Page 135

Now one side of his jacket was bunched beneath him, his shirt had pulled partly free from his trousers, and there was blood soaking into fabric that probably cost more than most of the people who worked for him earned in a month.

One polished shoe had turned sideways.

I couldn’t stop looking at that either.

Such a ridiculous thing to notice.

Father would have hated it.

“Isabella.”

I heard Lachlan, but I just couldn’t make myself answer.

I had imagined Father dead before.

More times than I would ever admit to anyone.

Sometimes someone shot him.

Sometimes I poisoned his liquor.

Once, when I was sixteen and particularly furious with him, I spent an entire afternoon imagining him falling down the main staircase and breaking his neck while I stood at the top and did absolutely nothing to help.

Those fantasies had always ended the same way.

With freedom.

I had believed his death would feel like a door swinging open.

Instead, I stood there staring at him and couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to feel.

He looked smaller.

That was the first truly unsettling thing about it.

Father had never seemed small to me.

He had filled every room he entered, even when he said nothing. His moods decided whether the entire finca breathed easily or spent the day trying not to be noticed. He decided when I left my bedroom, what I learned, where I went, who I spoke to, what version of my own life I was allowed to know.

Even when he was gone, I measured my choices against what would happen when he came back.

Now he was dead.

There would be no coming back.

He would never unlock my bedroom door because he felt generous.

Never lock it because I had annoyed him.

Never tell me what my mother would have wanted as though he had known her heart better than I did.

Never put his hands on me.

Never threaten Rafael because he had stepped between us.

Never decide what happened to me again.

My mother had died trying to escape him.