Page 37 of Nemesis
She was sporting an expression I’d never seen on her face before. She looked… content. Happy even. Her lips were drawn up in an effortless smile, her eyes crinkling in the corners.
There was a lightness to her features that had me entranced.
I felt my heart tug inside my rib cage at the sight. It wasn’t just her beauty. She had that in spades. No, there was something about her, about her being in her element, that had my heart racing.
As I continued watching her smile, something inside me shifted. There was more to her than she wanted to let on. Her features were so serene. Gone were the annoyance and perpetual scowls she greeted me with.
It felt as if I was getting a glimpse of another Olivia unfolding in front of my eyes.
She sat with them for what felt like hours and I just couldn’t stop staring. I could tell she knew I was, but, honestly, I couldn’t care less. I wanted to bask in the glow she was radiating while she was with these kids.
A burning need to see her this way, this happy and carefree, in my presence took home inside me. This absurd need bloomed inside my chest as I realized I wanted her to smilebecauseof me.
She eventually glanced up at me, our eyes caught in a silent exchange. Something had shifted between us two nights ago when I caught her looking through my things. She’d mostly kept her distance ever since, fighting me less and less, and I found myself missing it, missing our back and forth.
Despite how infuriating she was at times, I always loved feeling the fire she exuded when she wanted to be defiant. It only gave me more opportunities to dream of all the ways I could tame it.
She dismissed the class a few hours later, a blur of students chattering as they flitted toward the exit, but one of the students, a girl who seemed to be about the same age as Maya, stayed behind and took a hesitant step toward Olivia.
I couldn’t quite hear their conversation from where I was standing, but Olivia crouched down to her level, tucking a loose dark curl behind her ear. A moment passed and then the girl wrapped her arms around her neck.
Olivia’s face widened in shock, unsure what to do at first, but she eventually wrapped her arms around the girl’s small frame, tugging her into a tight embrace. She said one last thing to her before the girl gave her a high five and ran toward the exit, leaving Olivia still on her knees.
She stayed still for a moment, then looked up and caught me staring at her. Looking away, she stood and retreated to the back of the room where the rest of the volunteers were gathering, chatting.
After saying her goodbyes to the remaining staff, she brushed past me and hurried to the car.
I had so many questions I wanted to ask her but decided against it and turned the radio on to fill the quiet space during our drive back to the house. Thirty minutes later, I parked in the garage and we both made our way inside.
We drifted past the living room as she made her way to her office while I veered toward the kitchen, when a voice suddenly halted us.
“You’re home,” Victor noted. He might have sounded normal to anyone else, but I could hear an edge underlying it.
I’d never really paid attention to their interactions before, but ever since discovering the marks on her face that night, I started being more attentive to the way he spoke to her, the way she reacted to him when he was close, looking for any signs that he might have been the problem all along.
I was always alert when we stepped outside of these walls, but I’d never considered looking inside of them.
“Mr. Alvarez, would you please give us a moment?” he asked, more like ordered, with a tight smile. His eyes never leaving Olivia.
“Yes, sir.” I wasn’t going anywhere, but he didn’t need to know that. I stepped down the hallway toward the kitchen but retreated back when I heard him start talking again.
I hid behind a wall, spying on their exchange. Although Morales had his back to me, I could clearly see Olivia’s side profile.
Her arms were crossed over her chest and she stood straight, eye level with Victor, since she’d changed back into her heels before we walked in. He was tense, his fists clenched at his sides as he spewed muttered curses in Spanish under his breath.
Olivia stayed put, not moving an inch as he went on and on about how disrespectful she was being to him and how she was sabotaging his image by leaving the social gathering to spend time with those kids.
He spoke with such disdain that it took everything in me not to march over and put him back in his place for talking to her that way. But it would be overstepping boundaries and that wasn’t my job.
I was here to protect her from outside threats, not to regulate marriage conflicts. But most importantly, I knew how men like Victor would react if they saw someone coming to their wife’s defense, and I didn't want to create any problems for her.
Despite Olivia being a private person, I'd find a way to talk to her when it was just us, away from him, to try and gauge whether she needed me or not.
When he finished his ramble, she made a move to walk past him, but he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, gripping it and harshly pulling her back. The movement revealed a glimpse of his face and I saw red.
I saw his mask finally drop, showing the monster underneath.
Olivia curled around herself, bracing for impact as I watched Morales’s arm outstretched in the air, ready to strike her.
