Gloom shrouded the Castillo estate for the next twenty-four hours as the patriarch hovered on the precipice between life and death. The staff worked more slowly, the family talked more quietly, and the sunshine streaming through the windows dulled the second they hit the mansion’s dread-laced air.
I stayed out of everyone’s way except for Xavier’s.
I didn’t deal well with broody billionaires, nor was I particularly good at comforting people. However, I couldn’t bring myself to let him wallow alone, which was how I ended up searching the mansion for him with reinforcements in hand.
I had some free time—I’d finished the press statement last night, and no major outlets had picked up Perry’s piece about my misadventures in Spain. I wasn’t a celebrity, but the lack of response was suspicious. Nevertheless, I took it as a gift from the universe; I had enough real problems without creating hypothetical ones.
I finally found Xavier camped out in the den with an ESPN documentary about the world’s top athletes. One of his arms draped across the back of the couch while the other held a bottle of the Castillo Group’s signature drink.
Tousled hair, cashmere sweats, three-hundred-dollar T-shirt. That was the Xavier I knew and didn’t quite love.
Something akin to relief stirred in my chest. At least he wasn’t acting totally out of character.
“Sorry, Luna, you’ll have to find another TV for your rom-coms,” Xavier said without looking away from the screen. “This one is occupied.”
“I know. I didn’t come to watch a movie.” I sat beside him and unloaded my armful of goods on the coffee table. “I came to see you.”
His gaze flicked to me with apparent surprise before it cooled again. “Why?”
“You need to eat.” I eyed the empty beer bottles scattered around us. “And drink something without alcohol.”
“You came to feed and hydrate me?” A thread of amusement ran beneath Xavier’s otherwise dubious tone.
“Like you’re a pesky pet I got stuck with. Here.” I shoved a bottle of water in his hand and a plate of homemade empanadas in his lap.
He hissed and quickly lifted the plate off his legs, only to drop it back just as fast. “Jesus, that’s hot.”
“Then you should eat them before they burn your favorite appendage,” I said innocently.
A hint of laughter pulled on his mouth, and he wiped at it with his hand before he picked up an empanada. “Doris’s specialty and my favorite. How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I saw you weren’t eating, so I asked if she’d make some food for you, and she produced those.”
With my admission came the tiniest tremor—a frisson of electricity that hummed between us and swallowed the lightheartedness in the air.
Xavier’s hint of laughter disappeared. Warmth rushed to the pit of my stomach, and I unconsciously shifted beneath his burning gaze.
“Thank you,” he said, a strange note in his voice. “That was… very thoughtful of you.”
I replied with a stiff smile, hoping he didn’t see the blood rising to the surface of my skin. It occurred to me that I might’ve been the only person who’d checked on Xavier’s well-being since he arrived—everyone else was too busy or didn’t care—and the realization sent a conflicting rush of emotions through me.
He was an adult. He didn’t need someone looking after him, but I felt gratified when he ate the empanadas and drank the water without complaint anyway.
“How many do you represent?” Xavier tilted his chin toward the screen, where a gallery of superstar athletes flashed in between clips. They represented the best and brightest of every major professional sports league in the Western Hemisphere: NFL. NBA. MLB. Premier League. La Liga. So on and so forth.
I crossed my legs, still a touch unnerved by my reaction to him earlier. That’s what happens when I don’t get enough sleep. “One.”
A deep baritone recounted the meteoric rise of Asher Donovan over footage of his teen and early club years, culminating with the legendary halfway line goal against Liverpool that’d catapulted him into a household name.
I glanced at Xavier as the screen flipped to headlines about Asher’s record-setting transfer to Blackcastle.
“But you knew that already,” I said.
His mouth quirked into a crooked smile. “Sure. As long as I’m still your favorite.”
Despite his disheveled appearance, he smelled like soap and fresh laundry. He reached for a napkin, his leg grazing mine, and heat traveled from my thigh to my stomach.
