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“You let a bound man do that to your face?”

Isabeast had tried to answer, but the swelling made her words thick.

“I told you to keep him alive and useful,” Father had continued. “I didn’t give you permission to let your appetite make you stupid.”

“He surprised—”

She’d tried to defend herself, but Father was having no part of any excuse and barked, “He was chained to a chair.”

A few of the men had lowered their gazes to their plates.

“You’ve made yourself ridiculous over a prisoner you insisted you could control.” Father waved toward the door. “Leave. I won’t look at that mouth while I eat.”

The humiliation in Isabeast’s eyes had nearly made me laugh again.

She’d glanced around the table, searching for someone willing to stand up for her. No one had. Even the men she’d bought off understood whose table they were sitting at.

She’d slunk away without touching her food.

As we continued to walk, my memory skipped forward to dessert, and the reason the key now pressed beneath my bodice.

Watching Father dismiss her had helped me survive the rest of the meal. It had also kept my hands steady when dessert gave me the excuse I needed to enter the kitchen.

I’d told the women working in the kitchen I wanted to finish the pastel de tres leches myself so the whipped cream would be fluffy and the strawberries fresh. No one had questioned the dutiful daughter fussing over her father’s favorite cake.

The moment their attention shifted toward the dining room, I’d slipped into the pantry.

The dented sardine tin had been waiting at the back of the lowest shelf, hidden behind canned goods no one had touched in months, exactly where Rafael had promised it would be.

I’d barely twisted the false bottom free when footsteps sounded behind me, making my heart slam against my ribs.

My fingers had just closed around the key when Doña Teresa appeared in the doorway.

The suspicion in her voice was impossible to miss.

“What are you doing on the floor?”

I had frozen with the key in my fist. Then I quickly shoved the false bottom into place, pushed the tin behind the others, grabbed a bag of fine sugar from the shelf beside it, and stood.

“The other sugar is too coarse for the topping,” I’d quickly explained.

Her eyes had narrowed. “You’ve already sweetened the cake.”

“This is for the whipped cream. Father prefers it sweetened.”

Doña Teresa’s gaze had moved from the sugar to my face.

The key remained trapped inside my fist. I had no pocket, no basket, and no time to invent another reason for crouching on the pantry floor.

I’d turned toward the shelf as though searching for something else and slipped the key inside the bodice of my dress.

After one last skeptical look, she stepped back out.

“Then finish it quickly. Ciro doesn’t enjoy waiting,” she’d commanded in that nasally tone she always had.

After I’d carried the cake into the dining room and served Father, the conversation had turned to business as one of the women from the kitchen poured coffee.

The final conversation at dinner had left me desperate to reach my room. It was the first proof that Lachlan’s people really were coming.