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Rodrigo’s eyes caressed his wife’s beautiful face as she happily pointed out sights to their baby through the streets of Madrid.
They were a family.
The Rolls-Royce pulled to the curb in front of an elegant nineteenth-century building in the exclusive Salamanca district, on a wide, tree-lined avenue overlooking the vast green expanse of the Parque del Buen Retiro. As the driver opened the passenger door, Lola unbuckled their baby from the car seat. Getting out of the vehicle, she looked up in awe.
“It’s actually finished?” she breathed.
“Sí. Finally.” For most of his adult life, he’d avoided this building, preferring to stay at a luxury hotel like the Campania Madrid, rather than face his childhood home. It was Lola who’d convinced him, two years before, to remodel the place and make it his own. She’d been aghast at the thought that he’d allowed a nineteenth-century penthouse on the Calle de Alcalá, overlooking the famous park, to dilapidate into dust.
“I can’t wait to finally see inside,”
Lola said now, her eyes sparkling. “You never let me see it before.”
Rodrigo looked up at the building as memories floated back to him of his childhood. He’d been lonely here, with his parents often gone. And when they were home, the house was filled with their screaming fights, slamming doors, his mother’s taunts, his father’s broken bottles smashed against the walls and the sour smell of expensive, wasted wine.
“Rodrigo? Is something wrong?”
Coming back to himself, he shook his head. “There wasn’t much to see, after twenty years of neglect. Broken-down walls. Dust.”
“I can imagine,” she said quietly, looking at him.
A twinge went through him at the sympathy of her gaze. It was too close to pity, which implied weakness.
Lola reached for his hand, her eyes glowing and warm. “But everything is different now.”
For a moment, Rodrigo was lost in her eyes. Then he pulled his hand away.
“Yes.” He turned on the Madrid sidewalk. “Come see.”
As the chauffeur and bodyguard lingered outside, getting their bags from the car, Rodrigo led her into the lobby. Hiding a smile, he turned to see her reaction.
Holding their baby, Lola looked with awe at the grandeur of the seven-story atrium, with the large oval staircase climbing all the way up, around each floor. Her steps slowed, then stopped, as she tilted her head back to look up at the stained-glass cupola crowning the top ceiling, beaming warm patterns of colored light against the marble floor.
“Wow,” she breathed. “You paid for the lobby to be remodeled, as well?”
“I bought the whole building. I remodeled all the other apartments and sold them at a fat profit.”
She glanced at him sideways. “Nice.”
“This way.”
Rodrigo led her to the new large elevator that had replaced the rickety birdcage elevator he remembered as a child. His nanny had often taken him to play in Retiro Park, when his parents’ screaming became too loud. But usually the screaming was still going on when they returned, even hours later. They could always hear it before they even reached the top floor. So his nanny, looking stressed and sorry for him, would invent games allowing them to linger in the elevator.
Now, the gleaming silver door slid open silently, and they rode it to the top floor. There, they had a view of the entire atrium, stretching seven stories below. At the penthouse door, Rodrigo paused for a moment. He realized he was listening. But the apartment was silent now. No one was screaming or smashing glass.
His proud, aristocratic Spanish father—or at least, the man he’d believed to be his father—had been wealthy from birth, and bought a small Spanish movie studio, which was where he’d met Rodrigo’s mother, a spoiled, much younger American actress. He’d loved her—been obsessed with her—but she’d never loved him, only his money. She’d enjoyed taunting him with her affairs. His father’s rage had finally gotten the better of him, and he’d died of a stroke when Rodrigo was twenty-one. His mother had died a few years later, from a bad reaction to anesthesia during plastic surgery.
He’d never met the chauffeur who had supposedly sired him. The man had died when Rodrigo was just a child.
So many lies. So much deceit and rage. Rodrigo took a deep breath, closing his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Lola said cheerfully, coming up to the door. “Did you lose the key?”
He looked back at her. Jett’s childhood would be so different. He was beginning to trust his wife as no one else. They had the same goals. They respected each other. And there was no messy emotion like love or jealousy to cloud anyone’s judgment.
But he knew he’d never tell her about his childhood. There was no point. He wanted neither her sympathy nor her inevitable attempt at psychological analysis. There were some things a man dealt with better on his own.
And his past was in the past. Over. Forgotten.
