She frowned slightly. “No?”
“I didn’t marry you for money.” The words came out sharper than you intended, because panic was starting to climb your spine. “I don’t want this to be what tonight is.”
Something trembled in her expression. Not offense. Relief mixed with grief.
You set the envelope down untouched. “Having you is enough.”
That was when her lips quivered.
It was so subtle that another person might have missed it. But by then you knew her face well enough to see the strain underneath the beauty, like a bridge carrying more weight than its design allowed.
“Hijo,” she said automatically.
Then she stopped.
The air in the room changed.
Not in a romantic way. In the way air changes before a storm you can feel in your teeth.
She looked at you as if standing on a cliff edge. “I need to tell you something before you accept me fully.”
Your body went still.
There are moments when the soul understands danger before the mind has translated the evidence. That was one of them. It was in the way she said fully. In the slip from husband-language into something maternal and terrified. In the fact that she was suddenly shaking.
You took a step toward her. “What is it?”
Instead of answering, Celia slowly unbuttoned her blazer and let it slide from her shoulders.
At first you didn’t understand what you were seeing.
There were scars.
Not one or two, not the small ordinary marks life leaves on bodies. These were larger. Surgical. Deep. A pattern of old trauma crossing her chest and upper torso, half-hidden by silk and shadow. One curved beneath her collarbone. Another disappeared toward her ribs. There was a puckered mark near her shoulder, the kind that makes even a young man with limited experience understand violence has visited before.
You froze.