“Try one.” Xavier used the napkin to pick up an empanada and handed it to me. “You haven’t lived until you’ve had one of Doris’s empanadas.”
I took a tentative bite. Flaky, tender butteriness melted in my mouth, followed by a rich explosion of flavor. Ground beef, tomatoes, onions, garlic. Perfectly seasoned and perfectly balanced against the dough.
“Wow,” I said, slightly stunned. It’d been a while since I’d eaten something so simple yet so good. “You weren’t kidding.”
“Told you.” Xavier’s dimples made a surprise appearance. “Have another one. She loves making them. Says it’s soothing.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Did you eat lunch or breakfast?”
No. “I brought the food for you.”
“Yes, and I’m sharing it with you.” He nudged the plate toward me. “I insist.”
Xavier wouldn’t ease up until I agreed, so I reached for another piece and settled deeper in the couch. Sharing food was a simple, platonic act that people did every day, so why did my stomach feel like a breeding ground for a fresh swarm of butterflies?
I kept my gaze planted on the television until I finished eating and brushed the crumbs from my hands. “What?” I asked when he continued staring at me instead of the TV.
“Still wearing this, I see.” His fingers brushed Pen’s friendship bracelet, and my muscles instinctively tensed. The bracelet wasn’t the most professional accessory, but I could easily hide it with long sleeves. “You ever going to tell me about the mystery gifter?”
“I’ll tell you the day you get a job.”
His low laugh sent the butterflies soaring. “Touché.”
Xavier dropped his hand, and oxygen flowed a little more freely. “When I was a kid, I thought I would be the next Diego Maradona,” he said. “Unfortunately, I was more interested in hanging out with my friends than training.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed.” The sad part was, I bet he could’ve gone pro if he’d put the time and effort in.
That was what galled me about him and why I was harder on him than anyone else. Xavier wasn’t my rudest or most entitled client, but he had the greatest wasted potential.
“At least I’m consistent.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You can always count on me for a good time.”
Maybe. But beneath the champagne showers and yacht parties, how good a time was he actually having?
“So, spill it,” he said when the documentary segued from Asher to LeBron James. “What sport did you play growing up?”
“What makes you so sure I played one?”
“Sloane.” Xavier side-eyed me with a look that made my mouth curve despite myself. “You are too competitive not to have captained a team or three.”
True.
“Tennis, volleyball, and golf,” I admitted. “I tried soccer, but it wasn’t for me. My sister loves it though.”
The last part slipped out without thought, and Xavier perked up like a predator sensing prey.
“Your sister?” A speculative gleam entered his eyes. “Georgia, right?”
Shit. I never brought up my family, so I didn’t blame him for being curious, but the sound of her name on his lips brought those empanadas back up.
“No.” The thought of Georgia playing soccer, of all things, was laughable. “My other sister, Penelope.”
Xavier’s brows scrunched. “I didn’t know you had another sister.”
“Most people don’t.”
Pen was too young to have made her official society debut yet, and George and Caroline paid a fortune to keep her and her condition out of the press.
“She’s my half-sister” I clarified. “Same father, different mother. I’m pretty sure she’s watched every soccer game that’s ever been recorded. I got her an autographed Donovan jersey for her seventh birthday a few years ago, and you should’ve seen her smile.”
My heart pinched at the memory. Her birthday had been weeks before her CFS diagnosis. I took her to a local game while George was at work and Caroline was at a charity luncheon. I hadn’t seen her so happy since.
“How old is she now?” Xavier asked. “Nine.”
“Two years ago.” His gaze burned a hole in my cheek, and I realized my mistake.
My estrangement happened five years ago. I’d basically admitted I was breaking the terms of my family split.
Vivian, Isabella, Alessandra, and now Xavier. Besides Rhea and Pen herself, I could count the number of people who knew I was in touch with my sister on one hand.
The thought should’ve terrified me, but something about Xavier muted my usual worries. My gut told me he could keep a secret, and while I didn’t trust my gut one hundred percent when it came to him, he’d shared enough vulnerability of his own that I was willing to give him this piece of myself without much resistance.
