Page 64 of Chris

Closed.

That was how distracted Valeria became whenever Chris was in the picture. She knew, without a doubt, that wasn’t a good thing for either of them. It would likely get them both in a world of trouble.

It scared her to death.

Jorge, though?

He terrified her more.

“I would like to call Maria,” she told him, “once we’re settled in.”

Her husband chuckled, his arm coming to snake around her waist. To someone else, that hold might seem affectionate, but to her … it felt like another kind of prison. One she would never escape.

“No,” he said.

“But—”

“Maria is fine where she is for the weekend, Val.”

“I want to tell her goodnight, and to be a good girl while we’re away.”

When she couldn’t get what she wanted from being honest, then she had to try another route. What she really wanted to do was make sure her daughter was being treated fairly by that bitch he forced her to leave Maria with.

“Come on,” Jorge said, his arm tugging her up the stairs with him, “let’s get settled in, and have something made to eat. I am starved.”

“And then I can call Maria?”

“No.”

“Jorge—”

In the stairwell, Valeria found herself slammed into the wall. Her spine ached from the force of her husband shoving her before he was quick to crowd her with his presence. She stared into his cold, dark eyes as his lips pulled down into a scowl that would rival the devil’s. It frightened her, sure, but she refused to show it.

“You’re too close to her, I think.”

Valeria sucked in a sharp breath. “She’s my child. I raised her.”

“Yes, without me. Because what did you do, hmm?”

She refused to entertain that conversation. It always ended the same way, and that wasn’t a game she wanted to play with this man today. One person lost every single time—her. That loss came in the form of a sore body, and bruises she needed to be creative to hide. She wasn’t in the mood for it.

Her silence was not what he wanted though.

Jorge leaned in close, baring his teeth as he spoke in a hissed tone. “You spend far too much time filling that girl’s head full of shit about me, Valeria.”

“I do not.”

On that, she wouldn’t budge.

Valeria never told Maria anything bad about her father. Why would she when she didn’t need to? Jorge poisoned his daughter against him all on his own, and with little to no effort on her part. If he couldn’t see that, then how was that her problem?

“I think it would do her—and you—good to spend time apart.”

“What does that mean?”

Jorge smiled. “Behave this weekend, Val, or she won’t be there when you get home. The tutoring works well enough for her, doesn’t it? I can’t say how long that’ll last, and there are quite a few private schools she can attend instead. Ones that will keep her away for weeks at a time. Do you hear me?”

Valeria swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. “I hear you.”