“Mother, I saw, I saw exactly what you were doing with Francisco in the shed. This is not right towards my father.”
“Shut up, Mariana. You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is something for adults. You wouldn’t understand the complexity of a woman’s needs.”
“I understand more than you think, and I can continue to understand, even if I remain in complete silence, but with one condition.”
“What condition? What do you want, girl? Money, jewelry?”
“I don’t want shine, Mother. I want what you have. If he does the same thing to me that he does to you, I won’t say a word to Papa. I want to try it, Mother. I want to feel that big, thick thing I saw you hiding.”
“You wouldn’t be able to handle it, my daughter. You are young and delicate. It was difficult even for me to get used to Francisco’s weight and ways. After all, you know, your father is thin and small. You have no idea what you are asking for.”
“It doesn’t matter how much it hurts or how much I have to learn. I want to try it and I refuse to wait. I demand that he be in my bed tonight, promptly at eight o’clock. Otherwise, Papa’s dinner will have a very bitter taste today, and things are about to get even more tense on this farm.”
The grandfather clock in the Big House hallway struck eight times, each chime echoing like a judicial verdict. In the bedroom, Mariana sat on the edge of the bed, her body rigid under the white silk nightgown that seemed too thin for the sudden cold she felt. The air was heavy with the scent of lavender and the oil from the lamp that flickered on the vanity. The door creaked. It wasn’t a loud bang, but a moan of dry wood. Francisco entered.
He brought with him the smell of the earth, the sweat of the cane field, and something else, something raw that Mariana had never been able to name. He kept his head down, a gesture of submission that contrasted sharply with the imposing nature of his stature. His shoulders were broad, his dark skin shone slightly in the dim light, and his breathing was deep and controlled.
“Your mother told me to come, young lady,” he said, his deep voice vibrating on the wooden floor.
Mariana felt a chill that was not of fear, but of a burning and forbidden curiosity. There was her mother’s secret. That was the reason why the elegant Dona Eugênia forgot her saintly posture and got lost in the back of the farm.
“Close the door, Francisco, and lock it,” ordered Mariana, trying to keep her voice steady, although her heart beat against her ribs like a caged bird.
The sound of the bolt locking sealed the fate of that night. The social abyss between the two — she, the blue-blooded heiress of a land empire; he, a man treated as property — seemed to crumble before the carnal tension that filled the room. Mariana stood up and walked toward him. As she approached, the difference in height became evident. She had to tilt her head back to face the man who, by her mother’s orders, now belonged to her as well.
The initial shock was sensory. Mariana reached out hesitantly and touched Francisco’s arm. His skin was warm, firm as stone in the sun. She felt the raw strength contained under that touch, a power that her father, the colonel, with his thin arms and tired gestures, never possessed. It was at that moment that her mother’s words echoed in her mind: “Your father is thin and…” “Small.” Mariana understood. It wasn’t just about the act, but about surrendering to something that civilization and the family name tried to erase.
“Take off your shirt,” she whispered, her boldness growing as she saw the discomfort in his eyes.
When the fabric fell, the lamplight outlined Francisco’s muscles as if sculpted in ebony. Mariana gasped. The big, thick thing she had mentioned to her mother purely for provocation was now an imminent reality. Fear gave way to an instant obsession. She didn’t just want to try it, she wanted to possess that strength, to dominate the man who dominated her mother’s senses.
From that moment on, Francisco ceased to be a gear in the farm’s machine and became the central axis of Mariana’s life. She touched him with her fingertips, exploring the scars and the texture of a world she had always seen from afar, from the porch. The sensory discovery was a violent awakening. Each touch was an act of rebellion against her father, against the church, and against the society that prepared her to be a wife. Submissive. That night, between the embroidered linen sheets, the hierarchies were reversed and blurred. Mariana discovered that the power she wielded as the lady of the house was addictive when mixed with forbidden pleasure.
She no longer saw a slave. She saw a source of ecstasy that her mother had tried to hide only for herself. The hatred for Eugênia turned into an electric rivalry. As the night progressed, Mariana realized she would never be able to look at the world the same way again. Her mother’s secret now ran in her own veins, and the obsession with Francisco would fuel a silent war that was only beginning inside that big house.