Nevertheless, I lifted my chin and met his eyes, daring him to follow through with his train of thought. “Yes.”
Xavier didn’t flinch beneath the force of my stare. “She’s almost in the double digits,” he said. “Big milestone.”
So, how does nine feel? You’re almost in the double digits.
Pressure expanded in my throat. I hadn’t discussed Pen with anyone other than Rhea in so long that a conversation about something as simple as her age was tearing through my composure. My secret had bubbled inside me for years. It needed a release valve, and somehow, in the most unexpected of ways, I’d found it in Xavier Castillo.
He didn’t ask for details about Pen or how long I’d been in touch with her. He didn’t ask if I was talking to anyone else in the family. He didn’t ask anything at all.
He simply watched me with those dark, fathomless eyes, and the unseen force that’d brought me here reared its head again, urging me to confide in him and let someone in fully for once.
My self-preservation fought back like hell.
Moments of connection were one thing. Opening up to someone was something else entirely.
Luckily, I was saved from making a decision when a familiar shadow spilled across the floor.
I straightened, snapping into work mode while Xavier visibly tensed.
“It’s your father.” Eduardo cut straight to the chase. “He’s awake.”
They left me alone with him.
My father wasn’t up for seeing a crowd, so Dr. Cruz forced everyone else to stay in the hall while I…well, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
I’d run out of things to say to him a long time ago.
Nevertheless, I came up to his bedside, my heart thumping to an anxious beat when dark eyes latched onto mine.
“Xavier.”
His paper-thin whisper sent a chill down my spine. The last time I saw him, he could speak normally and I could pretend the status quo was still intact. Even if the status quo sucked, there was comfort in familiarity.
But this? I didn’t know what to make of this man or situation. Should I forgive and forget because he was terminally ill? Did the last moments of his life erase the moments of mine that he’d made a living hell? What did a son say to the parent he was supposed to love but hated?
“Father.” I forced a smile. It presented as a grimace.
His rheumy gaze traveled from the top of my sleep-mussed hair to the toes of my sneakers. It ascended to rest on my sweatpants. “Esos pantalones otra vez.” Those pants again.
My jaw clenched. Of course our first interaction in months revolved around his disapproval of my choices. The status quo lives and breathes.
“You know me.” I pushed a hand into my pocket and tossed out a careless smile. “I aim to displease.”
“You’re the Castillo heir,” he snapped in Spanish. “Act like it, especially…” A fit of coughs rattled his lungs. When they finally died down, he inhaled a wheezing breath before continuing. “Especially when I’ll be gone within the week.”
The hand in my pocket fisted. It was the first time my father had ever acknowledged his mortality, and it took every ounce of willpower not to flinch.
“We’ve had this conversation multiple times,” I said. “I’m not taking over the company.”
“Then what are you going to do? Live off my money forever? Raise another…” He coughed again. “Raise another crop of degenerates who’ll turn the family fortune into nothing?”
The monitors beeped with his increased heart rate.
“Grow up, Xavier,” he said harshly. “It’s time for you…” This time, a hacking cough took him out of commission for a full minute. “It’s time for you to be useful for once.”
“You want me, someone who doesn’t want the job and will never want the job, to be CEO? You’re supposed to have good business sense, Father, but even I can tell you that’s not a sound strategy.”
His cough morphed into a phlegmy laugh. “You? CEO of the Castillo Group as you are now? No. I would be better off putting Lupe’s dog in charge.” My father’s eyes slid to the closed door. “Eduardo will train you. This is your legacy.”
My hand ached from the force of my grip. “No, it’s not. It’s yours.”
Perhaps it was crass to argue with a dying man, but this was what our relationship was like to the very end: him trying to force me into a mold I didn’t fit into; me resisting.
There’d been a time when I tried. Before my mom died, I soaked up all my time with him, whether that was at a fútbol game or in his office. I lived for the dreams, the pats on the head, the bonding over a shared future. I was going to carry on the family legacy, and we were going to rule the world.
