AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"What did you do?" he repeats, the question more pronounced than before as his fingers dig painfully in my flesh.
"I killed him," I whisper, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. "I killed our son," I confess, but instead of freeing me, those words damn me for all eternity.
THIRTY-THREE
MICHELE
The car drewto a halt as it reached the private landing strip where a plane was waiting to depart. Sneaking a glance at his companion, Michele studied her with narrowed eyes, something about the entire situation bothering him.
He didn't know what it was. Technically, everything about her checked out.
Yet something prickled just beneath the surface of his skin.
"The baby," he suddenly spoke. "You didn't mention how he died before."
She froze, slowly turning towards him.
"I didn't get the chance," she answered in a thickly accented voice.
"Did Noelle really have something to do with his death?"
She nodded, and though Michele could not detect any untruths in her expression, something niggled at his conscience.
"She wasn't well," Lucero added. "Mentally. At some point, I think she became too overwhelmed by everything. She also didn't know if her beloved had survived…" she trailed off and Michele could fill in the blanks.
She'd gone over the edge.
Considering the environment she'd been forced to give birth in, he wagered postpartum—hell, even peripartum depression—could have been a serious issue. It wouldn't be the first time a mother killed her own child because her mind was too clouded with negative emotions brought on by a deadly cocktail of hormones.
On the best days, the mind could be a scary place, able to overpower the strongest of people. Michele himself had first-hand experience of it.
That wasn't to say that he excused infanticide. Far from it. Just as he didn't excuse what he'd done with his own hands—but that was a heartache for another day.
From the moment he'd heard the entire tale, a hole had formed inside his chest. He'd watched his brother slowly pale as Lucero had recounted everything that had occurred at thehaciendaand Michele had…felt sorry for Rafaelo.
He was intimately acquainted with the death of a child and the ravages that wrecked on a person—on a parent. Yet seeing his brother take in the news that not only had he been a father, but his son had been killed by his own mother—by the woman Rafaelo loved and cherished—was a type of hurt Michele couldn't begin to comprehend.
Over time, he'd studied Noelle and Rafaelo enough to gain an understanding of their relationship and the fact that it thought itself unshakable when it was one step away from being blown by the wind.
His conversation with Noelle, weeks ago, and then Lucero's claims had only served to cement the idea.
Noelle DeVille wasn't who she said she was.
Michele's lips twitched with displeasure and a deeply ingrained disdain towards those of her ilk.
From the beginning, Michele had been of a mind to finish his brother, but death wasn't something he had in mind. No, he needed something more potent that ensured his brother's attention would be fully captured by personal issues to even remember Michele.
As Michele had assured Andreas, Noelle's kidnapping and his subsequent game with Rafaelo had been nothing more than that—a game. But also an opportunity to gain more information.
He'd already suspected there was something odd about Noelle after he'd done his due diligence and researched whatever he could about thehaciendaand her former husband Sergio.
Michele had managed to track down some of Sergio's former associates who had met Noelle and they all said a similar thing—she was a witch, a she-devil. And no matter how bad Sergio had been, even according to his ownfriends, she'd been worse.
During those inquiries, he'd absentmindedly encountered Lucero's name, but he'd never pursued that lead because there had been no evidence to support her involvement in anything.
But the perfect situation had arisen when Noelle had brought up Lucero, namingheras Rafaelo's true love?
Suddenly all the cards had been laid out on the table for Michele. And as he'd stepped back to look at the bigger picture, he'd realized it was messier than he'd previously thought.
