Chapter 2 CHAPTER 2

Julia’s POV.

The door was still rattling in its frame when the nurse came in with a wheelchair and a paper bag, and pulled the IV out of the back of my hand without meeting my eyes.

“Your husband sent this.”

Inside was a gray dress buttoned up to the neck and a pair of flats. Not even my accountant dresses like that, and she dresses so the tax office will feel sorry for her.

I put it on sitting on the bed, my fingers slipping on every button, wondering how many times Juliana had fastened that same fabric with hands full of scars.

Downstairs, Alejandro was waiting beside a black car with the passenger door open. He didn’t offer me his hand; he waited with his own in his pockets for me to get in by myself, and only then shut the door and came around the car.

He pulled out without a word.

For several blocks there was nothing but the engine. My hands were closed on my lap and I had to open them on purpose, because if that man had pushed my sister I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of watching me shake.

“I’ve got pieces,” I said finally, quietly. “Loose things I don’t know where to put.”

“Like what?”

“A staircase. Somebody screaming.”

His fingers tightened on the wheel, just enough to bring out his knuckles.

“Who was screaming?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“So where were you?”

“Out.”

He put on the turn signal and changed lanes with a calm that made me want to rip the wheel out of his hands.

“I fell in your house the day after we got married, and you were out?”

“In my father’s house,” he corrected, and his jaw hardened for a second before it went back to normal. “And yes.”

In business I learned that a man who answers in one-word sentences either knows nothing or knows too much, and this one didn’t look like he was in the dark about the price of air, so I changed tactics.

“How did we meet?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re better.”

“I’m well enough to ask.”

“And I’m not in the mood to answer.”

I swallowed and went for what I actually needed to know.

“Were we… close?”

For the first time since the hospital he turned his head and took his time going over my face, stopping at my mouth before coming back to my eyes, and all of a sudden it was hard to breathe inside that car.

“Define close.”

My neck went hot and I looked out the window.

“Did you love me?”

“I married you.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“No.”

And he went back to watching the road.

I was left with that “no” stuck in my throat, not knowing whether it meant “I’m not answering you” or “I didn’t love you,” and what turned my stomach was understanding that my sister had probably never dared to ask him.

The mansion appeared at the end of a private street, and the gate closed behind the car before I had time to think about running.

A blonde woman with a string of pearls came down to meet us with her arms open.

“My girl! Thank God, we’ve been worried sick.”

She took my face in both hands and her thumb stopped half an inch from the painted bruise. My heart stopped.

“Margarita, don’t touch her,” Alejandro said behind me. “The wound is fresh.”

She pulled her hands back without dropping the smile, but her eyes stayed fixed on my temple, dry and attentive, like she was counting stitches she couldn’t quite see.

“Forgive me, sweetheart, it’s the emotion.” She stroked my arm. “The doctors were saying you might never open your eyes again, and here you are. What a… quick recovery.”

She turned toward the house.

“Catalina, come down and say hello to your cousin.”

Upstairs, leaning on the banister, a dark-haired girl with red lips was watching us with her arms crossed, and she didn’t move.

“Cousin, are you really putting her in your room?” she said to Alejandro, without looking at me. “They say with head injuries like that they end up like houseplants. You water her, you put her by the window and you’re set.”

She talked about me the way you talk about a piece of furniture somebody forgot to return.

“Oh, Catalina, the things you say,” Margarita scolded her, with a sweetness that wasn’t scolding her at all.

Alejandro took me by the elbow and walked me toward the stairs, and on the first step my legs refused.

That was where my sister had fallen. I grabbed the banister with a hand that was sweating so much it slipped, and my throat closed until breathing took effort.

“Go up,” Alejandro said, quietly, next to my ear.

I didn’t know whether it was an order or a shove made out of words, but I went up. Walking past Catalina, she moved aside just enough that my shoulder hit hers.

“Good thing you hold on now,” she murmured.

I turned and looked her straight in the face, one long second, without lowering my eyes. She blinked and uncrossed her arms. Then I remembered who I was supposed to be and dropped my head, but it was already too late, because Catalina stood there watching me until I turned the corner of the hallway.

When Alejandro opened the bedroom door, the first thing I looked for was a second bed, and there wasn’t one.

“Is there another room?” I asked. “I sleep terribly since the fall, I don’t want to bother you.”

“This is our room.” He set the hospital bag down on an armchair. “Nothing has changed.”

I went into the closet so I wouldn’t have to look at his face. All the clothes were in dull colors, chosen so nobody would look twice, and on one shelf I found a hair tie with a red hair tangled in it.

I sat down on the floor with the tie in my palm and covered my mouth with my fist. I bit my knuckles until I left the marks of my teeth, my eyes burning and my chest shaking without a sound, and I counted to twenty before I got up, because on the other side of that door was the man who could least be allowed to see me cry.

I came out with a brown dress hanging from my hand.

“Are all my clothes like this?”

“You picked them.”

“Well, I don’t want them anymore.”

He held my eyes with that long pause I was starting to hate.

“Tomorrow you’ll have a card.”

I used the headache to get out of coming down to dinner. Then I locked myself in the bathroom and stayed in the tub until the water went cold and my fingers wrinkled, praying he’d be asleep by the time I came out.

He wasn’t. He was reading documents sitting up in bed, his shirt open halfway down his chest and the sleeves rolled over forearms that had no business looking like that on the prime suspect in an attempted murder.

I grabbed a blanket and headed for the armchair.

“In the bed.”

“I’m fine here.”

“If Margarita finds out tomorrow that you slept in the chair, the whole house will know before breakfast.” He turned a page without looking at me. “You decide who you’d rather explain yourself to.”

I lay down on the very edge, my back to him, so far over that half my hip hung off the mattress. Alejandro turned off the lamp and the bed sank as he settled in.

Every time he moved I squeezed the sheet inside my fist, my eyes open in the dark and my ear on his breathing, waiting for those hands to finish at any moment what somebody had started on that staircase.

But his breathing turned slow and heavy, until he fell asleep with a calm that felt like an insult.

I let out my breath and loosened my fingers.

Then he rolled over.

A heavy, warm arm dropped across my waist and dragged me into the middle of the bed, pulling my back flush against his chest. I went rigid, my heart hammering in my throat, while he buried his face in my hair, let out a long sigh against the back of my neck and tightened his hold like I belonged to him.

He didn’t wake up.

I tried to work myself loose, just a little, and his arm closed tighter, asleep and stubborn, not giving me anywhere to go.

I lay there with my eyes wide open in the dark, feeling against my back the steady heartbeat of the man at the top of my list of suspects.

Son of a bitch. Less than a day in that house and I was already sleeping in the enemy’s arms.