Page 45 of Girl in the Water
He slammed into his wife and tuned out her whimpering.
He had taken care of the thief. But the thief had had accomplices. If Eduardo ever laid hands on the bastards…
As he imagined, in great detail, what he would do, the blood that would flow, he came in a blinding rush.
He collapsed on top of his relieved wife, caught his breath, rolled off. “Get dressed.”
She scampered away.
They were expected at his father’s estate. Raul Morais was giving a dinner to honor one politician or another. Morais Timber held inconceivably large swaths of rain forest. Raul Morais often needed an easement or a way to slip around an annoying environmental protection act. Political friendships were carefully cultivated.
Eduardo cleaned up and put on his tuxedo. As he headed out to the elevators with his wife, he spared her only a cursory glance. She’d come from money and looked it. Her dress was a peach-color froth of silk, probably a gift from her sister, who was married to Hugo Romero, who owned a major international luxury boutique chain.
Down by the curb, a car waited for them. Eduardo’s father had sent the chauffeured limousine that efficiently whisked them straight to Jardim Botânico, an upscale neighborhood in the south zone.
Raul Morais could easily afford a residence in nearby Leblon, the most expensive neighborhood in South America, but he didn’t want to live in a skyscraper, not even if it came with a three-story penthouse that had its own rooftop pool and garden.
Not that the house in Jardim Botâanico lacked anything. At fifteen thousand square feet—not including staff quarters—it held every imaginable luxury, including a spa with a sauna and live-in masseuse. The grounds featured an elaborate pool, an equally impressive pond with a twenty-foot waterfall, and a small forest of palm trees.
By the time Eduardo and his wife arrived at the residence, the party was in full swing, the guest list a testament to Raul Morais’s wealth. The politicians came to angle for campaign contributions. The business owners came for access to the politicians. The singers and actors had been invited to lend an extra layer of glamour to the evening, and eagerly accepted. Movies needed investors. Musicians too always needed backers. The strands of connections wove through the crowd, creating the fabric of money.
Eduardo set his wife loose and went to find the old hyena. Must greet him first. The king would want his due. And he always got what he wanted.
Raul Morais stood near the elaborate parrot enclosure, surrounded by politicians who courted his favor. The stroke he’d suffered four years ago had left its mark on his once-powerful body. He listed slightly to the left, and he’d grown thinner. Yet without doubt, he was the most powerful man present. His eyes were the same bottomless black, his gaze sharper than a machete.
As Eduardo joined the group, his father nodded at him. “Excuse me, gentlemen, I need a word with my son.”
They were, of course, all smiles, patting Eduardo on the shoulder, dear-boy this and dear-boy that.
Eduardo followed his father into the house, into his mahogany-paneled study.
“Marcos,” the old man said to one of the staff, and the guy hurried off to fetch the older son.
Joaquim, the butler-bodyguard, stayed with them. He’d done a stint with the 1oBatalhão de Forças Especiais, the 1stSpecial Forces Battalion, the rough equivalent of the US Delta Force. He was at least two meters tall and over a hundred kilograms, dark skin, close-cropped hair, square jaw, kind of a horse face. He looked like a death machine and was incredibly loyal.
“A drink, senhor?” Joaquim asked Eduardo.
“No, thanks.” He’d best keep his wits about him.
Marcos walked in with a full glass already in hand.
“Father.” Then he shot a what’s-this-about look at Eduardo with “Brother.”
Joaquim poured the old man some cachaça, a Brazilian liquor made from actual sugarcane juice—unlike its poor stepbrother, rum, made from the leftovers of the main sugar removal process. The glass replenished, Joaquim stepped back into the corner. He did his best to blend into the furniture, but he was about as invisible as a water buffalo at the ballet.
Raul Morais sank into the leather chair behind his ornate mahogany desk that sat in front of equally ornate matching bookshelves. The entire study had been bought from the castle of some Portuguese nobleman, in the north of Brazil.
Looking at Raul Morais now, nobody would guess that he was a son of the favelas, the miserable slums of Rio. Or that his father had been one of thesoldados da borracha, “rubber soldiers,” men who’d been taken to the Amazon during World War II to produce rubber. Some said a hundred thousand men had been taken into the rain forest, some said more. Few made it home. Eduardo’s grandfather had been one of the survivors—the toughest of the tough.
His son had taken after him.
By the time Raul Morais was sixteen, he’d thieved, prostituted to rich tourists—both male and female—and killed, in self-defense. By the time he was eighteen, he’d fallen love with a girl, Maria, who’d done all the same things to survive. When, a year later, one of their favela’s famed gangs had beaten Maria to death for poaching on their territory, Raul killed again. This time in a hot fury that left three gang members dead.
To escape being hunted down, Raul had gone as far as he could from Rio, two thousand miles, up to the Amazon his father had escaped, then up the Rio Negro, up the Içana, and joined a small logging operation.
“Back when I started,” he said now, “going into the rain forest and coming out with whatever you found was still legal. You cut it out—it was yours. You dug it out of the ground—you got to keep it. Not that I ever found anything. Rumors would fly about gold in one river or the other, but I never had any luck with that. I stuck to logging.”
Eduardo exchanged a look with Marcos and leaned against the richly carved column behind him. Sounded like they were in for some serious reminiscing. The old hyena got like this from time to time, usually a precursor to lecturing his sons. First the tale of his long, arduous rise to riches, then his disappointment with his useless sons, who weren’t fit to follow in his footsteps.
