Page 57 of Consequence of One Reckless Night

“What did they argue about?”

Raquel turned her tear-filled eyes on him. “Leandro’s marriage proposal.”

Alexandre’s lips thinned with displeasure. “You weren’t her first choice of bride, were you?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know what they were arguing about—only that Ana refused to do our mother’s bidding. I knew that if I stepped in and agreed to whatever it was that mother wanted, I would gain her approval. And I did.”

Compassion filled his eyes and Alexandre laid his hand on hers, clenched tightly in her lap.

“Later when I found out what I had unknowingly agreed to, it was too late to back out.” Her eyes became wide saucers in her face as she experienced the same trepidation she had all those weeks ago. “I couldn’t imagine marrying Leandro, not when I knew nothing about him. But Sylvia was ecstatic, and for the first time in my life, she looked at me with warmth and affection.

“But, as days passed, I began feeling trapped. I didn’t want to marry Leandro, but I couldn’t back out of the arrangement, not without making my mother hate me for not fulfilling her wish. The stress piled on and I remember thinking if I didn’t get away, I would go mad. That’s how I landed at Club M.”

They both remembered the night she had walked into Club M and forever changed the course of both their lives.

“But I didn’t plan on going home with a man that night,” she confessed.

Alexandre nodded. “I believe you.”

“I didn’t know who you were or why I was so attracted to you,” she said, relieved to finally tell him the truth about that night. “But I knew if I didn’t go home with you that night, I would regret it forever.”

****

Alexandre gatheredher in his arms.

“I wasn’t myself that night,” he confessed, aching to open his heart to her.

Raquel was honest with him, while he’d chosen to hold a part of himself back. These past few days, he’d discovered that while he enjoyed the physical aspect of their marriage, he’d begun to rely on her emotionally, too. Whenever she shared tidbits about her life, he longed to tell her about his past. But the prospect of trusting another person with intimate details of his life was frightening.

However, tonight, he wanted to bare his soul to her. He wanted no secrets between them. He trusted Raquel, he realized with a start. Trusted her implicitly, and believed she would never betray him.

“It was the day Leandro told me about the wedding,” Alexandre said, his eyes darkening with pain at the memory. “I was not just shocked by the news but angry, too.”

“Why?” Raquel whispered, her cheek resting on his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist.

“Because Carlos orchestrated the entire thing.”

She lifted her head, looking quizzically at him.

“You know Carlos adopted me,” he said, and she nodded. “What you don’t know is that he didn’t want to.”

She gaped at him.

“I strongly believe my mother intentionally got pregnant with me. She hoped my father would leave his wife and marry her, but when that didn’t happen, she used me to her benefit.

“My father, Rico, paid her to get rid of me in the womb, but she didn’t. Instead, she used me to try and extort money from Rico. But he didn’t care about her or me. Neither did it matter to him that if news about me got out, it would embarrass his family. It drove my mother crazy when her scheme backfired, but she found a gullible prey in Carlos.”

“Your grandfather doesn’t look like someone who can be extorted,” Raquel added, remembering the Monteiro patriarch whom she’d only met once. But once was enough to form a lasting impression—behind his warm smile, she’d sensed, was a man who was unyielding and ruthless, just like Alexandre.

“You didn’t know my mother,” Alexandre muttered with undisguised hate. “She was a snake—a manipulative woman who only cared about herself, and no one else. Liza went to Carlos and threatened to go to the press if he didn’t help her. It was enough to bring Carlos to his knees.

“Family is everything to my grandfather, and he would rather die than have the family name sullied. So he paid her. And kept paying. Month after month, year after year, till he too, got fed up with her manipulations.”

“Is that when he decided to adopt you?”

Pursing his lips, he looked away. He remembered that night—Liza complaining to Carlos how expensive raising a child was, and that Alexandre too, deserved a good life like Leandro.

The expense is crippling,Liza had said while he’d hidden behind his mother.

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