Claiming The Heiress

Alejandro

…my dear, dear boy. Throughout the years I have shared everything I have with you, I have taught you everything I know.There is nothing I’ve wished for more than being your father not just by heart, but also by blood. Unfortunately, that can never happen.

It is with the greatest of hopes that you understand the choice I have to make, I leave my entire wealth to my birth daughter, Katerina. She may not recognise me as her father anymore, but she is all the blood I have left, the only part of me that will live on once I am gone from this earth.

Please, forgive me the lie. I wish you all the happiness in the world, my boy. Thank you for being by my side.

I stare at the sheet of paper in my hands, the black lines blurring in front of my eyes as rage like nothing I’ve felt before overwhelms me. Fifteen years. I have wasted fifteen damn years of my life slaving myself in this hellhole, forgetting to truly live, forgetting what freedom means, with the only goal that everything will be mine once the times comes. Fifteen years of hopes and empty promises, and it all came down to this. To one ‘I’m sorry, but you are not blood’.

My fingers curl around the paper and I squish it, and squish, until it’s nothing but a crumpled mess in my hand, but the rage is not tamed.

The silence in the old dark study is heavy and potent, the only thing disrupting it the broken fan above my head which swings too fast, but somehow completely in tune with the rapid beats of my angry heart. The lawyer and the witness who came to open the will today are shrieking in their seats, both of them stealing wary glances at me. I can see the beads of sweat covering the lawyer’s face and I know it’s not the usual heat that bothers him. I guess I do look dangerous right now when my notorious temper is barely contained by a thread, but I don’t care. I don’t care if I am scaring them. I want to rage, to just loose it and break everything that comes in sight, whether it’s people or furniture, or the whole damn world.

It was supposed to be mine. The money, the lands, everything. This is the reason I stayed - because once upon a time my father promised to make me his heir, to give me everything that he had. Lies. I have no father apparently. Apparently, one can be a father only by blood and even though he practically took me off the streets and raised me as his own, I am not his blood, therefore all my hard work meant nothing to him. All the time I dedicated to his estates, managing his businesses, taking care of this hacienda, not even once catching a real break, it meant nothing.

No, no, Pedro Montaner’s only child by blood is a woman whose existence had been hidden from me for this entire time, and I am just the fool who gave the best years of his life away trusting that he will be rewarded for all the sacrifices. The old bastard tricked me to believe that’s how it was going to be, not even once mentioning that wretched daughter of his. Not even  once. But she exists somewhere out in the world and now I am the one who has to call her and invite her here to take over my inheritance, my house, my people, pretending it’s all okay. Pretending that I don’t care.

Oh, but I do care. Those lands were supposed to be mine! For my youth, for my mother. For the horror I was put through during the first half of my life. For my revenge. It’s hers now. Katerina’s, curse her soul.

Slowly, ever so slowly I get up from my chair, throwing the letter in the fireplace where it bumps off the stained cold walls and falls in the centre of the empty space. It’s still day and there is no fire now, but soon…

I don’t miss the way the two men shriek in their chairs as I raise above them, silent as a snake, and walk out of the study without saying a word. I can’t even tell them to leave my house because that’s not my house anymore. At least, not entirely. It’s still the only thing Pedro left me - to secure my future he let me co-own the house alongside that woman. How generous my dead father was with the likes of me.

I walk toward the large porch, dragging my feet there and plop myself up on one of the swinging chairs, the hot humid air making my skin prickle, but I don’t give a fuck about it either.  It’s like I don’t exist in this world anymore, it’s like I am frozen in time and space and I can’t move.

Barely any air oozes through my lungs and there is a weight in my heart, making it heavier than it was an hour ago when I still was just a grieving son, mourning the premature loss of his father.

My eyes are narrowed toward the blue mountaintops on the west, Pedro’s most favourite view in the entire world. He used to say it reminded him of his home, of that place over the ocean and the seas he could never go back to again. On hot humid nights in the deepest of summers he’d sit next to me on this same old porch, enjoying the breeze and telling me all kinds of stories about that place.

I am not an educated man, I don’t know much about geography and history of places. All I’ve ever known are the borders of my home village, how to ride horses and how to take care of the hacienda. Pedro taught me that, preparing me for the day I was supposed to take over. But he also taught me about the world, about his birth place with its ancient history and its blue mountains and endless beaches. His stories made me dream of seeing it all one day. One day when I will actually be free, because I’ve never been free here. I was too busy earning a living and working towards a future that would never be mine, to waste any time on daydreaming. And now it’s too late. I am not that old but I am not young either, and I feel so damn tired and lost, like my anchor is gone and I don’t know what to do about it. Two days ago I had a father, a future, a goal. Now I have none, everything taken away by the man who promised to never treat me the way my own family by blood treated me.