She had the control, she had the secret, and now she had the man. The morning sun entered through the high windows of the dining room, illuminating the dust motes that danced over the immense rosewood table. The smell of fresh coffee, corn bread, and tropical fruits should have brought a sense of comfort. But for Mariana and Dona Eugênia, the atmosphere was charged with static electricity, ready to explode at any movement.
“False.”
The colonel, sitting at the head of the table, read the local newspaper with his glasses balanced on the tip of his nose. He was the image of decaying authority, his mustache impeccable, but his yellowish skin and thin fingers betrayed that time was taking its toll.
“Look, Eugênia,” the colonel said, without looking away from the paper. “The world outside is lost. Crimes, betrayals, dishonor. Sometimes I feel that this farm is the last bastion of morality we have left.”
Eugênia brought the porcelain cup to her lips, her hands so steady they seemed made of marble. “It is true, my dear. We live to uphold traditions.”
Mariana, sitting across from her mother, kept her eyes down, but an imperceptible smile played at the corner of her mouth. She still felt the weight of Francisco’s body, the warmth of the previous night stuck to her skin, despite the exhaustive bath.
“And you, my little Mariana?” The colonel finally lowered the newspaper, looking at his daughter with a glint of pride in his tired eyes. “How did you sleep? You look radiant this morning. There is a different light on your face. It is the purity of your soul shining, my daughter. You are my greatest pride. The reflection of the impeccable upbringing your mother gave you.”
The clinking of Eugênia’s spoon against the cup was the only sound that broke the silence that followed. Mariana raised her eyes and met her mother’s gaze. Eugênia’s look was a mixture of panic, disgust, and a touch of envy she could not hide.
“I slept like an angel, Papa,” replied Mariana, her voice as sweet as honey, while under the lace tablecloth, she stretched her foot and deliberately pressed the tip of her shoe against her mother’s shin. “I felt renewed. I discovered that certain traditions in our house are much deeper than I imagined.”
Eugênia paled, but she did not back down. She returned the pressure under the table, a silent clash of forces, while the colonel continued his monologue, oblivious to the war.
“I’m happy. I’ve even already chosen your suitor, the son of the Baron of Araruna. A young man of good lineage, refined, educated, worthy of a young lady as chaste as you.”
Mariana felt her stomach turn. “Refined,” the word her mother had used to describe her father. She stared fixedly at Eugênia, whose eyes now shone with a cruel challenge. It was as if her mother were saying: “Enjoy your night, because your destiny is still mine.”
“My father always worries so much about lineage,” teased Mariana, without taking her eyes off her mother. “But sometimes what is rustic and strong has much more value than what is merely refined, don’t you think, Mother?”
Dona Eugênia almost choked on a piece of bread. The colonel laughed, a dry, lifeless laugh.
“Oh, Mariana, don’t talk nonsense. Rustic clothing is suitable for manual labor, for working in the fields. At the Big House, we value elegance.”
The breakfast continued under this dark theater. On one side, the father extolling a virtue that no longer existed. On the other, mother and daughter sealing a pact of hatred and lust. The silence between the two was deafening, broken only by the clinking of silverware. Mariana knew that she now had her mother in her hands, but Eugênia knew that her daughter had just entered a labyrinth from which there was no exit.
When the colonel finally stood up and left for his office, the two women were left alone. The silence changed tone.
“You don’t know how to play with fire without getting burned, Mariana,” whispered Eugênia, her voice trembling with anger.
“I’ve already burned myself, Mother!” replied Mariana, rising with a posture she had never shown before. “And I discovered that I love the heat. Prepare Francisco. He’s not going to the fields today. He has work to do in my room again.”
The atmosphere at the Big House became unbearable. The coldness imposed by the secret had turned into a cold and bureaucratic management of pleasure. That afternoon, Eugênia called Mariana to her personal office, a room the colonel rarely entered, and locked the door. On the rosewood table, there were no farm accounts, but a sheet of paper with precise notes.
“We cannot live in this chaos, Mariana,” began Eugênia, her voice sharp as a blade. “The colonel is blind, but he is not deaf. Francisco has obligations to the farm, and his health will not withstand the whims of two insatiable women if there is no order.”
She slid the paper across the table. It was a schedule.
