“My father is a terrible person,” Leontina said, and perhaps she sounded a little impatient. “But this is well known. This is who he is. My question for you, Pau, is what doyoulove?”
“I loved my father,” he bit out, and it was shattering.
She thought she would have preferred it if he’d hauled off and slapped her instead. It was that shocking.
That intense.
Because somehow, he sounded as arctic as before, and all she could think of was a little boy like the one she carried inside her own body. A little boy with dark eyes looking up to a man who did not possess the capability of returning that emotion.
So what could Pau possibly imagine except that love was unrequited, and then nothing but loss and grief?
It was heartbreaking.
At least Leontina had been lucky enough to have her brother. Whether they were close or not didn’t matter. His very existence had helped her get over that helpless parental love early on, because Giaco was so bright and irrepressible and Umberto had hated him, too.
Once she’d understood that hate was all her father did, all he was capable of, she found ways to get healthier. She loved her books. She loved her escape fantasies. And sad though that might have been, it was better than this.
“Of course you loved him,” she said quietly. “You are nothing if not dutiful, no matter what you get in return.”
He didn’t like that. She could see it all over his face like a kind of anguish, but he slashed his hand through the air as if he was casting that aside. Maybe her, too.
“You are my final act of revenge, Leontina,” he told her coldly. So coldly, though his eyes were that dark gold, and they were bright now. “Because that is how I will honor my father’s memory. Your father nearly took the only thing my father loved from him. It came so close that I believe it killed him. Struck him down where he stood. I can only hope that learning that I have returned that favor will do the same for Umberto.”
“It will anger him,” Leontina said. “But surely you must realize by now that my father does not feel anything. Ever.”
“If it angers him, all the better,” Pau growled.
“But—” she began.
“We leave tomorrow,” he told her. When she only stared back at him without comprehension, his gaze darkened even more, like a new, worse storm coming in. “I’m taking you back to the castle.”
Chapter Ten
Leontina was subduedthe next day, but Pau expected that.
What he had not anticipated was that he would feel something less than stellar himself, which made no sense, since he was finally enacting the final piece of his revenge against the loathsome Umberto Tavian. His plans had all come together, even better than he’d imagined they could. Today was a day of celebration.
Yet he somehow did not feel much like celebrating at all.
He should have been bursting with joy today, yet he felt…as close tomuddledas he thought he’d ever been. As if all of that pressure inside him hadexplodedand left him reeling, when he prided himself on always being sharp and in command—and therefore, he had always hoped, immune to the sort of thing that had taken down his father. Pau did not intend to trust the wrong person, and usually he could depend on his tried-and-true discernment to make certain he was protected.
But there appeared to be no protection from Leontina and the things she made him feel—little as he wished to admit he felt anything at all—
The trouble was, he hadn’t slept well.
After what had happened the night before, he hadn’t told the staff to move Leontina into his room the way he’d said he would. He’d considered that the smart and only reasonable course of action, particularly after Leontina had responded to the news of their journey today by turning on her heel and leaving the dining room. Without a word.
But this meant, of course, that she hadn’t been in his bed when he’d finally retired, after spending entirely too long scowling at the stacks of books in every corner of this house, noting which ones she’d taken out and looked at. After hours of wondering what, exactly, she’d learned about him in reading what he’d read, the way she’d said she would.
If he was the man he’d always thought he was, he’d kept thinking—for reasons that remained opaque to him even now—he would welcome this little project of hers. He would have nothing to hide.
That had been what had forced him to take himself off to bed. Because, of course, whatcouldhe have to hide? He was Pau Calixto. His life was a wide-open book, available to any who looked his way because he was precisely who he appeared to be, and the actual books in his home could only support that. And why should it matter to him what Leontina thought of him, anyway? They had decided to marry, and stay married, no matter what. The die was cast.
But he’d found himself standing in the center of his bedroom without any lights on, entirely too aware that she was not there.
As if her absence was a hole inside him.
When he’d finally thrown himself into the bed, he’d faced a very long night. Because the bed that had always seemed appropriately sized for him seemed entirely too big and empty without her.
