He heard the sound of his bedroom door open. After taking a large sip of his scotch, he set the mostly empty glass down. The amber liquid burned in his stomach, just as his anger shot hot through his veins.
Finally Serafia stepped through the open doorway, looking as worn and ragged as if she’d jogged all the way back from the oil platform. Her shirt was untucked and wrinkled. There was a run in her stocking, and her heels were scuffed. Her hair had been up in a bun, but now it was half up, half down in a silky black mess. She was flushed, with bloodshot eyes and dried tear tracks down her cheeks. It made him wonder how long it had taken her to put together this look and assume the role of the innocent in all this. Maybe that was why it took forever for her to get here.
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel. I didn’t—”
“Just stop!” he shouted more forcefully than he intended. The anger that had simmered inside him was approaching a full boil now that he was face-to-face with her again. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know about this, because I know that’s a lie.” He gestured to the white sheet of paper on the table in front of him. “I found the schedule you gave me back in Miami for this week. This event was on there. Patrick Rowling said you actually suggested it. You knew all this time what we were building up to.”
Serafia crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive posture. “In Miami, I didn’t know anything about your abduction. Yes, it was my suggestion because I thought it would be an interesting activity for you. When we reviewed your schedule for the visit, I mentioned it and you said nothing. You just tuned me out half the time. I’m surprised you even had the schedule anymore.”
“And after you knew about what happened to me in Venezuela? After the incident at the vineyard? Did it not occur to you then that these plans for the visit to the oil platform might be a bad idea?”
“I’d forgotten,” she said, tears forming in her eyes again. “With everything that has happened over the past week, I forgot all about the submarine. It slipped my mind and by the time I remembered, it was too late. We were separated by the crowd and I couldn’t warn you without making a scene. I was trying to warn you before they got to that part of the tour.”
Gabriel stood up, his dark gaze searching her face for signs of the treachery he knew was there. Hector had helped him cast her under a shadow of suspicion he couldn’t shake. She’d been hiding her secret agenda beneath a disguise of coy smiles and stiff, respectable suits, but it was there nonetheless. And he’d fallen for it.
“And you showed up to warn me at the perfect time,” he replied with bitterness in his voice. “Late enough for me to embarrass myself and undermine my future as king, but not so late as to convince me that it was deliberate just in case the ploy didn’t work and you might still end up queen.”
A strange combination of emotions danced across Serafia’s face, ending in a look of exasperation. “I don’t want to be queen. I never have and you know why!”
If she really didn’t want to be queen, that only left one option. “Just wanting to stay close enough to ruin me and my family, then?”
Serafia threw her arms up, spinning in a circle before facing him with her index finger held up. “One incident. One. And suddenly those newspaper accusations you dismissed are gospel? Do you have no faith in me at all?”
“I did. For some stupid reason, I pushed aside all my suspicions and allowed myself to trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone in years. Even when that article came out, I dismissed it as nasty gossip or old news from another time and place. I couldn’t believe that you could be using me to get to the throne.”
“Because I’m not,” she insisted.
Gabriel just shook his head sadly. “You’re just as bad as the Gomez family. You know what? You’re even worse. At least they’re transparent about their ambitions. You and your family just sidle up to us like friends, then pervert the entire relationship to suit your own purposes.”
“Gabriel, you said yourself that that story was nonsense. I didn’t get planted with you. You hired me.”
That was the detail that had bothered him, but the longer he sat on the patio, the more he’d begun to wonder if that was really true. “What were you doing in Miami, Serafia? I hadn’t seen you in years, and then all of a sudden, you fly all the way to Miami from Barcelona for my going-away party? You could’ve just waited to see me in Alma if you were that interested in congratulating me, and saved yourself a fortune in time and money.”
Serafia stiffened, her eyebrows drawing together into a frown. “I was in the States for another project and my father asked me to attend on behalf of the family.”