“On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he will come to my room after dinner. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, it will be yours. On weekends, he rests in the slave quarters so that no one suspects his prolonged absence. These are my rules. It’s either this, or I tell your father everything and watch this house burn.”
Mariana looked at the paper with poorly disguised contempt. The idea of her mother treating Francisco like a rationed commodity was pathetic in her eyes.
“You talk about him as if he were a bag of coffee, Mother,” mocked Mariana, folding the paper and tucking it into her neckline. “But I’ll accept it for now.”
However, Mariana had no intention of following a schedule. She quickly discovered that youth was a more powerful weapon than authority. While Eugênia maintained a lady-like posture, demanding Francisco’s submission through fear and social status, Mariana opted for subversive seduction.
On the days that belonged to her mother, Mariana set up ambushes. She would appear in the pantry when Francisco went to fetch supplies, wearing dresses made of light fabrics that left her shoulders bare, and the scent of vanilla lingered in the air. She didn’t give orders; she provoked.
“He must be exhausted, Francisco,” she whispered one afternoon, while cornering him between the bags of sugar. “My mother demands a lot, doesn’t she? She is a woman of long winters. I am the summer.”
She ran her small hands over his calloused hands, offering him sweet fruits and looks that promised a kind of freedom he had never known, the freedom of being desired and not just used. Francisco, although aware of the mortal danger he was in, was human. Mariana’s vitality and the forbidden game of being at the center of a dispute between the two most powerful women in the region began to affect his judgment.
That Tuesday, his official day off, Mariana received him with a bottle of wine stolen from her father’s cellar and a promise.
“You don’t have to be a slave, Francisco. At least not within these four walls. With her, you are a beast of burden. With me, you are the master.”
She began to systematically break the agreement. When Wednesday arrived, Eugênia’s day, Francisco would go up the stairs exhausted, his spirit still haunted by Mariana’s provocation and vigor. Eugênia noticed the change. His energy was not the same. His gaze, once low and submissive, now sought the crack in the door, waiting for Mariana. The balance of desire was collapsing. What was supposed to be a logistical solution became fuel for a war of egos. Mariana was winning the battle of the senses, and Eugênia, feeling power slip through her wrinkled fingers, began to prepare her counterattack.
The air on the farm porch was heavy. Dona Eugênia watched the central courtyard from behind the half-closed blinds. Francisco was carrying heavy bags of coffee. But, as he passed by Mariana’s window, his steps faltered. It was a second, a brief look, but Eugênia saw the way his eyes sought the upper floor and saw Mariana, in the dimness of her room, return the look with a triumphant smile.
Eugênia’s blood boiled. It wasn’t just desire; it was the awareness that she was losing sovereignty over her most intimate territory.
“Francisco!”
Eugênia’s voice echoed through the courtyard, dry and authoritative, like the crack of a whip. The man stopped instantly, the veins in his neck bulging from the effort of the load. He walked to the porch, lowering his head.
“Yes, mistress.”
“Where is the logbook for the north sector bags? I ordered it to be delivered to the foreman before noon. It’s late.”
“Mistress, the foreman said it could wait until…”
“I didn’t ask what the foreman said,” she interrupted, coming down the porch steps with suppressed fury. “You are becoming insolent. Do you think that because you frequent the linen sheets of the Big House, the laws of the slave quarters no longer apply to you?”
Silence fell over the courtyard. The other workers lowered their eyes. Eugênia took the quince branch that was leaning against the door frame.
“Thirty lashes now at the trunk,” she ordered, her voice trembling slightly, not from pity, but from a morbid jealousy that needed to be released in pain.
Francisco did not react. He knew that any protest would be his death sentence. But, before the first blow could be struck, the sound of firm footsteps against the wooden porch interrupted the execution.
“Stop right now, Mother.”
Mariana appeared, her eyes sparking. She was no longer wearing the silk nightgown, but a riding dress that gave her an air of defiance.
“Go inside, Mariana. This is a matter of farm management,” hissed Eugênia without letting go of the whip.
“Management?” Mariana let out a sarcastic laugh, coming down the steps and positioning herself between her mother and Francisco. “This is desperation. You want to beat him because he no longer looks at you with the same passion. You want to mark his back so he remembers who’s in charge, but you only manage to prove that you are a bitter woman. How dare you?”
