The ripped skin of my mother’s back comes to mind. Grandfather was brutal in his punishment. If she’d been his by blood, would he have done it? I don’t want to consider the answer to that. Is that why she hates me? Because I sided with him? I was a child. Or is it that she only has the capacity to love one of us, and Theron wins? Because he, like she, was hated by that man. And I was loved.

I wonder if either of them realizes what that love cost me. What it made me. A man with a temper to match his. But perhaps that is simply my nature. Like it was his.

Cigarette smoke wafts through the air as I dismount while Kentucky Lightning slows his pace. My beast and I know one another well. When I ride, we move as one.

“I don’t allow smoking on the property,” I tell Theron as he sucks on the last of his cigarette and drops it to the patio floor.

He looks casually at me, then stubs it out with the toe of his boot.

“Is that because of the old man? He smoked his cigars like a fucking chimney if I recall.”

“Don’t give me another reason to kick your ass out.”

“Well, I’ll try to keep your rule in mind, your honor.” He nudges the cigarette butt off the patio and onto the forest floor. He grins at me, then hops down the steps to meet me. “Twice in one night. To what do I owe the pleasure? Don’t tell me. Do you carry the news that the lady will have me?”

I step toward him. “You stay away from her.”

He smiles. I’m a fucking fool. He read me like a book the instant he saw me with Mercedes. And he’ll use this weakness against me.

“Why don’t you claim her then? You can. She’s your match. A De La Rosa. Imagine our houses united. The power.” I don’t respond, and he studies me. “Or is it that you think you might do to her what grandfather did to our grandmother?”

“She wasn’t your grandmother.”

“Low fucking blow, brother.”

It was.

“What he did to our mother, then?”

“My reasons not to marry don’t concern you. What does concern you is my warning. Keep away from her. She’s young.”

“Twenty-five is not a child.”

“Inexperienced.”

“Is she?” Arrogance turns the corners of his mouth upward. My brother is handsome. Disarmingly so. He can feign innocence so easily. “Still? Are you sure?”

Heat burns inside me, and I fist my hands, force it down. He doesn’t know what I did. He can’t.