Page 110 of No Merciful Corruption

The room falls deathly quiet.

Whatever anger I felt sizzling through my chest dissipates the moment I realize my mistake. Shame burns through me just as quickly.

“Regina…I’m⁠—”

Don Javier stands and interrupts me. “Thank you for inviting me. I’ll take my leave now.”

Dons Luis Alberto and Rubin understand when an out has been given to them. All three men leave the room and a chill settles in the air. I get up and walk over to her side of the table.

“Regina,” I place a hand on her arm. “I’m so⁠—”

She yanks her arm away. “Do not ever question the legitimacy of my rule over this family again.”

I take a moment to collect my thoughts. “I didn’t mean⁠—”

“Of course you didn’t. Men never think before they speak.” Her jaw tightens. “Gaspar and Gregorio may not have been my blood but they were mine. They loved me. You of all people should understand that. I am as much a Sandoval as Antonio is a Narvaez. Being adopted makes no difference.”

“My cousin Anthony is a Narvaez, yes,” I tell her. “But he isn’t inheriting the entirety of my family’s business.”

“Well, there’s no one else but me. Monse is unfit and Armando wants nothing to do with this. He wants to marry his university sweetheart and live a normal life, something I will not deprive him of.”

Armando is the youngest of the four Sandoval children and the only biological sibling Regina and Sandro shared. Technically, he should be the current head of his family but he was still a teenager when Sandro died. Regina had been the one running their family operation and it didn’t make sense to pull him in when he was still so young.

“Not only am I not a Sandoval by blood but I’m also a woman. If you of all people question my place at this table, I won’t have a leg to stand on,” she says, her voice full of anguish. “You want me to be your heir? To take over your place in this organization when you’re fully legitimate? Then defend me.”

“All right, all right,” I take her hand in mine and press a chaste kiss against her knuckles. “Forgive me. I’m sorry.”

She glares at me. “Does your wife forgive you this easily?”

“Yes.” I reply.

The corner of her mouth twitches as she yanks her hand away. “Liar.”

I chuckle softly as she gathers up her things and barrels into me on her way to the door, causing me to lose my balance and crash into the credenza.

“Ow, Regina.”

“I trust you can show yourself out.”

SI TU SUPIERAS

Alejandro

My earliest memory is of my father bringing Diego home.

Mom used to tell me I was too young to recall something like that and it must’ve been my imagination but I remember it clear as day.

I remember the blanket he was wrapped in—pale blue with faded yellow stars—and the weight of his little body in my arms. I remember thinking how strange it was to hold a trembling infant, as if he too was afraid of meeting me. Mom sat me down on the sofa in our new penthouse in New York and told me I had a little brother now and we were going to love each other forever.

He was small, too small for being almost three months old. Brown skin, soft wisps of black hair, and big eyes which were surprisingly alert. They were as blue then as they are now, the color having never changed.

When I think of my brother, it’s never as he is now. I see him as a toddler trotting around our home in New York on chubby legs and as a young boy with missing teeth at our aunt’s house in Mexico trying to ride a bike. I see him older, gangly and growing, on the saddle of a horse at our family compound in Colombia, terrified of the beast he’s mounted but determined to ride. I move through memories of who he was when our father died, not a boy but not yet a man, and who he’s grown into in the years since.

Allegra sits on his lap as Lettie puts a hideous cone-shaped Birthday Boy hat on his head. She laughs and he complains and when she leans down to kiss his cheek I see her in a different light.

All the roundness of youth is gone from her face and her voice has deepened from a high, childlike pitch to a smooth, steady rhythm. She wears a white blouse with sleeves that fall off her shoulders and a soft satin skirt that drapes over her figure. She’s taller than I remember or maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. From this distance and in those heels, she looks older than she is, older than the image of her in my mind. When she tilts her head and smiles it reveals the structured planes of her elegant face and a resemblance to our mother I often find uncanny. She can look so much like her in certain lights.

Diego and Lettie were the first children I ever had, the first ones I raised. How could so many years have gone by and I’m only now noticing?