Eugênia raised her hand to slap her daughter, but Mariana grabbed her wrist with surprising strength.
“If you touch him or me, I will go right now to Papa’s office. And I won’t talk about coffee, I’ll talk about how you spend your Monday and Wednesday nights.”
Eugênia’s face turned into a mask of horror and hatred. There, before the employees and under the scorching sun, the mask of the perfect family almost crumbled. Francisco remained motionless. A trophy of flesh and bone disputed by two lionesses.
“He is mine, Mariana!” whispered Eugênia through clenched teeth. “I bought him. I made him what he is.”
“You bought him with gold, Mother. I won him with what you no longer have. Youth and courage. Drop that whip.”
Eugênia dropped the object, which fell heavily onto the packed dirt floor. The physical conflict had ceased, but the cold war had reached a new level. Mariana took a step toward Francisco and, before her mother’s bloodshot eyes, wiped a drop of sweat from the man’s forehead with her lace handkerchief.
“Go back to work, Francisco. No one is going to touch you today.”
He nodded and left, feeling the weight of one woman’s hatred and the dangerous possessiveness of the other. Eugênia and Mariana were left alone in the courtyard. The hierarchy of the Big House had just been subverted forever.
The precarious balance of the Big House was shaken by an administrative decision that had nothing to do with the hidden desires of its inhabitants. At Sunday dinner, the colonel announced, between bites of roast, that he would leave for the provincial capital to negotiate the new shipment of…
“Sugar. I will take Francisco,” he said, wiping his mouth with the linen napkin. “He is the strongest and smartest to deal with the stevedores at the port. Besides, he knows the basics of reading, which helps me with the delivery notes.”
The silence that followed was cutting. Mariana and Eugênia exchanged a quick look, not of rivalry, but of pure shared desperation. One week, seven nights without the object of their obsession. In the first two days of his absence, the farm seemed to plunge into a silent mourning. Without Francisco’s presence circulating through the hallways or the courtyard, the tension between mother and daughter, which was previously channeled through him, turned entirely against each other.
Abstinence began to manifest as constant irritation. On the third day, breakfast was a battlefield of frayed nerves.
“You’ve been tapping your foot for ten minutes, Mariana. Have some composure,” snapped Eugênia, whose dark circles revealed sleepless nights.
“And you’ve broken two cups since Papa left. Your fingers are trembling, Mother. Lack of sleep or lack of company?” retorted the daughter with a sour smile.
The house seemed too empty. Mariana would enter the guest room, where he was customarily received, just to smell the scent of earth and sweat that still permeated the sheets she refused to let the laundresses change. Eugênia, in turn, had become a bitter shadow, walking through the house in the middle of the night, guarding the hallway as if she expected Francisco to appear magically on the stairs.
The dependence both had on that man became pathetic. Without the secret to manage them, they no longer had a purpose. The rivalry was what kept them alive, and Francisco was the fuel. Without him, they were just two lonely, wealthy women, trapped in an isolated mansion.
On the fifth day, the irritation exploded. Mariana, in a fit of rage, threw a porcelain vase against the wall when the maid said she didn’t know exactly when the men would return.
“They are taking their time on purpose!” screamed Mariana.
“Shut up!” Eugênia appeared at the door, her face livid. “You are acting like a lunatic. If your father arrives and sees you in this state, he will suspect everything. Control your instincts, girl. Do you think you are the only one suffering from this void?”
The two stared at each other in the hallway, gasping. For the first time, the mask of hatred fell, revealing the vulnerability of two addicts. They realized with horror that Francisco now exerted a power over them that no slave owner had ever imagined having over their masters. The power of absence. The week seemed to last a century. Every creak of the house’s wood at night made both their hearts jump, in the hope that it would be the creaking of his boots.
The sensory and psychological dependence on Francisco had reduced them to shadows of what they were, proving that, in that power game, the prisoner was, in fact, the jailer of their desires. The return of the colonel’s entourage brought immediate relief to the Big House. But for Mariana, the relief soon turned into a persistent doubt. During the week of absence, she had had time to reflect and now watched Francisco with more analytical eyes. That night, escaping her mother’s surveillance, Mariana managed to intercept Francisco near the stables. She expected to find the man submissive and grateful as always, but what she saw was a different posture.
