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I watch him, my husband. I knew what he was the night I met him, didn’t I? What man does what he did to me when I was only fifteen years old? The Augustine family is a mafia family. No matter how far they’ve come, their hands are dirty, and they’ve probably climbed that social ladder on the backs of the corpses they’ve left in their wake.
But my uncle? Was my uncle one of those corpses?
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I shake my head, force myself to breathe. “It’s hot in here. I need some air.” I slip out of his grasp before he can stop me, and honestly, if I don’t, I might just throw up right here on the dance floor.
He follows as I weave through the room, hurrying to one of the exits. The closest one happens to be at the back of the building.
As if on cue or some strange sign from above, lightning crashes overhead as soon as I step outside. I jump, shuddering with the sudden cold. Sea water slams loud and violent against the cliffs beyond, the eerie beacon of the lighthouse ever present over the wild sea. I run from the building, the music, the light inside, and all those happy people.
“Madelena!” Santos is behind me, but I don’t stop. Water pelts my bare arms, my hair, my face. It’s ice cold but nowhere near the snowstorm of a few nights ago, the remnants of which have turned to slush. “Madelena, stop!”
He catches me, his hand closing over my arm and tugging me into his chest. Momentum has me bouncing backward, but he keeps me from falling. Santos’s forehead creases with worry. I shiver, my teeth chattering, and within a moment, he’s slipped off his jacket and has wrapped it around my shoulders. It’s warm and smells like him, like the cologne I had made for myself years ago. I want to hug it to myself.
The thought leaves me with a longing so deep, it hurts.
Because I realize something, and the knowledge of it has me stumbling backward out of his grasp and doubling over.
“Madelena?” Santos asks.
How long has it been? How long have I been falling in love with this man?
Are you so unaccustomed to being wanted?
Because as I straighten to look up at him, I know that’s what it is. I have been falling in love with him in small increments over the years. From the first words he spoke to me, and every time he appeared as if by magic to rescue me from one evil or another, I have been falling in love with Santos Augustine. I have been wanting to be wanted by him. And this new truth, his betrayal, it hurts so much.
“Did you kill him?” I blurt out, wind howling, stealing my words, carrying them away.
“What?” he asks, walking us farther from the glass walls of the building to take shelter around the corner, out of the wind.
“Did you do it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“My uncle. Was it you?”
He stops, and for the first time in all the time I’ve known him, he is at a loss. Shocked even.
And I have my answer.
I try to pull free, but he only tugs me closer. “He drowned,” he says, voice different. Controlled. Low and dangerous.
“There was camera footage, Santos,” I tell him, because it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?
He waits, forehead furrowing.
“The gift someone sent, that muff? I thought it was you at first, but it wasn’t. And the muff wasn’t the gift. It was to hide a message someone wanted to send. A warning, maybe.” I’m not sure if I’m explaining it to him or trying to understand it myself.
“What are you talking about?”
“There was a photograph tucked inside it.”
“What?”
“It was a photo of you.” My voice breaks on a sob and it takes me a minute to continue. “A still captured on the security cameras my uncle had all around his house. It was you. You were there the night he died.”
His grip tightens on my arms as his jaw clenches with barely controlled emotion. He clearly never thought I’d find out, never thought anyone would.
