“Can we take the gag out please?” she asked. She searched in her bag for some wet wipes, pulling them out as Zander nodded to the guy guarding Rosalind.
He drew out the gag and her aunt scowled up at him. “Coño de tu Madre!”
Marisol jolted in surprise as her aunt spat Spanish at Zander.
“Aunt,” she said quietly.
“You.” Rosalind turned her lethal gaze on Marisol. “Get me out of here. Now.”
Zander snorted.
Marisol looked over at Zander. “Can I wipe her face?” she asked, holding up the packet of wet wipes.
Zander reached out a hand to take them. “I’ll do it.” He moved closer to Rosalind. “Just a warning, you bite me and I’ll bite back.”
Rosalind spat at him. “Fuck you!”
“Aunt!” Marisol said, shocked by her. She was like a wild animal.
Zander calmly drew out a wet wipe and cleaned her face with measured movements. Then he turned away from Rosalind and gave the packet back to Marisol.
“Marisol. Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.”
“I can’t, Aunt.”
“Can’t! After all I’ve fucking done for you! I should have let them send you back to that she-devil in Venezuela. I gave you everything and this is how you repay me? By letting them treat me like this? You owe me, Marisol. Do you think I wanted to take in a whiny brat? I had a life to live and you held me back, dragging me down.”
Marisol flinched, her gaze dropping to the ground. She tightly grasped hold of the pack of wet wipes.
“Why did you take her in?” Linc asked, placing his arm around Marisol’s waist. She leaned into him. Was Rosalind right? Did Marisol owe her?
“Because she was my sister’s daughter. I loved Gaby. And Gaby would have been devastated if her brat got sent back to our bitch mother.”
Marisol took in a shaky breath.
“So it had nothing to do with the money?” Zander asked calmly.
“What money?” Marisol asked.
“How do you know about that?” Rosalind snapped, glaring at Zander.
Zander turned to his man. “Leave us for a moment?”
“Gladly,” the other man replied and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
“Zander?” Linc asked.
“The money Rosalind’s husband settled on you, pipsqueak, when he divorced her.”
“What?” she whispered. “Harry?”
“Yep. See, I got curious about why someone as selfish as Rosalind would take in a four-year-old kid. So my tech guy did some research. Seems that when he was a teenager, Harry had an accident that left him unable to have children. My guess is that he pressured Rosalind to take custody of you. Or he got wind of you and she didn’t want him to think badly of her, so she took you in.”
“He was such a do-gooder,” Rosalind spat out. “My mistake was introducing you and Gaby to him. I couldn’t hide you from him once she died. He insisted that we take you in. He doted on you. Adored you.”
“But you said that he divorced you because of me. That he got sick of me.”
“I was sick of you!” Rosalind shouted. “I told you that to shut you up. Every night you’d cry for him, you were always asking for him. Christ, I should have left you with him.”