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“Well, that is extremely good to hear, tesoro. It sounds as if you don’t need me to survive. And I don’t need you to fulfill my dark purposes. There is now no more blackmail. So it seems to me that there is only one thing left.”
“What is that?”
“Choice. It is the one thing both you and I seem to have been afraid of all this time. If it’s all the world, if it’s fate, if it’s duty, then the pain that results is not ours, is it?”
“I don’t suppose it is.”
“If I am simply destined to be my father, then as much guilt and blame as I take on for our failed marriage, it’s still hollow. Because I’m blaming my blood. Not the choices that I made that brought me there.”
“If I am the daughter my father wants me to be, then when I find myself unhappy with the choices that were made for me...”
“You blame him.”
“And if my husband blackmailed me into marriage, kidnapped me out of the bedroom window... I suppose when times get hard I can blame him as well.”
“Yes. And when I find myself resisting loving my wife because the very idea terrifies me, then I can blame the loss in my childhood. The manner of man my father was. All the failures that have come since. It is so much easier to cling to the past and use it as a scapegoat than it is to move on to the future and realize that everything that happens from here on out... It will be my choice.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“I chose to let you go. The first choice that defied what I considered to be my nature.”
“I chose to walk away.”
“And so now here we are again,” he said. “With choices to make.”
“And what choice have you made, Diego?”
He shocked her then, dropping to his knees in front of the couch, taking hold of her hands. “I choose you, Liliana. You said that I was your light, when all I saw in myself was darkness, but that too is a matter of choice. I want to be your light. I want to love you, even though it is hard for me.”
She pulled back slightly, her heart twisting. Hard to love her? She didn’t know quite what to do with that.
He reached up and cupped her cheek. “No, don’t mistake me. It is not hard to love you. It is hard for me to accept that I do. Because what terrifies me most is all that I cannot control. All that love costs. All that loss can cause a man to endure.”
“Well. It’s scary,” she said, pressing her hand over his, holding his palm to her face.
He looked down. “But the real failing in my first marriage was not that I am like my father. It was that I married someone I never intended to give myself to completely. I convinced myself that as long as I was faithful that was all there was to it. As long as I didn’t murder my wife, then perhaps I was better than my father, but I had a conversation with my brother. And we both realized something.”
He looked up, his dark eyes meeting hers. “Love is the difference. Love is what makes you choose someone else’s happiness over your own. Love makes walking away from your family inheritance seem easy. Love makes letting go of fear seem worth it. Love is what makes you a better man. A better person. And love is what I have found with you. Fear held me back. It made me want to push you away. Running from love made me say things I deeply regret. Made me treat you in a way I should not have. But now I’m before you, kneeling. As I wanted to do that first moment I saw you in your wedding gown. You are my queen, Liliana. The queen of my heart. And I am begging you give me a chance. I no longer want to own you. I simply want to love you.”
She touched his face, tilting his chin up so that his eyes met hers. “I love you,” she said. She set the bag down, and slid off the couch, so that she was on her knees with him. So that neither of them were above or below the other. “You are my king,” she said. “The ruler of my heart. And you do hold me captive, but as long as I hold you, it will all be right in the end.”
“I think I loved you from the first moment I saw you,” he said. “But it took a great effort on my part to attempt to deny it while also trying to bring you into my possession. I suppose I can only be grateful that Matías intended to take you as his bride, because it pushed me to act sooner than I might have.”
“Are you so afraid now? About the baby?”
“I’m more terrified than I have ever been in my life,” Diego said. “Because I love more in this moment than I ever have. I love my life. I love you. I love my vision of our future, and with that comes...fear. Of all that I cannot control. But know this, Liliana. That which is in my power to do, I will do.”
“I don’t need you to control the whole world, Diego. I just need you to love me.”
“I do. I will.”
“I knew it,” she said, leaning in and kissing him on the mouth.
“What did you know?”
“That we were made for each other. That if I trusted in that we would find our way here. I think we could have stayed together as we were. But it wouldn’t have been this. It wouldn’t have been everything.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For trusting in that, even when I could not.”
“I’ll trust in it forever,” she said. “In our love.”
“I trust in our love too. And more than that, in that the moment I met you, my soul recognized yours. Recognized his other half.
“You’re the light to my darkness,” he said.
She smiled. “And isn’t it funny, how you’re the light to mine.”
“I think, tesoro, that that is exactly how it should be.” His lips curved, still pressed against hers. “It was never the inheritance,” he said.
“What?”
“The real reason I wanted you. It was never the inheritance, Liliana. It was always you. The rest was an excuse.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said. “You were always the true treasure, my love. Always.”
EPILOGUE
WHEN HIS SON made his entrance into the world, Diego Navarro was overwhelmed by a sense of relief and joy. The birth was easy. Everyone said so, even Liliana, who seemed surprised by how smoothly it had all gone.
Diego, for his part, had left nothing to chance. He had hired the best team of doctors in the world, had installed her in the plushest delivery suite available from the moment her first contraction had hit two days before the actual birth.
But now he was here, his son.
And so was his wife. The love of his life. The center of his whole world.
His grandfather had already called with his gift for the child. The inheritance. Part of Diego wanted to reject it, and he himself might not take any of it. But for his son... He would allow it for his son. And as for Matías, it meant that his brother could keep the rancho, which he loved. And Diego was more than happy to let his brother have full ownership of all that was his.
He no longer felt compelled to chase after the darkness inside of him. Not when Liliana’s light had done so much to drive it out.
“What should we name him?” Liliana asked, gazing down at their precious boy.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Is there no family name you want to use?”
For them, family would never be the blood that had made them. Liliana had given all the evidence of her father’s wrongdoings to the women who had been harassed by him, and they had set about dismantling the legacy he’d built on so much corruption.
There had been no reconciliation possible for them after that.
But they were family. A family that was growing, with love that would grow right along with it.
“No,” he said decisively. “I want our family to start with us. We are new. Because of our love. We are not tied to any legacy.”
“No,” she said, smiling slowly. “We are not. I do have a suggestion, though.”
In the end, they named him Matteo Navarro. In honor of Matías, who Diego had alwa
ys seen as the best of their blood. And more than that, as a man who could change, a man who could love, even when it was hard. And in the end, it was his talk with Matías that had helped him win back Liliana.
“Matías and I are the beginning. You and Camilla are the beginning,” Diego said.
“Yes. That is true,” Liliana said. “Though, I think that love is the beginning.”
Diego Navarro spent all his life making a very good habit of loving his children, loving his wife.
It started with the first moment he set eyes on Liliana. When the flames that had always been inside of him had seen her and leaped upward, toward destruction, he had thought.
He had thought that fire in him meant he was lost, but she’d taught him different. It could do terrible damage, there was no doubt about that. But love made the difference. It was love that made it burn bright enough to light the way. That made it burn hot enough to keep them warm, but not so hot it destroyed.
Love, he had learned, made all the difference in the world.
* * * * *
