Isabela stiffened. “I am not stealing from you. I bought you.”
“You bought a debt,” Nahuel corrected. “A piece of paper that says I am an object. But we both know the truth.”
“And what is the truth?”
“That you are afraid,” he said softly. “You didn’t buy me because you are cruel. You bought me because you are desperate. I saw it in your hands when you signed. You are trembling.”
Isabela felt a flush of anger. “You are insolent. I should have you whipped.”
“You could,” Nahuel agreed, leaning back. “But then who would harvest your coffee?”
The carriage fell silent. Isabela stared at him. The stories of the curse made sense now. It wasn’t magic. It was this. An enslaved man who refused to break, who possessed an intellect that threatened the fragile superiority of his masters. A man like this could dismantle a plantation from the inside out just by speaking.
Chapter 3: The Night of Revelation
They arrived at the estate at dusk. The rain had stopped, leaving the jungle glistening. Isabela handed Nahuel over to Rodrigo, the overseer.
“Put him in the barn,” Isabela ordered. “Not the general quarters. I want him separated until we see if he is… disruptive.”
Rodrigo, a man with a whip coiled permanently on his belt, sneered at Nahuel. “Fresh meat. Don’t worry, Doña. I’ll break him in.”
“Do not damage him, Rodrigo,” she warned. “He is for work, not for your sport.”
That night, Isabela couldn’t sleep. The house creaked in the wind. She sat in her study, going over the ledgers. The numbers were red, bleeding ink. She poured herself a glass of sherry, her hand shaking.
Suddenly, a shadow fell across her desk.
Isabela gasped and spun around.
Nahuel was standing in the doorway. He was no longer in the wet rags from the auction. He was wearing clean trousers and a loose shirt—clothes that belonged to her late husband.
“How did you get out?” she whispered, backing against the wall. “The barn is locked. Barred.”
Nahuel stepped into the light. He held up a piece of bent wire. “Locks are only suggestions, Doña. And Rodrigo… well, Rodrigo sleeps heavily when he drinks.”
“Are you going to kill me?” Isabela asked, her heart hammering against her ribs. This was it. The ruin. The curse.
Nahuel walked toward the desk. He didn’t look at her; he looked at the open ledger.
“No,” he said. He ran a finger down the column of numbers. “I am not a murderer, Isabela. I am an accountant.”
Isabela blinked. “What?”
“Your husband wasn’t just gambling,” Nahuel said, his eyes scanning the pages. “He was being embezzled. Look here.” He pointed to an entry for fertilizer. “He paid four times the market rate. And here, the sale of the beans in April. Sold at half price to a merchant named… ‘El Serpiente’.”
Isabela moved closer, forgetting her fear. “El Serpiente? That is the nickname of the local magistrate.”
“Exactly,” Nahuel said. “Your overseer, Rodrigo, is working with the magistrate to bankrupt you. They drive down the value of the estate, force you to sell for pennies, and then they split the land.”
Isabela felt the room spin. It made sense. The labor shortages, the bad harvests, the sudden debts. It was a conspiracy.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “You could have run. You could be halfway to the mountains.”
Nahuel looked at her then, and for the first time, the hardness in his face softened.
“Because I am tired of running,” he said. “And because when you looked at me in the market, you didn’t look at me with disgust. You looked at me with hope. I haven’t seen that in a long time.”
He closed the book.
“The other masters… they burned money to get rid of me because I exposed them. I showed them their own sins. Men hate nothing more than a mirror that shows them their ugliness. But you… you are different.”
“I am penniless,” Isabela admitted, tears stinging her eyes. “I cannot fight the magistrate. I cannot fight Rodrigo.”
“You have me,” Nahuel said. “And I am worth much more than thirty pesos.”
