up to us and kill you, I swear it!’
‘Starting to panic a bit, aren’t you?’ He grinned—and swung them round yet another acute turn in the road.
He did it so carelessly that it actually threw her hard against his shoulder. By the time she had righted herself again she was looking at stars glinting between two towering black walls, and realised in horror that they had now reached the mountain pass.
‘Felipe!’ she cried out shrilly. ‘Stop this—stop it!’
But he wasn’t going to stop anything. Not the car, not his wild and reckless driving, not the stupidity that was making him behave like this.
‘It might be an interesting form of revenge to see Luiz’s face when he finds you way down there in the ravine amongst the tangled wreckage of his very own car,’ he murmured tauntingly.
Then he laughed as Caroline’s face went white.
‘But I am not quite that hungry,’ he said. ‘My original plan suits my idea of revenge a lot better.’
‘I don’t know w-what you’re talking about,’ she stammered, through tense teeth that were beginning to chatter.
‘Yes, you do,’ he argued. ‘You are from the right stock to know all about ancient tribal rites. If you just think of me as the rightful owner of what we have just left behind, then the whole experience could be quite exciting—a bride on her wedding night who finds herself sleeping with the lord of the castle, rather than the peasant she married herself to.’
‘Luiz is not the peasant around here,’ Caroline tossed back. ‘And if you think I would let any other man but Luiz touch me, you are sadly mistaken.’
‘So you are pretending to be in love with the bastard,’ he drawled, eyeing her curiously. ‘Why? Does it make it easier to let him touch you when you can close your eyes and see el conde instead of a New York thug?’
‘I don’t need to pretend. I do love Luiz,’ she declared. ‘And will you keep your eyes on the road?’ she choked out when he took them swerving round a deep curve in the road with scant regard for what might be on the other side of it.
‘Stop worrying,’ he said. ‘I’ve been driving this road since I was a teenager. I know every twist and rut in it from here to Cordoba.’
Caroline could only hope and pray that was true! One of her hands had fixed itself to the car door handle; the other was clutching the strap of her seat belt. Felipe took in her taut posture—and recklessly swung the car round yet another curve.
She closed her eyes, unable to watch any more.
‘You married him because he offered to pay off your father’s debts if you did.’ He calmly returned to the other subject. ‘It had nothing to do with love.’
‘I married Luiz because I can’t bear to be without him,’ Caroline countered through tightly gritted teeth.
‘Liar,’ he jeered. ‘You were bought! Bought with his money. Bought with his name. Bought by the bastard of Don Carlos Vazquez,’ he spat out scathingly. ‘And you are prepared to lie in his bed and close your sweet English eyes to his low beginnings, his prostitute mama´ and the questionable way he earned his millions. Because it is better to close your eyes and pretend he is Don Luiz Vazquez el conde rather than the crook that stole from his own family!’
‘Luiz didn’t steal from you.’
‘He stole my title!’ he rasped. ‘He stole my money and my home! He stole what was my God-given right from birth!’
His fist hit the steering wheel in sheer anger. Caroline flinched, and began praying fervently that they made it round the next bend.
‘But I will steal one thing back from him before I leave here for ever,’ Felipe continued thinly. ‘I will steal his wedding night,’ he vowed. ‘And my reward will be in knowing that he will know every time he looks at you that it was me who had his beautiful wife first!’
‘Luiz and I have been lovers for years!’ She laughed at the sheer idiocy of what he was saying. ‘You can’t steal what he has already had!’
‘His wedding night, I can,’ he insisted grimly.
This was crazy. He was crazy! ‘You stole from him, Felipe!’ Caroline contended shrilly. ‘It was not the other way around! You aren’t even his half-brother! Your mother is a cheat and a liar, and she tricked her own sister out of Don Carlos’s life so that she could take her place! She set up a situation and used it ruthlessly to her own ends. She twisted everything around so that it appeared that Luiz’s mother had been sleeping with her married lover! Then your mother stepped neatly into the breach left by her sister—having first made sure that Serena had safely disappeared to America with her unborn child!’
‘That is a lie!’ he barked. The car swerved precariously. Caroline’s heart leapt to her throat and stayed there while she clung on for dear life.
Don’t argue with him! she told herself frantically. Ignore him and just let him get you down this wretched mountain in one whole piece!
But she couldn’t seem to stop the words from coming. They burst forth from the cold dark place she had been keeping them hidden ever since she had read the full horrible truth about the Vazquez family.
‘A few months later your mother married Don Carlos—with her lover’s child already spawned in her belly. That child was you, Felipe,’ she persisted, quoting almost verbatim Luiz’s father’s own wretched words. ‘Your real father was Don Carlos’s best friend. His married friend!’ she declared. ‘And the moment you opened your eyes on the morning you were born he saw his best friend looking back at him and knew—knew he had been tricked and used and betrayed by your mother to secure her own future at the expense of her sister’s! Since that same day Luiz has always been his father’s heir and you have never been led to think otherwise!’
‘How the hell do you know all of this?’ Felipe rasped, beginning, for the first time, to sound choked by his own wretched lies.
‘From Don Carlos himself,’ she said. ‘He kept detailed diaries of everything that happened, including the years he spent looking for Serena and his true son and the fact that he never kept any of this secret from you.’
‘I hated the bastard,’ Felipe gritted. ‘He spent thirty-four years of my life mourning a son he never knew while I was right there, waiting to be loved if he could only see it!’
‘He was wrong to treat you like that,’ Caroline acknowledged. ‘But two wrongs don’t make a right, Felipe! And what you are doing here now is wrong—can’t you see that?’
She hoped she was getting through to him. She hoped that she could make him see sense, maybe even turn them around and take her back again!
But he suddenly growled out the kind of curse that said a monster had taken over his soul right now, and with a lurch he threw them round another corner, sending the headlamps scanning out across a terrible nothingness that locked a silent scream into Caroline’s throat.
They hit a deep rut in the road. The scream found full voice as Felipe began to struggle with the wheel. He was cursing and cursing, and she was screaming, and the car was careering all over the place.
They were going to die; she was sure of it! They were going to tumble off the edge of the cliff and never be found! Sheer terror made her grab hold of the handbrake. Sheer terror made her yank it on hard. On a squeal of hot rubber the car gave a lurch, then began skidding sideways while she sat there and watched in open-eyed horror as they slid closer and closer to the edge of the ravine.
Then they hit something solid—a rock on the edge? She didn’t know, but they began lurching back the way they had come. Then, just when she thought the car was going to stop safely, it hit something else, made a terrible groan and toppled very gently onto its side.
Shocked