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My jaw tightened at the thought of her family. She was far better off without her sadistic brother in her life. I remembered her story about how he’d poisoned her beloved birds, and the memory of her haunted golden eyes caused something to twist in the center of my chest. All she’d ever known from men was violence and cruelty.
And last night, I’d pinned her beneath me and wrapped my hand around her throat. For an awful minute, my nightmare had clung to me, and it hadn’t been my pretty wife struggling in my grip; it’d been my ruthless captor, the man who’d kept me in hell for seven years.
I shook my head sharply, throwing off the thought of my time in captivity. Isabel was all that mattered right now. Somehow, I had to make things right.
She eyed me warily as I approached her, and the hint of fear that tightened her lush lips made my stomach drop. I forced my leaden feet to carry me across the dining room, to close the distance between us.
“Can I sit with you?” I asked, allowing her to make the choice. The last thing I wanted to do was force my company on her if she was still skittish of me.
She offered a tense nod, her eyes huge in her too-pale face.
I pulled out the chair beside her, making sure to edge back several inches to give her more space. She drew in a shuddering breath, as though bracing herself.
“I’m sorry about what happened last night.” The sooner I got this over with, the better. I wouldn’t waste time making small talk and pretending nothing had happened. After we were done here, I could go back to avoiding her, which would be for the best.
She dropped her gaze to her lap, where her fingers twisted together. “What were you dreaming about that was so awful?”
Her soft question hit me like a gut punch. I hadn’t been expecting that. I’d been expecting her to accuse me of hurting her, just like all the other men in her life. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d made such an accusation.
Her eyes lifted to mine when I didn’t answer right away, and their sweet caramel hue took my breath away. For a moment, the darkness of my past and my turbulent present blurred together. My nightmare was too close to the surface, and those eyes were painfully familiar.
“I was dreaming about the farm,” I admitted before I could think better of it. “I haven’t in a while, but I did last night. And I’m sorry for what happened when I woke up. I wasn’t really awake at all. I was still seeing him.”
“Who is he?” she pressed gently, her delicately arched brows drawing together. “And what’s the farm?” She hadn’t missed the poison in my words, and I heard it reflected back in her feminine tone.
I blew out a sigh and tried to roll the tension from my shoulders. I’d already revealed more than I’d meant to, but I couldn’t seem to stop the words from tumbling out. After how I’d scared her, I owed her the truth.
“When I was a boy, I lived on a remote farm. The landowner grew marijuana for the Sinaloa cartel. He needed workers, and I had the misfortune of being one of them.”
“Your parents made you work there as a child?” She seemed disturbed by the notion.
“José, the landowner, made us work. The hours were brutal and the conditions were worse.” She didn’t need to know how we hadn’t been fed when José deemed that we hadn’t worked hard enough. She didn’t need to know that it’d been impossible to escape the agony of his lash when he was in a rage.
Rafael and I had tried to run away once. The farm was so remote that there was nothing else for miles, and the arid landscape left few options for food and water. We’d wandered in the stifling heat, dehydrated and starving, for two days before we’d been forced to return of our own volition. I still had the scars from the beating I’d received for trying to escape. I’d been thirteen years old then. Just a year before Maria. Before she started to make things more bearable.
“But where were your parents?” Isabel asked, her sheltered life making it impossible for her to grasp the horror of true captivity. She wasn’t capable of imagining the things I’d been through, and I preferred to keep it that way. I would spare her the terrible details.
“My father was the one who sold me to José. He had gambling debts to pay and an eight-year-old son he didn’t want.”
Isabel gasped. “Your father sold you? How could he do that?”
A grim chuckle rolled from my chest. “He’d wanted to be rid of me since the day I was born: the day I killed my mother coming into the world. Apparently, he loved her very much. I’m not sure if he was a drunk before then, but I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t half out of his mind from cheap booze. He was drunk the night he decided to sell me to pay his debts. I don’t think he would’ve chosen any differently if he’d been sober.”
