Chapter 7 CHAPTER 7

Julia's POV.

I heard the car engine at the entrance after sitting on the dressing room floor for an hour and a half, the notebook open across my knees.

I slammed it shut. I wrapped it in one of my sister's scarves, shoved it to the very back of the leather suitcase, lifted the suitcase onto the highest shelf, and covered it with the blanket. Then I wiped my face with the back of my hand before walking out into the bedroom.

I barely made it to the bathroom and turned on the faucet when the bedroom door opened.

Alejandro stopped in the bathroom doorway, his suit jacket hanging from one hand. He was still wearing his tie, loosened, and his hair was tousled as if he had run his fingers through it many times on the way here.

He looked at my mouth.

I looked at myself in the mirror: my split lip, swollen on the left side, the scab already formed and a bruise spreading up my cheekbone.

"I hit it on the closet door," I said.

"Sit down."

"I'm fine."

"Sit down, Juliana."

He dropped his jacket onto the armchair, opened the cabinet beneath the sink, and took out a first-aid kit that he knew exactly where to find, which said things about that house that I preferred not to think about at that hour. He put his hands on my waist and sat me on the edge of the sink as if I weighed no more than the jacket.

And he didn't ask who did it.

That was the worst part. A man comes home and finds his wife with a split lip, and the first thing anyone would do is ask who. Not him. He opened the bottle, wet the gauze, and stood between my knees with the ease of someone who already knew the procedure.

Because he already knew. Because in that house, women's mouths got split open and someone simply took out the first-aid kit.

"It's going to sting," he said.

"It stung more when they did it."

He took my chin between two fingers and turned my face toward the light. The gauze touched my lip, and I dug my nails into my palm to keep from moving, but he didn't let go of my chin or slow down. He cleaned it carefully, edge by edge, blowing on the wound every now and then.

And that warm breath unsettled me more than any scream could have.

This was the same man who had examined my knuckles at the hospital like he was checking an invoice. The same man who had let his aunt put a coffee pot in my hands in front of the entire table and had kept reading his phone. The same man who had been in this house the night my sister tumbled down those stairs.

And now he was tending to my face with more care than anyone had ever shown me.

"Does it hurt here?" He ran his thumb beneath my cheekbone without pressing.

"No."

"You're a terrible liar."

He stepped half a pace closer to reach the other side and ended up so close that I could feel the heat coming off his shirt. There was a smear of dried blood on his right cuff that wasn't mine, and I didn't ask whose it was, because I've spent my whole life negotiating, and I know when a question comes at a high price.

He released my chin and took my left hand to put some cotton over a scrape on the back of it.

I stopped breathing. That's the hand with the knuckles. The hand my sister had covered in white lines, while mine was as clean as a contract sheet.

Alejandro turned it over, looked at it against the bathroom light, held it there for one long second, and placed the cotton over it.

"It's going to leave a mark," he said.

"One more. Who cares?"

He raised his eyes and fixed them on mine.

"One more?"

I felt the floor shifting beneath me and grabbed the edge of the sink.

"Put another way, I already have enough marks for this week."

He said nothing. He closed the first-aid kit and planted both hands on the marble, one on either side of my legs, leaving me trapped there with the advantage of looking down at him for the first time.

From this close, I could see his two-day-old beard and a tiny scar on his eyebrow that no one had treated in time. He smelled like cedar and a hospital. My knees were apart, his hips right between them, and neither of us moved to fix that.

"Why didn't you call me?" he asked.

"For what?"

"So I could get here sooner."

I laughed, and my lip hurt.

"Sooner than what, Alejandro? Before the first slap or the second?" I pushed my hair back. "No one in this house lifts a finger. Your aunt watched. Your cousin laughed. The girl went to the kitchen and pretended she couldn't hear. I have no one to call here."

Something shifted in his jaw.

"You have me."

"You weren't here."

"I'm here now."

"You came too late," I told him, and climbed down from the sink, pushing him back with my hand against his chest. "Ask your aunt how far away your office is."

I walked into the bedroom with my legs trembling on the inside, and he followed me halfway before stopping there.

"Juliana."

"I'm tired."

"Juliana, look at me."

I turned because I had no other choice, and he was standing in the middle of the room with his stained shirt and that stone face that never seemed to move.

"Your father will never lay a hand on you in this house again," he said.

"Do you promise? And who's going to tell him, you or me?"

There was a knock at the door.

Two soft, polite knocks, the kind that sounded like a courtesy visit but were actually the sound of a knife being pulled from a drawer. I opened it myself because I felt like doing it before he could get there.

Margarita was standing in the hallway, still wearing her pearl necklace at that hour, her hands folded over her stomach.

"My dear, I'm glad you're awake." She looked at my lip with a pity that lasted as long as a blink. "Your father is waiting for you in his study."

"It's late."

"He's still downstairs." She tilted her head. "If I were you, I'd go down, darling. If he has to come upstairs to get you, things are going to get ugly, and this house has had enough of a scene for one day."

I held her gaze and she held mine, and in that doorway, we both knew exactly what we were doing.

"Tell him I'm coming."

I closed the door.

I stood there for a second with my forehead against the wood, then went to get my shoes, because I wasn't about to go see that man barefoot.

Alejandro blocked my path.

"Don't go downstairs."

"I have to."

"No." He took my hand, the one with the clean knuckles, and held it between both of his. "Let me handle your father. I can protect you, Juliana. You only have to ask me."

And there he was: the man my sister had asked for help two days before she was found at the foot of a staircase at dawn. The man who had been in this house that night. The one who said he could protect me while his two women served me tea with drops for my nerves.

I pulled my hand from his, finger by finger.

"I don't need it."

And I went down to the study alone.