Engagements and Entanglements

It all began with a letter, one pressed between the pages of a Latin psalter, inked in Victor’s elegant, reckless hand and sealed with youthful desire.

A love letter, meant for Isabella’s eyes only. But the Sisters of St. Patrick were meticulous in their evening inspections. And so, before sunrise, Isabella Fernandez, daughter of Alonso Fernandez, who is a religious extremist, was expelled.

Alonso refused to hear her cries of innocence; by sunset, he had summoned Don Alvaro.

“Your son,” Alonso said coldly, “has stained my daughter’s honor.”

“Do you know what people will say when they learn my daughter was dismissed from a sacred institution over a boy?”

Don Alvaro, already weary of Victor’s unchecked impulses, knew what had to be done. They silenced the scandal the way their kind always did—with a wedding.

Victor agreed instantly. He’d just returned from university, full of Western ideals about love and freedom, and perhaps a little too thrilled to play the romantic hero.

Amanda, her mother, wept quietly in her sewing room as she altered the white dress Isabella had once imagined wearing far in the future. But the future had arrived, and it had teeth.

On the morning of the wedding, Isabella stood still as ribbons, lace, and jasmine water wrapped around her.

Guests filled the chapel’s courtyard. The scent of blooming grapevines clung to the breeze. Isabella waited, heart pounding, hands cold, eyes on the church doors.

Then the hush came. Not Victor, but Don Alvaro, he entered the bridal chamber alone, shoulders heavy, face weathered and pale. He did not greet Alonso, did not even meet Amanda’s eyes. He walked straight to Isabella.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, handing her an envelope. “He asked me to give this to you.”

She opened it. A blur of ink, apologies, and cowardice, a valid reason he said but no explanation. Just guilt and abandonment.

“No…” she breathed. Her knees buckled. Amanda caught her, but the world had already tilted. She couldn’t stay, she couldn’t breathe so she ran.

Through the vineyard fields. Away from the chapel and the guests who would whisper. Away from her father’s fury and her mother’s heartbreak.

Her gown snagged on a bramble and tore across her chest but she didn’t care; let them see her shame, the sting felt honest.

* * *

Somehow, her feet carried her to the far side of the estate, Vincent’s land. No one went there anymore. Not since the estate was divided and now the part belonged to the b*st*rd son.

From the top floor of the old house, Vincent watched the girl in white stumble toward his lake. At first, he thought she’d come to cry. But when she stepped into the water, still in her wedding dress, something inside him snapped.

“What the hell are you doing, Isabella?”

By the time she sank beneath the surface, he moved. Slamming through the rotting door. Sprinting through the long grass. The air slicing across his lungs as he dove into the lake like a predator.

The water was cold, but he burned. He reached her in seconds and dragged her out. She coughed, gasped, tried to speak, but he didn’t give her the chance.

He threw her onto the wet grass like she weighed nothing and caged her there with his body. His tattooed arms were on either side of her head, the wet shirt clinging to every cut of rage and muscle. His face was shadow and fury.

He was nothing like the mute boy she remembered, the one who used to vanish into corners, all shadows and silence. This man didn’t look like he hid. What shocked her next was that he was no longer silent.

“Are you f*ck*ng crazy?” His thunderous voice echoed. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She barely heard the words; she was too stunned by the sound of his voice. He could speak now?

“You...” she whispered. “You can speak?”

“That’s what shocks you?” he growled. “Not the fact that you tried to f*ck*ng drown in my lake?”

Her lips parted. “I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what? Mean to trespass? Mean to die? Mean to remind me of every f*ck*ng thing I spent years trying to burn out of my soul?”

His face was inches from hers, his breath ragged. His fingers dug into the grass beside her head like he was trying not to touch her.

“Vincent—”

“Tonto.” His eyes gleamed. “That’s what you used to call me, right? Dummy. Mute. B*st*rd. Remember?”

Vincent’s jaw flexed. His eyes, once hollow and innocent, now burned. Their little nickname, that’s what she and Victor used to call him. Now the sound of it made her cheeks burn with shame.

“I didn’t mean to—” she started, but he cut her off again.

“Didn’t mean to mock me then? Or didn’t mean to almost die like a goddamn coward?”

“Look I wasn’t trying to die,” she said, voice cracking. “I just… needed air.”

“Right. You were just taking a casual swim in your wedding dress.” He sneered and rose to his feet, towering above her. He offered no hand, just loomed dark and dangerous.

His eyes flicked down to her soaked bodice, followed his gaze and froze. The water had made her dress cling to every curve, and the torn bodice revealed more than it hid. Her arms crossed over her chest, a pitiful shield.

