Page 370 of The Romance Adventure

I stagger back. “Are you saying I’m fake?”

He shakes his head slowly and circles me. “Not even a little bit. You are very real. This is very real. It wasn’t happenstance that we ran into each other in Malaga. You were on my tail since Tangier, at least.”

Sadness makes my eyes sting. “No and yes.”

His voice is stern. “Can’t be both, Jolie.”

“No, it was happenstance. You came across as a subject during an investigation. You evaded me. I gave up the chase. Yes, I was on your tail, but not when we met. That was a coincidence.”

“Why were you following me?”

I refuse to answer. This would be the point in one of those old spy movies when the femme fatale would bite into a cyanide capsule. But I don’t give up that easily. Not even when CJ laces his arms around my lower back, drawing me close.

“We’re married. We made a promise.”

But I cannot tell him. Not until I have the crown and do what must be done.

“Chip’s life’s work was to find the stones and crown. He succeeded on the first. I’m not so sure about the second. Sure, the pearl, diamond, and red coral were treasure and could’ve made him wealthier, but his mission was to return the crown to its rightful owner.”

I sink back, drawing out of CJ’s arms. “And who is that?”

“The Devil’s Charm.”

I scoff. “Yes, the crown was on the Crimson Tide, but⁠—”

“It belonged to the captain, Jolie. It was my great, great, great or so grandmother’s. She was the pirate queen. She had it made⁠—”

I shake my head. Everything I thought I knew tumbles through my mind like ice into a glass. The thing about that is it melts. “No, that can’t be right.”

CJ hoists me onto the counter and then plants his arms at both of my sides. He tells me the story of how The Régia House of Sousa betrayed its own by sending João, the heir, and his family to Brazil to claim it for the crown. But he was cut off and distraught. After he was killed, his beloved, Márcia, was left to care for the family in a strange land. The royal family she’d married into ignored her as if she didn’t exist.

He splits the story between English and Portuguese, but I understand it well enough.

“She grew desperate and did what she had to provide for her children, including resorting to piracy.”

Parts of the story make sense, but gaps and pieces don’t line up with what I’ve been told. After my father dropped her like a grenade, my mother abandoned me for a glitzy life. I only saw her once or twice a year when growing up. However, when she got sick, I went to her bedside and she relayed the story of my father and his claim to the treasure. How it was rightfully his and if I just gave it to him, he’d finally have everything he sought.

“She became the pirate queen, captain of the Maré Carmesim, wore the Coroa de Lágrimas, and swore revenge on the House of Sousa.”

That’s not how I heard the story. “Pirates are known for lying. Why should I believe you?”

“How much time do you have?”

Heads together at the table, CJ tells me the entire story, front to back, sparing no details, at least not that I can discern. His case is watertight.

Turns out, mine is not.

Either my father told my mother a false story, or she fabricated it, knowing I’d pursue revenge. Seeking the very thing he valued most—the crown to his collection, as it were. And if anyone else found it, that would burn him.

“How’d you find the last piece of the map? Were you going through my things?”

CJ tells me how he was getting dressed in the closet when he remembered that I hadn’t told him where the earrings came from.

“I wanted to leave you something sweet in case they came from an ex and you kept them as a reminder to guard your heart, or that not all that glitters is gold.”

“Something sweet?”

“Next time you’re up there, you’ll see.” He winks.