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He wasn’t ready to listen to this. Not just yet.
Rising, he strode to the bar to grab a tray of booze this time. He had a feeling he needed to get plastered. He only hoped he could achieve that.
He poured them both drinks. She took hers, sipped it, grimaced when she realized it was a stiff one, but took another swallow before she went on.
“He came to our domicile later to ‘negotiate’ with my parents for me. My father refused the ‘bargain’ point-blank and was so enraged he shoved Burton. Next moment, he was dead.”
Richard stared at her, everything screeching to a halt inside him. Burton. He’d killed her father. Too.
She adjusted his deduction. “Burton’s bodyguard shot him for daring to shove his master. Before I could process what had happened, Burton put a bullet through the killer’s head then turned to me, apologizing profusely. My mother was frantically trying to revive my father, while I faced the monster who’d come to buy me.
“The sick infatuation in his eyes told me resistance would come at an even bigger price to the rest of my family. Though my soul wretched at being at this monster’s mercy, I’d already dealt with the worst life had to offer and knew I could do anything to survive, and to ensure the survival of my family. And if I manipulated his infatuation, someone of his power could be used to save my family, and many, many others.
“So I swallowed my shock and anguish, said I believed he hadn’t meant any of us harm, but to give me time to deal with my shock and loss and to get to know him. He was delighted my reaction wasn’t the rejection he’d expected after the ‘catastrophic mistake’ of my father’s murder and he promised me all the time in the world. And everything else I could want. I told him I only wanted my family to be taken to the United States, to live legally in safety and comfort. He told me that would only be the first of thousands of things he’d lavish on me.
“The next day I stood at my father’s grave with the man who’d been responsible for his murder. Before Burton took us away, I promised my friends I’d be back to help as soon as I could.”
His hand shaking with a murderous rage he’d never before suffered, he reached for the bottle. He took a full swig and savored planning the new horrors he’d inflict on Burton.
Isabella continued, “Within a year he got us permanent residences through an investment program. My sisters and brother were in school and my mother volunteered in orphanages and shelters. Burton pulled strings to equate my experience to college courses necessary for medical school. Then on my twentieth birthday, he proposed. Though he was like putty in my hands, from his murderous behavior with others, I didn’t doubt he could kill us all if I wavered now that he’d fulfilled his end of the bargain. I was forced to accept. With an ecstatic smile.”
This. The missing pieces. What explained everything. Rewrote history. Made everything he’d thought or felt or done not only redundant or wrong, but a crime. Against her.
And she wasn’t finished telling him how heinous that crime had been. “After the lavish wedding, I played the part of the doting wife, capitalized on his abnormal attachment to me. Thankfully, I didn’t have to suffer through many sexual encounters, as he rarely wanted full intimacy. I perfected the act of loving his constant pawing, though.”
The rage that exploded inside him threatened to crack his head open as he imagined her succumbing to Burton’s touch while her every fiber retched at the violation...
He hurled the half-finished bottle across the pool. His fling across dozens of feet was so forceful, the window smashed on impact, exploding outward. If not for the terrace, it would have rained shards on the street below.
Isabella’s heavenly eyes turned black at his violence.
He gestured that he’d expended it, would rein it in now, and for her to continue.
So she did. “I was also thankful he’d had a vasectomy in his early thirties. When he said we could still have a child if I wished, I assured him my younger siblings always felt like my children, and I wanted to focus on my education, my humanitarian work, but mostly him. He was delighted, as he was with everything from me. I continued to perform the role of perfect wife to such a powerful man, appearing to make flamboyant use, as he wished me to, of his wealth, and managed to put aside millions. I wanted enough personal power, education-, money-and knowledge-wise, to plot my family’s escape from this nightmare. Then you appeared in my life.”
Before he found words to express the torrents of regret accumulating inside him, she looked away, eyes glittering.
“When you asked me to leave with you, promised to protect me, I believed you had no idea what you were getting yourself into, not knowing the extent of my vulnerability, or of Burton’s power and obsession with me. I thought even if you’d managed to spirit my whole family away, he’d find us, and you wouldn’t be able to protect yourself, let alone us, from his vengeance. Oblivious to your real powers, I thought you were no match for him, was certain I’d only doom all of us if I left with you.
“Then you were gone as I always knew you would be one day and I discovered what true misery was at last. It wasn’t being trapped in this horror with my family eternal hostages, their lives depending on my ability to perfect my act forever. It was to know what passion was, then to lose it and return to m
y cage to pine for you forever.”
“Isabella...”
Her hand rose, stopping his butchered groan. It seemed she needed to spit this out, as she would venom. “When you put your plan in action, I knew once he became convinced I betrayed him, he would be as insanely vicious as he’d been irrationally indulgent, so I took my family and ran. Then around a year later, my ‘lady in waiting’ who was married to his new right-hand told me Burton’s bank accounts had been emptied by unknown parties and he no longer had means to buy allegiance or even protection, and that just before she’d called me, he’d disappeared. She suspected he’d been killed.
“Not willing to gamble on that, I decided to go back to Colombia when friends enlisted my urgent assistance in relocating them. I employed all necessary secrecy methods, and used the money I’d taken from Burton to build shelters and medical centers for those I couldn’t help personally.
“After three years of no developments, I dared to go back to the States for a conference, where I met Rose. Then four years later, when she kept persisting with her partnership offer, I made my most extensive investigations yet. It was then I discovered you’d thrown Burton into that off-the-grid dungeon for the world’s most dangerous criminals and finally felt secure enough to come back. A week later...you appeared again. And here we are.”
Richard stared at Isabella, every word of her revelations a shard shredding his guts.
He’d lived among corruption and perversion so long, he considered only the worst explanation for anyone’s actions. He’d condemned her at face value, hadn’t reconsidered when all his being had kept telling him otherwise.
But what she’d been through wasn’t unique. He’d seen worse crimes perpetrated against innumerable individuals in the world he inhabited. It was what she’d achieved in spite of all the danger and degradation, the way she’d conquered all adversity, built unquestionable success and helped countless others that elevated her from the status of coping victim to that of hero.
And he was the villain. One of the major causes of her ordeals. Even worse, among her unimaginable sufferings, he’d been the one to cause her the most anguish.