Francisco no longer seemed like the man who just obeyed carnal orders. He had an astute glint in his eyes that she had never seen before.
“You took a long time, Francisco. I missed you,” she said, approaching with the confidence of someone who feels in control of the situation.
Francisco took a step back, not out of fear, but with a cold calculation. “The colonel gave me new responsibilities in the city, young lady. It seems I earned his trust and some privileges.”
Mariana found his tone strange. After further investigation, she discovered that Francisco had used his time in the capital to negotiate favors. He was not just the secret lover. He was becoming the colonel’s right-hand man in matters that required discretion. But the final straw came when Mariana found, hidden among his clothes, a silver ring that she knew belonged to her mother’s personal collection.
“What is this?” she asked, snatching the jewel from his hand. “Did my mother give you this?”
Francisco gave an enigmatic smile, a smile that did not belong to a slave. “Dona Eugênia gave it to me so that I would forget to tell the colonel about certain visits you paid me in the pantry, little mistress. And you, mistress? What will you give me so that I don’t tell her that you tried to give me wine from her private cellar?”
The ground seemed to slip from under Mariana’s feet. She realized, with a start, that Francisco was not a pawn on that chessboard. He was a player. He accepted Eugênia’s treats and protection in exchange for information about Mariana, and accepted the freedoms Mariana gave him to strengthen himself against her mother’s authority. He used their desires as bargaining chips. Thanks to the rivalry between the two women, Francisco now ate better than any other man on the farm, had free circulation in the house, and, most dangerously of all, kept secrets that could lead both to social ruin.
“Are you playing with us, Francisco?” she whispered, between fury and a new admiration.
“I just learned the rules of the big house, little mistress,” he replied, moving close enough for her to feel his breath. “Whoever holds the secret holds the power, and now I hold yours, both of you.”
Mariana realized that the object of her desire had a will of its own, plans for freedom, and a dangerous intelligence. The game had changed. Now it was no longer just mother against daughter, but both being manipulated by the man they believed they possessed.
The calm of that Tuesday afternoon was deceptive. The colonel had announced that he would spend the day reviewing the boundaries of the southern lands, but a sudden torrential rain forced his premature return. Upstairs, Mariana’s room was a world apart. The bolt was slid shut, and the sound of the rain muffled the whispers. Francisco was about to leave when the metallic sound of the colonel’s spurs echoed on the main hallway floor, climbing the stairs with unusual haste.
“Mariana, Eugênia, where is everyone in this house?”
The colonel’s voice, raspy and authoritative, chilled the spine of those inside the room. Panic set in instantly. Francisco pressed himself against the wall, eyes wide, while Mariana, heart beating in her throat, desperately tried to button her dress with trembling hands. The colonel was a few steps from his daughter’s door. If he turned the doorknob and found her locked in with the slave inside, the execution would be summary and blood would wash the family’s honor before nightfall.
Eugênia’s door, at the end of the hallway, opened with a bang.
“Colonel, thank God you’re back!”
Eugênia’s scream was too loud, a deliberate tactic to distract her husband. The colonel stopped in front of Mariana’s door, his hand already extended toward the doorknob.
“What happened, Eugênia? Why this scandal?”
“A snake,” lied Eugênia, appearing in the hallway with a pale face and slightly disheveled hair. “I saw a pit viper enter your office downstairs. I panicked. I thought it might have come up. Mariana is sleeping, poor thing. She had a terrible migraine, and I forbade her from being disturbed.”
The colonel hesitated, looking at Mariana’s door. “Sleeping at this hour? She didn’t even answer my call.”
“The opium medicine I gave her is strong, my dear.”
Eugênia approached, taking her husband’s arm and physically guiding him away from her daughter’s door. “Come, let’s take a look at the office. If that snake bites one of your accounting books, the loss will be greater than the poison itself.”
While the mother dragged the father downstairs, Mariana opened the door just enough for Francisco to slip like a shadow toward the service stairs. Through the crack in the door, she saw the look Eugênia cast back over the colonel’s shoulder. It wasn’t a look of help, it was a look of pure terror and fury.
