Page 113 of Veiled Amor

Oh, wow. Straight in at the deep end then, huh? Okay.

“Okay. Your brother worked for my father about a year previous, you remember?”

“Sí.” His jaw got tight. Lucia recalled listening to a yelled argument outside of the estate gates one day. Capone telling Santiago how dumb he was to work for Nicholas. That deep voice enthralled her, and from then on, Capone was on Lucia’s radar.

“He was low level, which meant he ran from A to B delivering to the sellers, but he was also always around the estate.”

“He caught your eye?”

“I wasn’t interested in dating Santiago, there was only ever one Mercado brother for me.” When Capone’s brow folded in, she went on. She had to tell this in chronological order.

“If he saw me by the pool, we’d talk a little, he’d boss me about sunscreen, said his mom always lectured him too. As I told the FED, I heard a lot of things I wasn’t meant to hear. One day I was outside dad’s office and Santiago was begging him not to tell anyone. The last thing you ever do to Nicholas is show him you’re weak. He pounced on Santiago for that and used it against him. Informing Santiago he would keep his secret, not tell your father, but he had to do something in return. He accepted without knowing what it was.” Santiago’s third mistake. “The favor was to marry me. Dad explained he wanted meunavailablefor a few years. So that’s how I ended up with the same surname as you.”

After what felt like a week of silence, Capone spoke. “Did you dispute it?”

“Dispute it? I downright refused when dad told me what he had in mind. I wasn’t given a choice, Capone, it’s dad’s way, the end. He told me what I had to do and expected me to do it.”

“What a piece of fucking work. Are you sure you don’t want me to kill him,amor?”

Her smile wasn’t happy, but it was a smile of relief. “For what he did to your family, I should say yes. How can you let that revenge go?”

“Some things are worth letting go for.” He meant her and Lucia’s heart flooded with love.

“Are you sure?”

“Go on with what you need to tell me,nena.”

“I remember vividly catching your eye at the wedding and I so wanted you to stop it somehow,” she shared, “which was silly because you weren’t aware of me from any other girl.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,”

“Oh?”

“I was more thanawareof you, Lucia. I nearly broke the bones in my hand from squeezing my fists together so I wouldn’t stop that wedding. You were eighteen, too young for me then, I thought you and my brother were in love. A whirlwind courtship. Mama was pleased because she thought it would settle his ass down, stop him from doing dumb shit.”

All she heard were the words saying he wanted to stop the wedding. Her heart raced. If only he had, things would be so different now.

History was weird. She could look back and regret what couldn’t be, or be grateful for what they had now. She chose the latter.

“I never understood why you’d want to keep in contact with me after everything that happened. But I hung off our calls like a lifeline, desperate for you to change the narrative, anything to suggest I wasn’t a family obligation.”

A twitch moved across Capone’s lips. It could be amusement or irritation, right now she wasn’t so sure.

“You know you were more to me than I allowed myself to have.”

So there was no more confusion between them, and he could discard his self-imposed guilt, she told him. “There was never anything physical between Santiago and me. Not a kiss, a hug or anything else. We didn’t share a bed. The villa my father gave us, he was hardly there at all. We weren’t enemies, but neither of us wanted that marriage, Gi.”

Capone pinned Lucia with his unmasked, moody eyes, a wealth of questions crossing through them.

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“He had his reasons.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? All this time I’ve thought I did him dirty by sleeping with you, by wanting you.” There was no mistaking the agony in Capone’s voice, and she felt hers crack as she answered. “I tried to tell you, remember? You cut me down every time I attempted to talk about what happened. I was afraid you’d cut me out altogether, so I complied with your wishes.”

Dropping his head over his hands, she heard him suck air through his teeth and then he looked up and her sweet man was unrecognizable. His face and eyes were hard, so was his voice. A hard, tortured voice. And Lucia felt the pain of it. “All this goddamn time,” he was suddenly on his feet and Lucia watched him pace behind the couch, “I asked him at the wedding ‘are you happy, Santi?’ and he told me, ‘sí, brother.’ Why wouldn’t he tell me it was all a lie?”

“He probably was happy because he’d gained a higher position with my dad. I told him so many times he was doing the wrong thing, he insisted he had it handled. He talked about impressing you and your brothers, your father especially, he didn’t want to disappoint you.”