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“Has it gotten away from you?” Matías looked surprised.
“Liliana Hart,” Diego said, “was supposed to be the simplest and softest of targets. I have watched her for years while doing business with her father. Sheltered. Meek, or so I thought. She is such an innocent, Matías, you have no idea. At least, she was.”
Diego felt like his heart was being squeezed even as he spoke of her like that. But it was the truth. He’d imagined her a piece of light he could capture easily. A lightning bug he could keep in a jar and claim for his own without consideration.
But Liliana wasn’t meek. She wasn’t soft or breakable.
She was a force.
She damn well might have broken him.
“So, neither of us play?” Matías asked. “That’s what you’re proposing?”
“Yes,” Diego responded. “I already called Grandfather and told him that Liliana was divorcing me.”
“Is she?”
“I have already put her on a plane back to America. Along with all of the evidence of her father’s misdeeds so that she has no fear I will use it against her.”
“We are in a similar place, then. As I have sent Camilla away. Back to her family rancho, and have just finished procuring documents for her to sign that will restore ownership.”
Diego laughed darkly. Then he reached out and grabbed hold of the whiskey tumbler in Matías’s hand. He took a drink, quick and decisive. It burned all the way down. He hoped it would blot out some of the pain that he felt. It didn’t.
“I thought you were afraid that was poisoned,” Matías pointed out.
“At this point, I feel it would be all the same either way.”
Matías shrugged, and took a sip of his own whiskey. “You may not be wrong.”
“I have always found it astoundingly simple to take what I want,” Diego said. “Why was it not with her?”
Matías sighed heavily, his gaze on the wall behind Diego. “You’re not going to like my conclusion.”
“Oh, probably not.” Diego didn’t like anything about this. Why should he like his brother’s conclusions?
“Love.”
The word was like a dagger straight through his heart. It was all that he wanted. All that he feared.
“I’ve already tried love,” Diego said. “Against my better judgment.”
But he hadn’t loved Karina. Not really. He’d seen the chance for oblivion in her and he’d taken it. But he hadn’t loved her.
“It ended badly,” Matías said.
“Yes,” Diego answered slowly, “though not in the way that people think.”
“I knew that already.”
The two brothers stared at each other for a moment. They had never been close. The way they had grown up had simply made it impossible. Diego had acted out. He’d made himself into a man that Matías would never want to speak to, much less spend any time with.
His brother had always wanted to escape the kind of debauchery their father had reveled in, and Diego had played on the outskirts of it. Why would Matías want to be close with him?
Maybe that had been the whole point. To push him away. To not risk anything with his brother. To not ever be close with another living soul because loss hurt too badly.
Maybe it was time to try. To talk about something they never had. If they could do that, if they could deal with that hideous childhood they’d both managed to survive, maybe they could take a step toward a different life.
Diego hadn’t imagined Matías needed that, but now he wondered. He’d lost his wife, the same as Diego had lost his.
“I know that our father killed our mother,” Diego said, his tone grave.
“Dios,” Matías said. “Why did you never say?”
“I don’t know how to talk about such things,” Diego said. “And he...threatened me. And as a boy I was too frightened to stand against him. I am a coward, Matías, and I have to live with that.”
“You were a child, not a coward.”
Diego went on as though Matías hadn’t spoken. “And I know that... That I am broken. Just as he was.”
“No,” Matías said, the denial so swift and fierce it shocked Diego. “You’re not. He was. Abuelo is. We can be something else.”
“Can we?”
“Does Liliana love you?”
I love you. Don’t you love me?
“I don’t think so.”
How could she? How? It didn’t make any sense. He was the monster who’d kidnapped her, and then denied her love when she gave it freely. She’d asked to be let go, and he’d obliged. The only good thing he’d ever done for her.
But if she still could...
“Camilla says she loves me. And I feel that... I feel that if she can love me then perhaps I’m not broken.”
“The concern,” Diego said, his voice rough, “becomes breaking them.”
“Yes,” Matías agreed. “But I wonder... If love is the difference.”
“That is the one thing I can confidently say our father and grandfather do not possess at all. Though, that highlights other failures of mine, sadly.”
“No one ever taught us how to love, Diego,” Matías said. “They taught us to be ruthless. They taught us to play these games. To be cold, unyielding men who cared for nothing beyond our own selfish desires.”
“I would say they taught us everything we should have tried not to be. And you,” Diego said, “have certainly come the closest.”
“I still didn’t have love. So I’m not sure if it made any difference in the end.”
“Is it too late now? Do you think it’s too late to have it now?”
He wished it weren’t. He needed it not to be. He’d lived half his life convinced his fate was set in stone, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe... Maybe he could change.
He’d let her go.
He wanted her to be happy.
He wanted her to know he chose her.
He didn’t want money.
He didn’t want to win.
If all those things could change, then maybe there was no limit to it. Maybe he could be whatever she needed. Maybe they could have any life they chose.
“It’s never too late,” he said. “I have to believe that. And then, even when it is too late, I feel that you have to keep trying. Beyond hope. Beyond pride or reason. Because love has no place in any of those things. Love is something entirely different.”
“When did you become such an expert?” Diego asked.
“I’m not,” Matías said. “But I know about pride. I know about failing. I know about loss. I know about selfishness. I know about anger. And nowhere, in any of that, did I find peace. Nowhere was there love. I can only assume it’s this thing,” he said, “this thing that feels foreign, this thing that I don’t know at all. This thing that has taken me over, body and soul. And... I wanted. I would’ve given it all up for her. We were both acting fools for this, and we were willing to give it up for them. Would our father have ever done that?”
“No,” Diego said, without hesitation.
“No,” Matías agreed.
“Well then,” Diego said. “Perhaps we are not broken after all.”
Whether or not he could take the chance on breaking Liliana was another thing entirely.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
