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Santiago
Florian
The sun beams brightly, casting a glow on the ocean around me as I park the car near the shore and get out. My boots tap on the wooden deck. Santiago stands in the distance near his yacht.
He wears jeans and a T-shirt. The wind whooshes over him, billowing his jacket backward while his back faces me as seagulls fly high in the air and fish perform in the water. Its navy-blue color invites you to take a deep dive, which is mesmerizing and should be anyone’s first warning.
Everything vivid and gorgeous in nature is deadly, as it doesn’t need to be invisible to hide.
“An island in the middle of nowhere. It has Grandpa Atlas written all over it. I never knew you had an island, but considering you used it to kidnap my sister here, I can see why.” His cold tone paints his current mood quite clearly, and I tense inwardly because apparently, he came to fight.
After going radio silent and Octavius reporting to me that Santiago was surprisingly calm during our absence, I expected him to maybe…deal with all this.
“I’ve never hidden the fact. You just never asked.” Hooking my thumbs into my pockets, I walk toward him just as he spins around, and our eyes connect. The mask of indifference settles over his features while he crosses his arms, and I stop several feet away from him. “Hi, Santiago. What brings you here?”
“Octavius and Remi knew, I assume? But you don’t have to worry. Your best friends didn’t tell me anything. I found it all on my own.”
“They are your best friends too.”
“Didn’t feel that way when you crashed my sister’s wedding and then held a gun to my head while kidnapping her. They stood there and did nothing.” A beat passes, and he swallows. “They chose a side in our war.”
“Yeah, hers. Not mine.”
Fucking hell, leave it to Santiago to make everything sound dramatic, but he’s kind of right.
Not that I feel bad about it.
I’ve spent the last week in heaven, finally able to freely express my love, possessiveness, and obsession toward my woman, who’s the center of my universe.
I won’t apologize for it, and if her brother has a problem with that?
Fuck him.
I’m done dancing my life to their tune. I paid all my dues.
“Are you going to punch me in the face again? Because let me warn you. You have no punching credit left when it comes to me.”
He gives me a long stare, then goes back to gazing at the ocean and pondering something. I notice the dark circles under his eyes, and the guilty part of me rears its head. I can’t hate him for loving Jimena because I love her madly, but he has to know his limits.
They might never accept me, and that’s their right, but I won’t allow him and his dad to start fistfights to prove a point or upset my woman. Especially not while she’s carrying my baby.
A smile shapes my mouth at the thought. My heart always melts whenever the baby kicks me, and it feels surreal to think I’ve created something beautiful that I love so much already even though he’s not even here.
The manifestation of our love.
“How is she?”
“Happy and glowing, or at least she was until she found out you’re here. She wanted to come, but I told her not to.” I expect many things, but his curt nod isn’t one of them. “What do you want, Santiago?”
Engaging in a verbal sparring match doesn’t seem like a good strategy to travel all this way for.
“Remember the trip we took together to the park when we were six years old?”
My brow furrows at this. “Yeah. Remi and Octavius couldn’t join us, so we went alone.”
We took many trips like this as kids, enjoying each other’s company and not needing anyone else, but somehow, that last trip…it forever shifted everything for us.
It felt wrong. We missed the guys and, for the first time ever, had no secrets to share with each other.
