I Broke His Rule to Get Near Him, So the Billionaire Made Me Count novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Tell Him

I didn't knock this time.

It was three in the morning, and I stood on the porch with my keys cut into my fist until he opened the door himself.

He had been awake.

He was in a gray T-shirt, barefoot, with a book in one hand.

He took one look at my face and put the book down on the hall table.

"Mari. What happened?" he said.

"I have to tell you something," I said.

"Come in."

"No. Here," I said.

I said it standing on his threshold, with the porch light on my face and the dark yard behind me.

"My name is Marisela Escobedo. My mother's maiden name is Lozano. I used it to get hired."

He didn't move.

"Ramón Escobedo was my father," I said.

"I went to work on your dock to make you look at me. I've been lying to you since the first night in your office."

The wind moved in the hedge.

He did not say a word, and his face did not change, but all the color left it.

I watched it go.

"I know what he did," I said. "Teo told me. I know the lock was in his truck."

My voice shook.

"I know you've known it for ten months, and you let me hate you, and you let the whole city say it was yours."

"Mari."

"You said his name to my face," I said, and my voice broke open.

"On your bed, with your hands tied. And you didn't know whose face it was."

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them they were wet.

"Come in," he said, in a voice I hadn't heard before. "Please."

I walked in.

I walked through the hall to the foot of the stairs, turned around, and slapped him across the face.

The crack of it rang in the empty house.

He took it.

He didn't lift his hand or step back, and his head turned with the blow and came back to me.

"Again," he said quietly. "If you need to."

I slapped him again.

My palm burned.

I was sobbing, and I was shaking, and I hit him a third time on the chest with my closed fist.

"You let me hate you!" I shouted.

"Yes," he said.

"You let me stand there at the huddle and watch you read him off a card! You never looked up! I wanted to kill you!"

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