Page 45 of The Last Sunrise

“You’re… wait, you’re…” He looks over and down at me, his face twisted in confusion, and then straight back to my mom.

“You’re Isolde Pera,” he says with a stony certainty, my mother’s name sounding like a curse rolling off his tongue.

How on earth does he know her name?

His attention snaps to me.

“She’s your mother? I knew you looked familiar. This vile woman who came here to demolish our business and bleedour land dry is your mother?” His voice is full of venom, a deep hatred for her that has my head spinning.

I grip my hands around the stony edge of the pool, trying to pull myself up, but the roaring behind my ears makes it hard. It takes several attempts before I join them on the hot cement. Water drips from my body as I try to grasp what the hell the problem between them is.

My mother’s face is whiter than a sheet of paper. Her eyes are steel, her chin set. I can practically see her temper flaring. She’s trying to appear as unbothered as stone, but I know better.

“How do you two… What the hell is going on?” I finally manage to speak through the fog in my brain.

Julián’s index finger points toward my mother and she takes a step back.

“She’s the one I’ve been talking about. Her and her greed have come here to steal the land we own and build another useless luxury resort on top of it. She’s killing our island, and you—” I can hear the pain in his voice.

“You’re her accomplice. That’s why you’re here.” His eyes go wide as if he’s piecing together a puzzle that he’s spent years trying to connect. “You told me you’ve been working on a charity thing and came to live a free summer? Bullshit. Your happy-go-lucky summer is putting my family and our workers out of their jobs. How fucking typical.”

I whirl to my silent mother. “Mom, what is he talking about? Is the company you’ve been talking about his?”

She swallows before she speaks, her lip quivering as if she’s in the presence of a ghost. Confrontation usually makes her morph into a stronger, bigger version of herself, not shrink the way she is now. I take a breath, wondering if she’s goingto crush him like a bug as she typically would any man who speaks to her in that type of tone.

“It’s more complicated than that, Ry. I can explain it to you, but this isn’t personal.”

Julián laughs, a sickened, roaring, angry noise from deep in his chest. “You liar. You destroyed my pare’s life, broke his heart. You’ve kept him in an eternal prison, longing for a selfish ghost of a woman he loved as a child, and now you’re here to put the final nail in his coffin under the pretense of charity and building a hotel on our land? Disgusting. Both of you.” He spits at her feet, and she blinks hard as he storms off.

“Julián, wait!” I try to catch up to him, but when I do, he yanks his arm away from me.

“Do not touch me! Stay away from me! I never want to see your face again. Just go back to where you came from and never,evercome back here.”

The warmth, the comfort, the familiar Julián I had fallen in love with is gone. The man in front of me is cold, full of ice and metal, no sign of the smiling, endearing Julián. My Julián.

My heart cracks, my knees buckle as I grab on to an umbrella stand to keep my body from collapsing.

Chapter Sixteen

I sit across from my mother in the dining room of the hotel, my arms crossed around my chest, staring sharply at her until she speaks. I will get an explanation, and she will not get away with sharing the bare minimum as she usually does. A basket of warm bread and butter with flakes of salt sits lonely between us as the server pours my mom’s glass full of wine.

“I’ll have some too, please.” I smile at the server: the same friendly face I’ve seen at nearly every meal I’ve eaten at the hotel.

“You shouldn’t drink on your medication, Ry. You know—” my mom starts to say.

I cut her off. “I’m having some.”

She purses her lips but doesn’t argue further. There’s a buzzing between us, almost a tinge of fear radiating from her side, which has never been the case in our power dynamic.

“How did you meet him?” Her voice is cool, dripping cold water.

I shake my head. “Answer my questions first. Why did you mislead me about why we came here? You told me you were celebrating a big deal, a merger. You complained aboutthe seller some, but you didn’t even hint at what you were actually doing. I would have never come if you had. You know that.”

“And what am I doing exactly, Ry? You don’t understand anything about my job or how important this deal will be for us. For you, your future.”

I slam my hand down on the table, shaking the glasses and cutlery.

“What future?” I glare at her.

---