Minutes later, when the colonel was convinced that the snake had escaped through a crack in the floor, Eugênia came back up. She didn’t knock; she invaded Mariana’s room like a hurricane and slammed the door behind her.
“You almost killed us,” hissed the mother, her voice squeezed between her teeth. “You’ve lost your mind, Mariana, bringing the man into your room in broad daylight.”
“You bring him too,” retorted Mariana, although she was still pale with fear.
“I am the mistress of this house. I know his schedule. You are an amateur playing with fire.”
Eugênia grabbed her daughter’s face tightly. “If he catches us, there will be no inheritance, there will be no marriage. There will only be the farm’s cemetery for all three of us.”
Eugênia realized, then, that Mariana’s game had no limits. The daughter didn’t just want pleasure, she wanted the risk, the adrenaline rush of defying the patriarch. For the first time, Eugênia felt that her biggest threat was not her husband’s whip, but her own daughter’s recklessness, who seemed willing to set the whole empire on fire just to prove she could have what she wanted.
The danger that before lurked only in the hallways of the Big House gained a raw, sweaty face: that of Silvério, the head foreman, a man of the colonel’s trust, known for his eagle eye and lack of scruples. That morning, he intercepted Eugênia near the rose garden, far from the ears of the other slaves.
“Dona Eugênia, you have always been a very charitable woman,” began Silvério, taking off his leather hat, but maintaining an insolent glint in his eyes. “But I’ve been seeing things that not even charity can explain. Francisco continues to enter the Big House through doors that should be locked and leaving the young mistress’s room with a smile that doesn’t belong to someone who got a beating.”
Eugênia felt the world spin, but she did not waver. “What do you want, Silvério? Tell me the price of your silence.”
“I want half of this year’s coffee harvest in gold, and I want you to be nicer to me too. After all, if Francisco can, why wouldn’t a decent man like me have the same right?”
The disgust Eugênia felt was almost paralyzing. When Silvério walked away, she ran to Mariana’s room. The rivalry between the two disappeared instantly before the abyss that was opening up.
“He knows everything,” said Eugênia, her voice trembling. “And he wants you, Mariana, and he wants your father’s fortune. If he speaks, the colonel will kill Francisco in front of us and send us to a convent or to the grave.”
Instead of crying, Mariana felt a chill growing in her chest. Her obsession with Francisco had transformed her. She looked at her mother and saw, for the first time, not an enemy, but an accomplice in blood.
“He won’t speak, Mother, because he won’t have the tongue for it.”
The plan was executed in the dead of night, that very night. Using the pretext of delivering the advance in gold, Eugênia lured Silvério to the tool shed. Mariana was hidden in the shadows. They didn’t call Francisco. Involving the slave would give him even more power over them. This was a family matter.
When Silvério leaned over to check the weight of the bag of coins that Eugênia was handing him, Mariana emerged from the darkness. With a heavy iron bar, she delivered the first blow. The man fell, stunned. What followed was a horrifying scene that sealed the fate of the two women. Driven by the instinct for survival and the hatred of having been blackmailed, Eugênia helped her daughter finish the job. The silence of the shed was broken only by the panting of the two women. Their silk and lace clothes were stained.
“We need to get rid of him in the swamp,” whispered Eugênia, wiping the sweat from her forehead with dirty hands.
Working together, mother and daughter dragged the body to the riverbank that cut through the farm, where the alligators and the current would take care of the rest. When they returned home and cleaned themselves up in Eugênia’s room, the look they exchanged in the mirror was definitive. They were no longer just mother and daughter sharing a lover, they were murderers sharing a crime. A bloody alliance had been sealed. The secret was now thicker than the colonel’s blood. Francisco, upon seeing them the next morning, realized that something had changed. The women he had tried to manipulate now had a shadow in their eyes that even frightened him.
The nights on the farm became endless for Mariana. The silence of the manor house, once comforting, now seemed to amplify her heartbeat. But unlike Eugênia, who seemed to have buried the guilt along with Silvério’s body, Mariana plunged into a different kind of agony. The nightmares did not bring the bloodied face of the foreman, but rather the image of Francisco. In her dreams, she saw him chained not by iron, but by silk threads that came from her own hands.
