She trembles when I release her, dropping her back onto the mattress, half limp. Branded by my belt and my hands and my seed leaking from her body. For a long moment, I stand there, catching my breath as I watch her. This woman I can’t trust. The woman who has managed to get inside my head. The darkest spaces of my mind. The emptiest spaces of my chest cavity. The beating heart no other soul has ever dared to trespass. And at that moment, I realize two things.

I hate her.

Yet I feel something else for her too. Something inexplicable. Something dangerous.

Something I can never allow myself to feel.

With tremulous hands, I release her ties and the belt around her throat, leaving the pillowcase over her face. My tone is ice cold, almost demonic as I give her one final command.

“Get out of my sight.”

31

Santiago

Days pass, turning to nights, and then, inconceivably, to weeks. I spend them locked in my office, alternating between work and poring over every detail of the reports that come in on Abel. He’s a loose end. Something that needs to be dealt with. A fucking Moreno who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of humanity. I know what needs to happen. I dream about it all night and all day. Bleeding him out slowly. Torturing him until he gives me the answers I want. The confirmation of everything I know to be true. Their blood is a stain on society, a systemic disease, and the only way to cure it is to cut it out.

Every day, reports arrive on Eli’s progress in the hospital. He is regaining his mobility, recovering slowly. I’m told he demands to see me. Demands answers on the whereabouts of his family. And one day, he will have them.

This has always been my plan. My intention. But even behind a locked door, stowed safely out of sight, my wife manages to poison my thoughts.

I have not seen her since the night of the incident in the chapel. I have not asked her about the broken case or her reason for burning the sheet because it doesn’t matter. She lit the fire on my altar and in my soul with one intention. To wound an already wounded animal. I am too proud to admit that on some level, she succeeded.

I’m drowning myself in scotch, trying to forget her. Trying to get back to a time and a place when I didn’t think about what her feelings might be when she learns the fates of her brother and father. The fates delivered by the same hands that touch her at night. The same man whose mark she will bear for eternity.

She will never want to look at me again. Slowly, I am coming to understand that. But there can be no alternative.

“You look like hell.”