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“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 willneverwant 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’syours.”
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 afútbolgame 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.
Everythingof 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 Ineededto 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.
