She spat the words at like a dagger, and for the first ti in my life, María José had managed to shock speechless.
I blinked slowly. Staring at her through the barely open door.
This was new. This was very, very new. She had never spoken to like that before.
Hell, I didn’t even think she could speak to like that before.
And Dios mío, she looked furious. Her eyes burned, her scar stretched slightly as her lips curled in anger, and there was a fire in her expression that made sothing tight coil inside .
I exhaled, the surprise turning into sothing else... sothing almost like admiration. My pretty flower was finally learning.
A slow smirk tugged at my lips. "Well, look at you," I mused, tilting my head. "You finally learned to speak for yourself."
María José’s eyes narrowed. I half-expected her to slap through the tiny gap in the door. "I had a good teacher," she shot back.
That caught off guard. I hadn’t expected her to admit it. I thought she’d shut down completely.
Damn. Damn.
Where the hell had this María José been hiding?
I chuckled, shaking my head. "That’s good. It really is."
I ant it.
But then my smile faded, and my eyes dropped to her face again. The scar. That damn scar. It was an offense to everything good in the world. A cruel, jagged thing cut through her features, deforming what should have been divine beauty.
Her divine beauty. The first thing that mapped out her identity. Rosa took away half of her identity after trying to strip her of everything else:
I sucked in a sharp breath. My fingers twitched and my chest burned.
"But what’s not good," I groaned, voice darkening, "is that thing on your face."
María José didn’t even flinch. Didn’t drop her gaze. Instead, she arched a brow, her lips twisting into sothing almost smug. "Then tell that to your lover."
Oh, for the love of...
I groaned, raking a hand through my hair. "Can you stop calling Rosa my lover?"
She folded her arms, shifting her weight slightly. "That didn’t seem like the case the other day when you ca."
Her voice was calm and collected but if one listened well, they could hear the hurt and brewing hatred beneath it.
María José, she was learning to hate .
"Despite how you publicly declared your love for her, I still asked to see you in private, Axel. I believed in you. I believed you must have so plan and wouldn’t discard of like trash. I strongly believed that you were better than the others. So I gave you one more chance. I asked to see you in private. That perhaps, if you see the hurt in my eyes, that if I bared my heart out to you, you would see my heart and realize your mistake. However... however..."
She inhaled sharply, her fingers gripping the door just a little tighter.
"You told ," she continued, voice suddenly softer but sohow harsher, "that I was an Oga. That I didn’t deserve a man like you."
Oh, co on! I’d never say such a thing!
I frowned. "María José, what are you talking about?"
Her jaw clenched, her shoulders rising and falling with the force of her breathing.
"You said an Oga like wasn’t deserving of a man like you, Axel. You said to go be with whoever could take no matter who they were because no one would want a useless thing like ."
My chest caved in. The words landed like a punch to my gut. The jolt of surprise I felt was unexplainable.
What?
No.
No, absolutely not.
My stomach twisted violently, nausea creeping in like poison in my veins.
I took a step back, my vision swimming for a second. "I said that?" My own voice sounded foreign and hoarse. "I told you that?"
Her expression was bland. But the way she lifted her chin, the way she held herself... It told enough.
I clenched my jaw, my nostrils flaring. My head began to spin and it felt like the pain was drilling holes in my brain.
This wasn’t . This wasn’t . This wasn’t .
"María José, if that’s what I supposedly said to you," I bit out, stepping forward again, "then isn’t that even more proof that I wasn’t the one who said it?"
She recoiled just a little. I let out a rough breath, dragging a hand through my hair. Dios mío, give patience.
I pushed harder.
"Does it even make sense that I’d go through every damn length to make people respect you, to stand up for you... only to turn around and destroy all of it like this?" My voice was rising now, but I didn’t care.
I was allowed to get angry. Ever since I woke up, It’s been one false accusation after the other. Fuck it, I also have feelings, don’t I?!
"Does that sound like sothing I would do, María José?"
She said nothing.
Her fingers curled tighter around the doorfra, but she didn’t look away.
"You..." she exhaled shakily, her fingers flexing. "You said those words to , Axel. I looked into your eyes when you said them. And now, I just... I can’t believe any excuses you give."
My heart felt like it dropped to my stomach.
Her voice wasn’t just about anger anymore. It was pain. A deep, raw, and aching pain.
She really believed I had said those things.
I exhaled sharply, trying to control the frustration growing inside .
"María José," I started, voice lower now. "If you feel even the least bit of gratitude for everything I’ve done... for every ti I’ve fought for you, protected you, stood by you—then you will hear my point right now."
She went still. For a long second, there was nothing.
No words. No movent. She wasn’t expecting that.
Then, her fingers wiggle slightly, her hand slowly rising to her neck—where her scarf should have been.
I froze as I saw the movent.
She wasn’t wearing a scarf today. But the high neckline of her top still covered the place where my mark should be.
But I knew it was there. I knew.
My mark.
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