After Their Vows

‘What the hell difference does that make?’ he exploded, without knowing he was going to do that either. ‘You believed he was capable of stealing your rings from you, Angie! You are sitting there like that, fighting back the tears, because you are so relieved that he did not! Now, pack a damn bag!’

‘Don’t shout at me!’ Angie sprang to her feet and glared at him.

‘Do you need me to spell it out to you before you recognise what’s going on here?’ he rasped. ‘The rings do not matter. The credit card he took matters! If we let him get away with what he has done, what do you think he’s going to take next? Or, worse, who is he going to steal from to finance his gambling habit?’

‘It’s not gambling!’ Angie heard herself repeat Alex’s own defence from a hazy place filled with horror and self-disgust. ‘Y-you speculate on the markets all the time, Roque, and I’ve never heard you call it gambling.’

‘I do not steal from other people to do it. I do not drag my family down to a level where they are forced to defend me like you are doing now—just to save his face!’

Guilty as charged, Angie quivered out a pained, shaken breath. ‘He’s all I’ve got and I love him.’

It came out so bleak and so broken that Roque swung away in a lithe, angry movement to glare at the nearest wall with a burning desire to throw his clenched fist at it!

And he knew why he felt like that. Hell, did he know.

‘Where is his love for you, Angie?’ He swung back to her, grinding his teeth together when he watched her flinch. ‘He walks all over you—because you let him. How long do you think the rings would have remained in that drawer if what he’s been doing with the credit card had not been exposed? Do you think he did not notice the ring box?’ he pushed on relentlessly, even as she dropped weakly back onto the bed.

‘He resisted the rings because the credit card was easier. He has more nous than you, meu querida, because I think he worked it out that selling the famous de Calvhos diamond would bring him more trouble than it was worth. And what the hell were you doing, tossing such a valuable object into a drawer as if it was a cheap piece of junk?’

‘I know.’ On an agonised groan she lifted up a hand to cover her face. ‘I’m very sorry.’

Roque released a growl like an angry and frustrated snarling animal. The atmosphere in the room hit incendiary levels because he did not want her apology—he wanted—

Ramming the ring box into his pocket, he reached down and lifted her back to her feet. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘this is what is going to happen.’ He gave her a gentle shake in case she wasn’t listening to him. ‘You are going to pack a bag and come back home with me.’

The home bit sent her lips parting and her chest rising on an intake of air, ready to object.

‘Then,’ he continued uncompromisingly, ‘there is going to be a new order of things in our marriage, where I take full control of your brother and you willingly hand that control over to me.’

‘If you hurt Alex in any way I will never forgive you!’ Angie instantly choked out.

‘I don’t want to hurt him. I want to teach him how to be a man before it’s too damn late!’

When she blinked, as if he’d shocked the hell out of her, Roque made himself tug in a controlling breath.

‘I will tell you something, Angie,’ he continued, less harshly. ‘I think Alex craves to be taught that lesson. I saw the need burning in his eyes when we faced up to each other today. He hates me, but he would love to be me—why do you think he chose to gamble on the stockmarkets in this current financial climate, when only the hardy dare touch it? I am his role model. The only successful male role model he’s had any real contact with. He would have loved to have thrown the credit card and a stack of profited money at me and then told me to go to hell today.’

‘Instead you sent him to m-me, with his tail between his legs.’

‘Exactly where his tail deserved to be,’ Roque delivered without a hint of regret. ‘It was his first lesson in facing up to his actions.’

To her own surprise, Angie let out a strangled snatch of a laugh. ‘You would not be saying that if you’d heard what he had to say about you.’

‘I’m a big boy. I can take his insults.’

‘At a price.’ Angie slipped out of his grasp and moved away from him.

As if someone had cued the precise moment it was to happen, her phone starting ringing. Turning back to the bed, where she’d dropped her bag when she’d come in here, Angie hunted through it and came out with her mobile phone.

‘It’s Alex.’ She knew that it would be. ‘I promised to—’

‘Don’t answer it.’

About to connect with the call, Angie lifted her head up in shock. ‘But he—’

‘Let him stew.’

There was a stony cool in the way Roque said that which sent a chill chasing down Angie’s back. Her fingertip hovered over the appropriate button on the phone, but her gaze clung to Roque’s grim, hard and inflexible expression while she battled with a desire to defy his instruction and the helpless knowledge that he was right.