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Dante’s grip on her arm tightened. This was not a halfhearted attempt to prevent her leaving. This was the Romani chieftain at his most intimidating and commanding best. Or his worst, Rose thought as she glared furiously back at him.
“I was married on my eighteenth birthday—”
He paused as she gasped, “I don’t want to hear it!” She strained to pull away, but Dante held on tight.
“To a member of the Argentinian aristocracy,” he continued without missing a beat. “I should have told you long before now,” he admitted.
He let her go, and continued in a monotone. “I don’t talk about it—not to anyone. You might have heard rumors, but no one but Miguel and my colleagues on the team know the full story, and they would never speak of it. It’s part of that past you don’t want me to hug,” he added, but she wasn’t ready to smile.
“You’ll listen, and then you’ll leave,” he stated with confidence. “And there’s no gloss I can put on this to make it easier for you.”
“I don’t want gloss. I want the truth.” She felt as if someone was standing on her chest. Of all the things she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this, but now Dante had started to open up, she desperately needed to hear all of it.
“My father was very pleased with my match,” Dante went on. “He chose the girl out of the best of intentions. She was the daughter of an old friend of his who had fallen on hard times. She was a pretty girl and I was horny. My stepmother was less impressed.” His voice had dropped, suggesting worse to come.
“And you?” Rose prompted. “How did you feel—apart from horny?” She had to try to keep it together.
“At the time, I thought I was in love,” Dante admitted. “I know now that I was in lust. That seems to be my limit,” he added grimly.
Ignoring this, Rose prompted, “Go on.” A picture was being drawn in her mind, and it didn’t paint Dante in the bad light he imagined. If he hadn’t opened up to anyone but his closest friends, this had to mean something for him to share it with her.
“My stepmother couldn’t bear to think of the ‘foundling,’ as she called me, rising in society,” he went on with a look she was sure was meant to be wry, but which came across as a reminder of the bewilderment he’d carried as a youth facing bigotry.
“I was young and wild and willful, and my stepmother’s opinion only made me more determined to have my own way.”
She had to smile a little, recognizing the youth in Dante the man.
“My wife was pregnant before I was nineteen.”
Dante’s words pierced her skin like a series of arrows, and a sound of distress left her throat before she could stop it.
“When my father died and I inherited his estate, my wife thought we would instantly have all his money as well as the estancia. Her family expected the same. Like an old cliché, the daughter of impoverished aristocracy had been put out to tender and had succeeded in snaring a rich husband, whom, they thought, would save them all. But then came the court case, and I had to fight my stepmother to save the land. I had no idea if the legal fees would ruin me, or even if I’d win. My wife grew impatient. She said she was ashamed of me and always had been. She was ashamed of marrying the half-breed, and there had to be some compensation for that. Don’t feel sorry for me,” he warned when Rose shuddered. “I was the architect of my own downfall.”
“No, you weren’t,” she argued fiercely. “You transformed the estate when your father died, and brought prosperity to the families living here.”
“But that didn’t happen quickly, and there were mounting debts with no promise of victory. My wife looked for greener pastures and soon found them with a man called Del Roca—a vicious criminal, not too dissimilar from the type of man who terrorized your father. He was her rich, criminal lover, and the father of her unborn child.”
Rose’s world rocked on its axis. “I can’t imagine…”
“Try harder,” Dante advised.
Taking a breath, she focused on his face. “What happened to your wife?”
A look of weariness crossed his features. “Del Roca arranged a special little treat for her. She even bragged to me that her wealthy lover was going to take her on a trip across the sea in his luxury helicopter. What Del Roca failed to mention was that my wife, being of no further use to him now her prospects of easy money had disappeared, wouldn’t be completing the journey. He dropped her off along the way, over the sea like a sack of rubbish, where he knew that neither she nor her unborn child could survive.”
“He killed his own child?” Rose shivered uncontrollably at the thought. “How do you know this?” she whispered.
Dante’s short laugh lacked all semblance of humor. “Del Roca sent me a video. ‘Say good-bye to your wife’ was on the soundtrack as he shoved her screaming out of an open door.”
“Oh my God. Dante…”
“I don’t imagine a pregnant mistress who had nothing to bring to the table figured large in Del Roca’s planning.” Dante’s eyes were unfocused as he thought back. “My young wife was just a trophy for him.”
For a moment, she couldn’t say anything, but then reality intruded on what had been a hideous shock. “Did you tell the authorities? Was he captured—brought to justice? Did he pay for his crimes?”
Dante huffed a short humorless laugh as he shook his head. “Del Roca’s been in court several times on murder charges, but none of them stick. There’s never an explanation as to why the court case falls apart, but everyone knows that intimidation is at the bottom of it. When people hear what he’s capable of and how far his tentacles spread, they’re too frightened to speak against him.”
“But you would,” Rose insisted. “I know you would.”
