrow at me. “And?”
I down the entire glass of scotch. “And the little stunt you pulled the other day showed up in Lili’sTwitter feed.”
“Ha!” A quick, breathy laugh expels from her throat as she crosses her arms over her chest and crosses her legs. She’s dressed in a classy-as-hell white blouse and slim-fitting black pants cropped just above the ankle, and with her hair tied back into a thick, ebony ponytail, she looks like the Latina version of Audrey Hepburn. Something about her appearance hits me over the head with the idea that,if only she hadn’t fucked me over,she honestly would have been the perfect duchess. She always had been the potential perfect duchess. Beautiful, charming, raised well with all the proper social graces, and not to mention the fact that I’d never lovedanythingmore than her. Now that she actuallyismy duchess, it’s all a filthy, twisted alternative version of everything that could have been. “What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light,cabron.”
I pitch forward, bracing one hand on the back of the couch behind her so I can level my gaze on hers, our faces only a breath apart. “I know what that means, so don’t make me wash out your filthy mouth with soap.”
Isla grabs my collar and jerks my face so close to hers that her bottom lip does the slightest brush against mine. “Your mouth is far filthier than mine,” she growls, her voice now low and husky, “and my sister would not have seenanythingif you hadn’t slapped me.”
The bruising on her face has faded to a sickly blueish-greenish-yellow, and it curdles my stomach just like right after I lost control. And apparently, I’m equally out of control right now, because I can’t shut myself up before I bark, “Idid notintend to slap you, Duchess. I’msorry.”
She deserves no apologies from me, and yet, there it is: hanging in the nearly-non-existent space between our faces.
Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, and despite her being completely undeserving of an apology, Idoregret what I did. Even if she has no remorse for whatshedid years ago.
The tight, hard sneer of her expression persists for a moment before her features soften into explicable sadness. “You’re actuallyapologizingto me?”
Truthfully, Iamthe better person in this fucked up marriage, so I respond, “Yes.”
Isla is still holding my collar in her tight fist. “What did Papá say to you?”
“That if I did anything like that again, he would come after me with a shotgun,” I remark in an automatic jab at our shared past. But then, I recall that our inside jokes died amidst her betrayal, and she doesn’t remember the shotgun incident from years ago anyway, and she only knows about it through hearsay from me and her siblings.