That was before we became the villains in each other’s stories. “Yours or mine, it’s all the same.” My father’s mouth twisted, the thought as appealing to him as it was to me.
I stared out the window at the gardens. Beyond them lay the rest of Bogotá, and Colombia, and the world.
In our household, tradition formed a prison in which no change entered and no member escaped. I’d come the closest, but a yoke of fear tethered me to the grounds the way a curse tethered spirits to the mortal plane.
I’d been here for one day, and I was already suffocating. I needed a breath of fresh air. Just one.
“Your mother left you a letter.” Six words. One sentence.
That was all it took to obliterate my defenses.
My attention snapped back to the bed, where satisfaction filled my father’s smile. Physically weak though he may be, he was back in control, and he knew it.
“She wrote it when you were born,” he said, each word tumbling through me like boulders in an avalanche. “She wanted to give it to you on your twenty-first birthday.”
Static crackled in my ears until the implications of what he was saying crashed down around me and detonated. Mushroom clouds billowed into the air, robbing me of breath.
Everything of hers had been destroyed in the fire—photos, clothing, mementos. Anything that could’ve reminded me of her, gone.
But if she wrote me a letter…my father wouldn’t have mentioned it unless it was intact. And if it was intact, it meant a piece of her lived on.
I swallowed the emotion burning in my throat. “It’s far past my twenty-first birthday.”
“I didn’t remember it. It was so long ago.” His voice was fading. We didn’t have long before he went under again, but I needed to know about the letter. How had it not burned alongside the rest of her things? Where was it? Most importantly, what was in it?
“She kept it in one of our safes.” Another wheezing breath. “Santos found it when he was tidying up my affairs.”
Santos was our family lawyer.
The safe explained why the letter was intact, but it gave rise to another host of questions.
“When did he find it?” I asked quietly.
How long had my father been keeping it from me, and why was he choosing to tell me now?
He averted his gaze. “Top drawer of my desk,” he rasped. His eyes drooped closed, and his breathing steadied into a slower rhythm.
Foreboding sank its teeth into me as I stared at his prone form. He was skin and bones, so frail I could snap him in half with one hand, but in true Alberto Castillo form, he exerted undue control over me even from his deathbed.
The room was eerily quiet despite the monitors, and a cold sensation trailed after me when I finally turned and walked out.
My family had dispersed from the hall, tired of waiting. Only Dr. Cruz and Sloane remained outside the door.
“I’ll check on your father,” the doctor said, astute enough to pick up on my volatile mood. He slipped into the room, and the door closed behind him with a soft click.
Concern shadowed Sloane’s face. She opened her mouth, but I brushed past her before she could get a word out.
A strange underwater silence bloomed in the hall, muffling every noise except the thud of my footsteps.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The hall split into opposite directions at the end. The left led to my bedroom; the right led to my father’s study.
I should retreat to my room. I wasn’t in the right headspace for reading the letter, and a part of me worried there was no letter. I wouldn’t put it past my father to play some sick game where he got my hopes up only to crush them.
I swung left and made it two steps before morbid curiosity pressed replay on my father’s confession.
Your mother left you a letter. Top drawer of my desk.
I came to a halt and squeezed my eyes shut. Dammit.
If I were smart, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of taking the bait. But this was my chance to potentially hold a piece of my mother again, and even if he was lying, I had to know.
I backtracked to the other end of the hall and into his office. The top drawer was unlocked, and a sticky mess of dread, anticipation, and anxiety roiled my stomach as I slid it open.
The first thing I saw was a gold pocket watch. Beneath it, a yellowing envelope sat tucked against the dark wood.
I unsealed it with a shaky hand, smoothed out the letter inside…and there it was. A page filled with my mother’s flowing script.
My throat constricted.
Emotion swept through me, quick and violent as a summer storm, but relief didn’t get a chance to settle before I started reading.
It was only then that I understood exactly why my father had told me about the letter.
