She wanted him to be all that she imagined him to be.
She wanted him to be the fantasy husband she’d created in her head.
Tonight was the first night she had been afraid—truly afraid—that he might not be. That she might be deluded by sex and a charming, dark voice that had made her fantasies a sweet and dirty reality all night long in his bed.
She had been so sure she was smarter than that. So sure that she wasn’t enough of an idealist to buy into it.
She had trusted herself. Her feelings.
The low-slung car hugged each and every curve of the road as they made their way down into the city, all brightly lit as people began to emerge from their homes to take part in the celebrated nightlife of Barcelona.
They pulled up to the front of the hotel they were staying in, and Diego turned the keys over to the valet.
They walked up the vast front steps and into the ornate building, and Liliana barely had a chance to enjoy the gilded marble lobby with its rich, velvet furnishings, because Diego was whisking her to the elevator that took them to the penthouse. They hadn’t stopped to look at the room earlier. Rather, Diego had simply brought their things and had the staff handle them. She didn’t have time to enjoy it now. Because when the door shut firmly behind them, Diego rounded on her, his dark eyes blazing with black fire. “Go ahead. Make your accusations.”
“What accusations do you expect me to make?” He knew. He knew because...
There were only two options. He either knew because he’d heard them as rumor... Or because it was true.
“I’m not playing a game with you, Liliana. Tell me what you think of me now, wife? Tell me what manner of man you were told you married.”
“My first question is, why did you go off to play the villain with Camilla? What did that serve? Why harass Matías’s bride?”
“I am the villain,” he said, his tone dark. “It would be disappointing if I didn’t make an appearance in the last act to menace, wouldn’t it? It’s just bad storytelling.”
“Why? Why are you obsessed with the idea that everyone see you that way?”
“I wanted to see what this marriage was. If he’d found a woman to fall in love with him.” His words were dripping with disdain. With hatred.
“And are you satisfied with your answers?”
He looked shocked by that line of questioning. “It would seem to me,” he said, his voice dark, “that there is a certain amount of injustice in the fact that my brother could escape the life we lived being who he is. Finding love. Finding marriage. Living on the rancho, redeeming it.”
“Why isn’t that fair?”
“I can redeem nothing. I can only play in the darkness that my father instilled inside of me. Matías is our mother. He is...he is made of different materials. And I have never understood why. I’ve never understood how that was fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Diego, or did you miss the class they gave on that?”
He made a scoffing sound and turned away from her, pacing the length of the room like a caged tiger. “Such a rich thing to be lectured on from a cosseted rich girl.”
“My mother died giving birth to me,” she said. “I never knew her. I never had the chance. She never even got to hold her child. Tell me how that’s fair, Diego? My father didn’t take the opportunity to then become two parents in one. To love me enough to cover my loss. No, he saw it as an opportunity to manipulate me into doing his bidding. Tell me again about fairness.”
“I tried. I tried to overcome my past. I tried to love. It ends in nothing. It ends in darkness.”
Disquiet filled her. She remembered the words Maria had spit at her.
He’s a murderer.
Like his father.
“What happened, Diego? Tell me.” She would rather know. She would rather know and face whatever demon came with the truth.
“You are not my first wife.”
Those words felt like a punch to the stomach. She didn’t want them to be true. She didn’t want what Maria had told her to be true. But now, looking at him, at the horrible bleakness etched into his handsome features, she worried that it was.
“You never mentioned you’d been married before,” she said.
“I don’t like to talk about Karina. But the people in the village where I’m from have little else they like to talk about. The beautiful, vivacious woman that I married when we were both far too young.” He shook his head. “They think they know. They think that it was the same as my father, and sometimes I wonder... I wanted to be in love, Liliana. I wanted to believe that I could escape what I was. I’d spent years losing myself in debauchery, trying to forget. Thinking that if I divorced myself from any and all connection I could at least keep those around me safe. And hell, in the process I might kill myself. And then the world really would be safe.”
He was rambling, a string of words that ran together in a dark endless river. And none of it was answering the most important question she had.
“Did you kill her?” she asked.
“Yes.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE WORLD FELT like it was tilting and she had to grab the back of the couch in order to keep from falling down. “Diego... I don’t... I can’t...” It made no sense. He wasn’t a good man, her husband, but she couldn’t imagine him killing anyone apart from his father. She had no trouble imagining he would happily put an end to the man who had made his life so miserable and stolen his mother from him.
But a woman? His own wife?
She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to run away from this. Wanted to hide. But she had to face this. And him.
She wasn’t a little girl locked in her father’s house anymore. She was a woman. Her own woman.
“Diego,” she said, her voice so much stronger than she had expected it to be. “Did you kill your wife?”
“Not with my hands,” he said, his voice rough. “But the fact of the matter is, she ran off with a man who was worse than a coward, and she found him preferable to me.”
Relief washed through her, and perhaps it shouldn’t have. But he hadn’t killed her. Not really. And that was all that mattered to Liliana. “Start at the beginning.”
“It is not a pleasant story, and you won’t like the outcome. The most that I can say is that what I love, or what I strive to love, tends to meet tragic ends.”
“Diego...”
“I married her. I cared for her. She is dead
,” he said, his voice flat. “Does the rest matter?”
“Yes,” she said, “it matters to me. Because you matter to me. And I want to know...”
“We were married for two years,” he said. “Only two. I was twenty-five. She was twenty-seven. We met at a club, and we were both intoxicated. Not with each other, mind you, but with a substance of some kind. It was instant lust. She was wild and possibly the only person I had ever met who was more untamed than I was. How could I be anything but fascinated by that? I thought... I thought that would be the way. My mother had been sweet. She had loved my father in spite of all that he was. And I imagine that if I found a woman who was my equal in debauchery that then perhaps it would all work. But our marriage was never anything but toxic. Fighting, and then...”
“Sex,” Liliana said, jealousy prickling over her skin. She was angry with herself. Angry for being jealous of a dead woman. A woman who clearly hadn’t had the happiest of relationships with Diego.
But still. She’d been with him. Touched his body. Been brought to ecstasy by him.
No other man had ever touched her. It didn’t seem fair.
“A year and a half into the marriage she became pregnant.”
That word truly was like a slug to the stomach. Another woman. Pregnant with his baby. It burned her up inside.
“I had never wanted children,” he said, “but I was...happy. Though Karina and I had our differences I thought we would have incentive to make our marriage work because of the child. I was happy to have a child.”
“But you don’t...”
“No. I don’t have one. Because when Karina was about six months pregnant she informed me that she was leaving me for another man. My wife. My pregnant wife had found someone else. Someone infinitely preferable to me and my moods.”
“What happened?” she asked, keeping her tone gentle.
“This is why people imagine I killed her. But the truth of the matter is it was nothing so nefarious as a car accident. It was just that... She was the only one in the car. And she was in the passenger seat.”