As anger swirls in my blood again, making my vision go almost black, a growl escapes me and I drop my fist on the table, and the sound of the impact is nasty and wet, but I don’t feel pain, I don’t care about the blood.

Soft steps behind me startle me, but I don’t sit taller in my chair, not caring to pretend I even noticed. I am too busy staring at that mountain and battling the weakness in my chest.

Maria, the old housekeeper walks barefooted around the white clothed table, ignoring the broken part and the blood that now stains the cloth, and sits next to me, dragging up an open bottle of tequila with a shot glass.

Without saying a word, she pours herself a shot and slides the bottle to me but I don’t catch it. I don’t drink. That’s a promise I gave a very long time ago and unlike Pedro, I never break my promises.

Maria doesn’t speak right away, not until she finishes her shot, her old wrinkly face scrunching at the taste.

“The lawyer just left,” she informs me with a careful tone, those black sparkly eyes of hers, the only thing that’s remained of her youth, throwing cautious glances at me.

“Good for him,” I shrug and shift my gaze back at the horizon, at the place that looks like Pedro’s homeland where his bitch of a daughter probably lives.

We sit in silence for a few more minutes and I know Maria wants to tell me something, this is not one of our usual moments where we just sit in each others company, not speaking, lost in our own thoughts, but glad to have someone to do it with.

“He said it was not permanent,” she finally says, eying me again. She’s trying to be really casual about it, whatever it means.

I reach out for the bottle, forcing my gaze away because the burn in my chest becomes unbearable. I don’t drink though. I just play with the etiquette, trying not to get lost in my head as I often tend to do. Everything in me feels locked, tense, the sorrow of having just lost someone dear to me battling with the anger and the feeling of betrayal and helplessness because he’s not around anymore for me to confront him.

“What’s not permanent?” I finally ask even though I don’t really care right now.

“The will,” she drags with a heavy sigh and pauses, waiting for me to catch up. When I don’t react, she continues. “The girl has to come and stay here for a year and only then can she inherit the hacienda. If she refuses, or leaves for more than a week before the time is up, it goes back to you.”

Now that makes me stop and finally lift my eyes to her. My breath catches in my throat and my vision narrows to those last words. If she leaves, it goes back to you.

“Why would she leave?” I ask cautiously as I hold her gaze, trying to figure out whether I read her wrong, whether there is actually a meaning behind her words.

Maria’s lips stretch in a conspiratory smile, one that makes her eyes glisten like the devil’s. The air is playing with the loose grey strands from her braid, and she reminds me so much of my mother like this. She reminds me my mother would look exactly like her if she had the chance to grow as old.

“Well, boy, I thought you smarter than this,” she tells me, ignoring my stare. “I don’t think that girl is someone born for our life. People like her father are rarity and… She’s probably a city girl, a European. They are not built for the tough reality of a hacienda like ours. She may not even want to come.”

The next thing I know Maria is tossing a phone and a note at me, one I didn’t even notice she was holding when she came. “This is her number, call her.”

“Why should I be the one to call her?”

“Aren’t you her father’s adopted son? You are technically this woman’s brother. Plus, only you around here know foreign languages.”

Now that’s not true. Many people around the hacienda know English, it’s mandatory to be studied in some schools. But I know what Maria is doing. She’s giving me back a purpose, a goal to chase. And just like a dog with a bone, I take it and rush after it.

Katerina doesn’t pick up on the first call, or the second. It takes five beeps before someone answers me and my heart speeds up as I hear the unfamiliar voice and the words that sound like gibberish to me.

“Alo?” The woman on the other line says and that l is not soft like a Spanish l, it’s raw and sounds all wrong. “Alo, kogo tarsite?”

I narrow my eyes at the distance, almost going out of breath, because is this going to be this easy? Does she even speak my language or at least English? I try to kill the quick rising hope, but it’s still there, still spreading its tentacles in my blood.

“Helo,” I say cautiously. “Do you speak English or Spanish, señorita? I am looking for a miss… Katerina Eneva.”

She hums at that. I can hear chatter of people, honking of cars, like she’s at some kind of a market or something. I can almost imagine her pausing at my words in the middle of a busy street.

“In what regards are you looking for her?” Katerina asks a second later in perfect English, not a trace of accent.

“My name is Alejandro Montener and I am calling about her father.”