Xavier’s brows scrunched. “I didn’t know you had another sister.”

“Most people don’t.”

Pen was too young to have made her official society debut yet, and George and Caroline paid a fortune to keep her and her condition out of the press.

“She’s my half-sister” I clarified. “Same father, different mother. I’m pretty sure she’s watched every soccer game that’s ever been recorded. I got her an autographed Donovan jersey for her seventh birthday a few years ago, and you should’ve seen her smile.”

My heart pinched at the memory. Her birthday had been weeks before her CFS diagnosis. I took her to a local game while George was at work and Caroline was at a charity luncheon. I hadn’t seen her so happy since.

“How old is she now?” Xavier asked. “Nine.”

“Two years ago.” His gaze burned a hole in my cheek, and I realized my mistake.

My estrangement happened five years ago. I’d basically admitted I was breaking the terms of my family split.

Vivian, Isabella, Alessandra, and now Xavier. Besides Rhea and Pen herself, I could count the number of people who knew I was in touch with my sister on one hand.

The thought should’ve terrified me, but something about Xavier muted my usual worries. My gut told me he could keep a secret, and while I didn’t trust my gut one hundred percent when it came to him, he’d shared enough vulnerability of his own that I was willing to give him this piece of myself without much resistance.

Nevertheless, I lifted my chin and met his eyes, daring him to follow through with his train of thought. “Yes.”

Xavier didn’t flinch beneath the force of my stare. “She’s almost in the double digits,” he said. “Big milestone.”

So, how does nine feel? You’re almost in the double digits.

Pressure expanded in my throat. I hadn’t discussed Pen with anyone other than Rhea in so long that a conversation about something as simple as her age was tearing through my composure. My secret had bubbled inside me for years. It needed a release valve, and somehow, in the most unexpected of ways, I’d found it in Xavier Castillo.

He didn’t ask for details about Pen or how long I’d been in touch with her. He didn’t ask if I was talking to anyone else in the family. He didn’t ask anything at all.

He simply watched me with those dark, fathomless eyes, and the unseen force that’d brought me here reared its head again, urging me to confide in him and let someone in fully for once.

My self-preservation fought back like hell.

Moments of connection were one thing. Opening up to someone was something else entirely.

Luckily, I was saved from making a decision when a familiar shadow spilled across the floor.

I straightened, snapping into work mode while Xavier visibly tensed.

“It’s your father.” Eduardo cut straight to the chase. “He’s awake.”

They left me alone with him.

My father wasn’t up for seeing a crowd, so Dr. Cruz forced everyone else to stay in the hall while I…well, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

I’d run out of things to say to him a long time ago.

Nevertheless, I came up to his bedside, my heart thumping to an anxious beat when dark eyes latched onto mine.

“Xavier.”

His paper-thin whisper sent a chill down my spine. The last time I saw him, he could speak normally and I could pretend the status quo was still intact. Even if the status quo sucked, there was comfort in familiarity.

But this? I didn’t know what to make of this man or situation. Should I forgive and forget because he was terminally ill? Did the last moments of his life erase the moments of mine that he’d made a living hell? What did a son say to the parent he was supposed to love but hated?

“Father.” I forced a smile. It presented as a grimace.

His rheumy gaze traveled from the top of my sleep-mussed hair to the toes of my sneakers. It ascended to rest on my sweatpants. “Esos pantalones otra vez.” Those pants again.

My jaw clenched. Of course our first interaction in months revolved around his disapproval of my choices. The status quo lives and breathes.

“You know me.” I pushed a hand into my pocket and tossed out a careless smile. “I aim to displease.”

“You’re the Castillo heir,” he snapped in Spanish. “Act like it, especially…” A fit of coughs rattled his lungs. When they finally died down, he inhaled a wheezing breath before continuing. “Especially when I’ll be gone within the week.”

The hand in my pocket fisted. It was the first time my father had ever acknowledged his mortality, and it took every ounce of willpower not to flinch.

“We’ve had this conversation multiple times,” I said. “I’m not taking over the company.”

“Then what are you going to do? Live off my money forever? Raise another…” He coughed again. “Raise another crop of degenerates who’ll turn the family fortune into nothing?”

The monitors beeped with his increased heart rate.

“Grow up, Xavier,” he said harshly. “It’s time for you…” This time, a hacking cough took him out of commission for a full minute. “It’s time for you to be useful for once.”

“You want me, someone who doesn’t want the job and will never want the job, to be CEO? You’re supposed to have good business sense, Father, but even I can tell you that’s not a sound strategy.”

His cough morphed into a phlegmy laugh. “You? CEO of the Castillo Group as you are now? No. I would be better off putting Lupe’s dog in charge.” My father’s eyes slid to the closed door. “Eduardo will train you. This is your legacy.”

My hand ached from the force of my grip. “No, it’s not. It’s yours.”

Perhaps it was crass to argue with a dying man, but this was what our relationship was like to the very end: him trying to force me into a mold I didn’t fit into; me resisting.

There’d been a time when I tried. Before my mom died, I soaked up all my time with him, whether that was at a fútbol game or in his office. I lived for the dreams, the pats on the head, the bonding over a shared future. I was going to carry on the family legacy, and we were going to rule the world.

That was before we became the villains in each other’s stories. “Yours or mine, it’s all the same.” My father’s mouth twisted, the thought as appealing to him as it was to me.

I stared out the window at the gardens. Beyond them lay the rest of Bogotá, and Colombia, and the world.

In our household, tradition formed a prison in which no change entered and no member escaped. I’d come the closest, but a yoke of fear tethered me to the grounds the way a curse tethered spirits to the mortal plane.

I’d been here for one day, and I was already suffocating. I needed a breath of fresh air. Just one.

“Your mother left you a letter.” Six words. One sentence.

That was all it took to obliterate my defenses.