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“Why does he think that?”
Her face was a smooth mask of blank expression. “Because after he found me, Daniel set it up to appear I’d drowned.”
Who the hell was this guy that they’d had to go to such great lengths to protect her? “Muriella, who is your father?”
“Juan Carlos Calderón.”
Holy shit.I knew all about him. The man was notorious for his brutality. How could he have had a daughter as kind as she was? No wonder she went to so much trouble to stay hidden. It had never occurred to me Muriella Morales wasn’t her real name. “You’re Camila.” She just looked back at me without responding.
There was no end to what she might have seen in her life. Rage and regret for what she’d been through turned me inside out. Her father once killed one of his men and used his body parts to spell out the word traitor in the center of a Nicaraguan town. Legend had it that grown men pissed themselves when they faced him, and undoubtedly for good reason. Calderón killed at will, whether justified or not, his mood the determining factor.
“What they did to your mother—” I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“Actually, I do.” I roughed a hand through my hair. “A few years ago, I was offered the lead in a biographical film about him.”
“They’re making a movie about that monster?” She covered her mouth. “And you’re going to play him?”
Imagine the irony in that.
“I turned it down before I read the script.” Thank God I’d gone with my gut. Everyone had tried to tell me the role would earn me another Oscar and take my career to stratospheric levels. None of them understood those things didn’t matter to me. Now I knew for certain why I’d been so averse to the film. My connection to Muriella had stopped me, even when I had no idea how it concerned her.
“You’re not doing it?”
“No, I’m not, and as far as I know, the movie never got greenlit.”
She sagged into her chair with relief. “If you didn’t read the script, how do you know about Mama?”
“I carried it with me for a while. Had some down time one day, and it was like I couldn’t not read it.”
“What did it say about her?” she whispered, almost as if she was afraid to hear it.
I swallowed hard as I recalled the brutality. “That she was dismembered by a rival of your father.”
She made a choking noise. “He kept her captive for four weeks. Beat her. Raped her. Starved her.”
Acid burned as it shot up my esophagus. “I didn’t know that.”
“He sent her back to us in a box. There were pictures—” She squeezed her eyes shut and looked away.
I balled my hand so tight my fingernails dug into my flesh. “You saw them?”
She nodded and straightened. “My father avenged her death. But it didn’t bring her back.” Muriella drew in a long breath. “I think I’d like to sleep under the stars again, like I did with Mama when we were happy.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
I droppedthe armload of blankets and pillows onto a lounge chair.
“Put them on that one.” She motioned toward the round one, large enough for two people.
I blinked at her before I finally cleared my throat. “Yes, ma’am.”
I spread a blanket over the cushion and lined up the pillows at the head. I hoped this meant what I thought it did, but in the end, how far we went was always completely up to her. I made sure she felt she was in full control.
“Making beds another chore you excel in?”
The woman amazed me. We hadn’t talked about easy stuff, yet she shrugged it off, enough to tease me.
