Page 8 of Eternal Craving

He smiled down at me. “In your mother’s letter, she insisted I take it.” He paused. “Not sure who to give it to.”

Shouldn’t it be me?

It was the only thing left of my old life – other than the invisible scars I carried for what had happened that day.

Discreetly watching him, I steadied my hands and swallowed hard, unsettled by a wave of uneasiness. In the shoes’ newly shined reflection, I saw my brother staring back. But it was my own image. A quick glance confirmed Roelle hadn’t noticed my reaction.

My stone-faced expression concealed so much, even from me.

Roelle regarded me with interest. “Your mother is dead.”

I gazed at him with pain etched in my expression. “When?” I asked, my voice breaking.

“Does it matter?”

My jaw gaped in horror at his cruelty.

He shrugged. “A week ago.”

“And my grandparents?”

He looked surprised. “They died years ago.”

With a lump in my throat, I whispered, “My sister?”

His lip twitched. “Go and help Miguel in the stable.”

Dazed, I headed for the door.

“Daumia,” he called out. He rarely used my first name, so I turned to face him.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” he said. “It’s a good reminder that actions have consequences.”

I stood there wondering if this crushing pain in my chest would ever let up.

Hate for him burned fiercely in my soul. But I was powerless.

“You’re doing that thing again, where you stand there staring and waste time…my time.” Roelle slipped into the shoes I’d just polished.

Black wax stained my hands, the polish ingrained under my fingernails.

Halfway down the stairs, I stared back up at Roelle’s bedroom. That painting had been defaced and yet he’d kept it.

Back in the office, I went straight for the portrait. I turned it over and studied it more closely. In the left-hand corner, in small scratchy handwriting, the subjects’ names were written on the back:Ricardo Velde, Felipe Grenaldi, Roelle Bastillion, and Aaron Luis.

I turned the painting over again and scraped the smudge that obscured the mystery man’s face, exposing black eyebrows too close together, a familiar dark expression, and a cleft in his chin.

It was the same man who had tried to murder me in the mausoleum – before the mystery woman had appeared. Sunaria had prevented him from striking me with that awful cudgel.

Distracted, I made my way to the servants’ quarters.

On finding a bath prepared for someone else, I climbed into the tub and began scrubbing my skin, trying to wash away this agonizing feeling as the memories of losing my mother overwhelmed me. I’d never explained the truth to her. It had been another man who had acclimated the bull, and I had stepped into the ring to warn him of the danger.

And the bull had turned on me, forcing me over the wall and into the path of those brutes who struck me down, knocking me out and discarding my body within a tomb.

Biting my hand to quiet my sobs, I slid beneath the surface of the water, and it whooshed over the sides of the tub, soaking the floor.

I held my breath, letting the truth seep in…