“Close the door and sit down, Sofia.”
A deep sense of foreboding settled like a cement brick in my belly as the door clicked closed behind me. I took the seat he pointed to. He’d barely looked at me when he’d said it, and when he spoke, it was more like a business transaction than a handing off of his granddaughter to a stranger. I learned who Raphael Amado was, at least what Grandfather was willing to tell me. I learned my fate. A future decided for me, the reasons for which I was not allowed to know. And as my heart grew heavier and my stomach felt like it would heave the lunch I’d eaten, I knew my life would change—had already been changed–irrevocably.
I didn’t even hear him after a while. He spoke almost on autopilot, like the cold, heartless machine he was, and all I could imagine, all I could picture, was a deep, dark canyon and me standing on a cliff that crumbled beneath my feet, moments from falling into the chasm, my life forfeit.
Six months.
I had six months before he’d come to take me.
I was the thing Raphael Amado felt he was due.
I was what he meant.
He’d come on my eighteenth birthday. The same day as my graduation from St. Sebastian. What should be a day of celebration would become the day of my sacrifice. Because I no longer belonged to myself. My life had been traded, exchanged. And I belonged to him now.
My grandfather, a man who should protect me, would give me to a stranger.
With the meager details Grandfather allotted me, I wasn’t sure whom to hate, whom to blame, whom to pity. All I knew was that in six months’ time, I would be taken out of my home and forced to marry Raphael Amado, to become his property, the payment of a debt my grandfather owed.
The image of the two of them in the hallway came to mind. I’d never seen a man stand nose to nose with my grandfather. Raphael Amado hadn’t cowered. The opposite. He’d stood in my grandfather’s house as if it was his. As if he had every right to it. And he’d told my grandfather what he would do, leaving no room for discussion, no doubt as to what would happen.
Any man who could cause my grandfather to yield was formidable.
I knew Raphael Amado was a man to be reckoned with.
And in six months’ time, I’d be his.
Chapter Two
Sofia
June twenty-third. Just one week to graduation.
“That’s all, ladies and gentlemen. Well done. We’ll run through it again tomorrow.”
Sister Lorelai excused us, and ninety kids, this year’s graduating class, broke out into chatter, our shoes loud on the wooden platform erected in the east garden of the property.
“There’s a party at the pool later,” Cathy whispered to our group of five. “Invitees are handpicked. We’re all on the guest list, of course.” She winked, locking arms with Mary.
“Swimsuit optional?” Mary asked.
“Absolutely!” Cathy said, leaning her head in close.
They broke out in giggles. I didn’t feel much like laughing myself.
“Sofia, come on. You’ve missed the last three parties! You can’t not go tonight,” Cathy said. “Exams are over, you have no excuse.”
I smiled at her, my mind elsewhere. “Sorry, tonight?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Party? Boys?”
“Um…”
“I just got a new bikini in the mail yesterday!” Mary said. “I’ll show you.”
“I’m going to run to my room first,” I said, breaking away from the group when we reached the mansion where we were housed.
Mary muttered something, but I didn’t care. They had no idea what would happen to me in a week’s time. And attending a party was the last thing on my mind.
It was a little after seven in the evening. Dinner wouldn’t be served for another half hour, but I wasn’t feeling very hungry. I climbed the stairs to the second floor where Cathy and I shared a room, grateful I’d be alone.
One week before my eighteenth birthday.
How would he do it? Would I get to go home first? Would he just show up to take me? Send someone for me?
I shuddered, the memory of his cold blue eyes still fresh in my mind.
I’d dreamed of those eyes often in the last six months and every night in the last two weeks. Those rage-filled, arctic eyes. He was my enemy, although I didn’t know why. No, that wasn’t true. I did know why. Because my last name was Guardia. All it took was my name for him to hate me because I shared it with my grandfather.
I’d always wondered why Lina and I had my mother’s last name and not our father’s. I understood now. It was required for the inheritance. The inheritors of the Guardia fortune had to carry the last name.
In the study that day six months ago, I’d learned my mother had run away from home to marry my father. And I knew I was right. That our grandfather had felt little emotion toward us apart from ownership of us. Taking us in was not a kindness. It was his victory over my dead mother. Over her sin of falling in love with a man he’d not approved of.