But his gaze didn’t soften. It sharpened harder and it lingered. Not like Victor’s admiration, polished and sweet. No. Vincent’s stare burned.

He was stunned, she didn’t look like the girl who used to toss her head and pretend he didn’t exist. She was a woman now, and God… what a woman she had become.

The sharp angles of youth had melted into soft, dangerous curves. Her long lashes, drenched, clung to her cheeks, her lips were parted. She looked divine.

Vincent’s breath hitched in his throat.

“When did you start talking?” she asked, her voice softer now. “Did you... get help?” Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”

“I just... I never heard your voice before.”

“You can thank your Papa for that.”

She stilled. And then she remembered her father’s warning, hushed and deadly, when she was just a child: “That boy has his mother’s curse in him. Let me not see you near him again, Isabella. Never.”

She had believed him then. She’d steered clear of Vincent like he carried plague, and yet here he was. Her savior.

A bitter smile ghosted his lips. He remembered too much. Years swallowed in silence, hiding like a stain in a house he was never allowed to call his own.

The girl who spun for Victor like the sun only rose for him. Who never once looked Vincent in the eyes unless it was to laugh. The one who taunted him, just to please her golden boy.

The anger surged back like wildfire. It burned in his throat. She’s still that girl. Still Alonso’s daughter.

“Remember the hacienda was split, right?” His voice was hot iron and steel. “This land isn’t part of Alvaro’s kingdom. It’s mine now. And I don’t allow trespassing.”

She flinched. He saw it, the way her breath caught, the way her arms clutched tighter across her chest. She had always been so easy to rattle with power.

“I was just leaving,” she whispered.

He watched her begin to walk. Her steps were stiff. Grief had made her limbs heavy, but she moved like a woman clawing at dignity, even through ruin.

And Vincent stared. He couldn’t stop, shattered as she was... she still stood beautiful in the wreckage.

And for a fleeting second, he forgot everything, the humiliation, the silence, the salt she’d once rubbed into his soul.

What kind of idiot walks away from this? What kind of goddamn fool leaves a woman like her standing at the altar?

Victor had always had everything, the name, the praise, the spotlight. And now he’d thrown this away? Vincent’s jaw clenched.

His hands balled into fists. His gaze devoured the way the wet fabric clung to the curve of her *ss, the swell of her breasts, the trembling of her fingers as she tried to shield herself.

No. She wasn’t leaving like this.

“Let’s go,” he said, voice like smoke and heat. “You’re not dying today. And you’re sure as hell not walking away from me like this.”

* * *

Isabella trembled beneath the jacket Vincent had thrown over her shoulders. It did nothing for the cold nor the shame clawing at her throat.

Vincent remained silent, his grip on the steering wheel tense, fingers pale against the dark leather. Her heart still raced, bracing for what awaited at home.

Alonso’s rage, the judgment, the questions. What could she possibly say? That Victor never showed up? That she’d been discarded like a soiled rag?

She imagined the faces of the women on the estate: the wives, the gossips, the daughters of fieldworkers who had spent years smiling through gritted teeth as they told her how lucky she was.

"You’re so lucky," they used to say. "The Don’s son? He really chose you?"

But the fairytale had ended and prince had vanished. All she had left were rags and a broken carriage. And Alonso would make sure she paid the price.

College had already been ripped away months ago when she was expelled from St. Patrick.“Papa, I seek forgiveness! Please, I’m sorry!” she had sobbed, clinging to his knee as he punished Mama instead. That was always the pattern, Isabella did something wrong, and they both paid.

Alonso said she was lucky marriage into the Alvaro bloodline was worth more than any education. And now, there was nothing left. No marriage, no future, just dirt beneath her nails, long days in the fields, and endless nights cooking beside Mama.

She let out a long, trembling sigh. It escaped like a confession she hadn’t meant to make. Vincent heard it, he told himself not to care, not to reach and to let her pain stir anything in him. But it did, his lips moved before he could stop them.

“You shouldn’t wallow.”

She turned to him, startled. “What?”

“Little Vic doesn’t deserve your grief,” he said, his voice cold. “The boy left you and didn’t even look back. What the f*ck are you mourning?”

She blinked, her instinct was to recoil but something in her stilled, because deep down, she knew it wasn’t cruelty. It was truth.

“I… we don’t know why he left. He must’ve had a reason.”

Vincent let out a sound that might’ve been a laugh, but it held no humor.

“Standing up for him. Even now?” he muttered. “All I know is if I were set to marry you, only death would stop me. And we both know—Little Vic ain’t dead.”

There was no softness in his voice for this brutal conviction. Vincent pulled u