Page 71 of Tainted Blood
Sighing, she perches on the end of my desk. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but yes, he does. There’s a side to him no one sees, but me.”
Too much fucking information.
“Let’s keep it that way,” I grumble. “When’s the wedding?”
“What wedding?”
“That pinche cab—” At her biting look, I scrub a hand across my unshaven face. “I mean that Santiago knocked up my baby sister. You’re telling me he’s not even going to marry you?”
She rolls her eyes. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, Santi. Having a baby doesn’t require a shotgun wedding.”
If Sanders thinks he’s going to turn my sister into a single mother, that shotgun will be aimed at his dick. “I thought you said you loved him.”
“I do, but when we marry, it will be because we want to, not because we’re forced to.”
I wince. Although unintentional, she just shot a direct hit at a very thin nerve. Judging by how quickly her smile fades, she knows it too.
Biting her lip, she squints her way through a half-assed apology. “Look, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded…”
As fucked up as everything is, I can’t help but chuckle. Carrera blood may dominate our gene pool, but this is pure Lachey. Máma has always had a penchant for unfiltered bluntness. Speak first, think second, apologize when necessary.
Which, right now, is forcing me to take a good, hard look in the mirror.
Hooking my discarded wedding band around my thumb, I bring it to my face. For days, I’ve seen it as a promise. A circle of hope. Now, I see it for what Thalia saw when I slid hers onto her finger on our wedding day.
A fucking shackle.
“Yeah, you did,” I say flatly. “But I deserve to hear it because you’re right. No one should be forced into a marriage they don’t want. It never ends well.”
Silence fills my office as she absorbs my admission. “Give her time, Santi. You don’t know what we went through. Nobody will ever know. Our bodies are healing, but what we saw, what we survived…” She shudders, a dark expression clouding her face. “It lingers. The memories are like poisonous seeds.” Pinning me with a knowing stare, she adds, “Some things can’t be uprooted with soothing words or with twenty bodyguards staking out her apartment.”
Shit.
She knows I have eyes on New York.
“Those seeds are embedded in our minds. Given the right environment, they’ll take hold. They’ll fester black roses with thorns, and eventually that’s all that will be left. We’ll be their greatest victory.” Glancing down, she dusts her fingers over her flat stomach. “Their living victims.”
The sadness in her voice is like another dagger to the heart.
“Lola…”
Sliding off the edge of the desk, she rounds the corner to where I’m still reeling from her confession. “That’s why she left,” she says, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder. “It isn’t because she doesn’t love you, Santi. It’s because she hasn’t learned to love who she’s become. They stole pieces of us and changed others. Until Thalia can come to terms with that, she doesn’t have enough pieces left to give you.”
I don’t speak. I can’t. The image she created has me by the throat.
As much as I fucking hate it, I’ve accepted Thalia’s need for space. But until now, I’ve never understood it. Every demand of mine shattered the fragile pieces she was trying to rebuild.
As for my sister? I’m starting to understand her, too. She doesn’t need my protection anymore. She’s a Carrera.
Tipping her chin up, I tap her nose just like I did when we were kids. “You’re going to make a good mom.”
“Does that mean you’re going to stop trying to kill the father?” she asks tentatively, hope flickering in her arctic blue eyes.
These motherfucking truces are going to be the death of me.
Sliding my desk drawer open, I pull out the silver bangle I’ve kept safe for her.
“My bracelet!” she says with a gasp.