A quiet sob slips from my lips before I can stop it, and tears hover precariously on the edges of my eyes as I turn and try to wipe them away. So much for being numb. I swore I wasn’t going to do this, but for the first time in my life, I really can’t control it. I hate crying. I despise it. And more than anything, I hate that I allowed my brother to see such a display of emotion. If our father were here right now, he would have backhanded me into the next week for showing such cowardice.

“Now, Mercedes,” Santiago clips out. “If you don’t tell me now, you will decide for both of us. You will never hear from me again.”

Horror washes over me as I glance up at him, blurting the words out before I can think about how pathetic it makes me look. “No, you can’t do that!”

“You aren’t in a position to argue anymore.” He turns back toward the window, reaching for the curtain as he glances down into the courtyard again.

I’m terrified of what he might be looking for, but I’m even more terrified that he’ll follow through on his threat. If my brother disowns me, I’ll have nothing left.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” I cry out. "I never meant for any of this to happen. I was just so irritated with you, Santi. To see the way you looked at that Moreno girl. You were falling for her right before my eyes. I could see it, and it felt like such a betrayal."

He releases the curtain and turns to look at me, his pity unmistakable. He can see my jealousy for what it is, but I don’t care. What did he expect? He betrayed our family when he married the enemy. He committed the most egregious crime he could by falling for her. And in the end, instead of following through on our plans as he had promised, he ousted me from the scheme entirely. Our revenge fell by the wayside, and now he’s making his own little family with the blood we swore we’d extinguish from this earth.

"She was going to take you away from me," I snap. "I had to do something. I just wanted to make her hate you. So I hired that courtesan who used to work for IVI to lure you away at the gala and seduce you. Ivy was supposed to come out of the bathroom and see you together. That was it. Nobody was ever supposed to get hurt."