Mariana began to have crises of conscience that left her pale and spaced-out during the day. However, her guilt was complex. She did not suffer for betraying the colonel, a father she now saw as a cardboard figure, but for how her desire had transformed Francisco into a luxury pawn. She realized that, by demanding his presence in her bed, she merely repeated the same logic of master and slave, which she had always despised intellectually, but which she now practiced with carnal fervor.
“You are looking at me as if I were a ghost, young lady,” said Francisco one afternoon, while serving tea on the porch.
“I’m looking at the man I helped enslave twice,” she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. Something unthinkable for the colonel’s daughter. The desire that was once an explosion of adrenaline and defiance began to turn into something much more dangerous: affection.
Mariana began to worry if he was being fed, if the scars on his back ached with the humidity, if he felt pleasure or if he was merely pretending to survive the fury of his two lovers. This confusion of feelings — possession, desire, and a forbidden and distorted love — left her vulnerable. She began to give gifts to Francisco, not to buy him as her mother had done, but to try to compensate for the weight of the invisible chains. She gave him books, taught him passages of poetry, and sometimes spent nights just talking to him, trying to humanize him to alleviate her own guilt of using him.
Eugênia noticed the change, saw her daughter crying on the slave’s shoulder, and felt a chill.
“Are you falling in love with him, Mariana?” asked the mother in a tone of mortal warning from the library. “Desire is a weapon, but affection is a death sentence. If you start treating him like a man and not as an instrument, you will destroy us. Perhaps he is the only real man on this farm.”
“Mother,” retorted Mariana, her voice choked. “The weight of guilt” transformed Mariana. She was no longer the petulant girl who wanted to defy her mother. Now, she was an anguished woman, caught between the power she had inherited and the humanity she discovered through the man she was forced to share. The pact of silence remained firm, but Mariana’s heart was breaking, and she knew that, soon, she would have to choose between her empire and the man who had become her only truth.
The atmosphere at the Big House reached a boiling point. Eugênia, watching Mariana from the corners, realized that she was no longer just competing for a lover, but for her place of authority in the family. Mariana’s affection for Francisco was a variable her mother could not control. Desire is negotiable, but passion is anarchic. Determined to nip the evil in the bud, Eugênia took advantage of an afternoon when the colonel was in a good mood to cast her net.
“My dear,” she said while calmly embroidering. “The lands of the old sugar mill on the provincial border are in chaos. The foremen say the slaves are rebelling. We need someone we can trust, someone strong who knows how to read orders, to organize things for a few months. I thought of sending Francisco.”
The colonel, always practical, agreed. “An excellent idea, Eugênia. He is the right man. He will leave tomorrow at dawn.”
Mariana, who was listening behind the dining room door, felt the blood drain from her face. Sending Francisco to the old mill was, in practice, an exile. It was Eugênia’s way of regaining control of the house and punishing her daughter for the insolence of falling in love. That night, the confrontation was not whispered. Mariana invaded her mother’s room while she was getting ready for bed.
“You are not going to send him away,” stated Mariana, slamming the door with a violence that made the perfumes on the vanity tremble.
“It is already decided, Mariana. Your father’s orders have been given,” replied Eugênia without turning around, staring at her daughter’s reflection in the mirror with a look of icy triumph. “It is for the good of the farm and for your own good too. You are getting sick because of that man.”
“Sick?” Mariana walked until she was inches away from her mother. “You want to send him away because he doesn’t look at you anymore. Because when he is with you, he thinks of me. You prefer to lose him than to accept that I won. Have some courage, Mother. You are a murderer, just like me!”
Mariana screamed, losing her cool. “If Francisco crosses the gate of that farm tomorrow, I will go downstairs right now and tell Papa about Silvério. I’ll tell him about the swamp. I’ll tell him about your Mondays and Wednesdays. I will destroy everything, Mother. I will set this farm on fire with all of us inside. But you are not going to take him away from me.”
Eugênia turned, her face transformed into a mask of pure horror. She saw in her eyes… Mariana knew it wasn’t a bluff. Her daughter was ready for self-destruction. The silence that followed was the heaviest of their lives. Eugênia’s power, built over decades of dissimulation, met its limit in the madness of a youthful passion.
“Would you be capable of condemning yourself to the gallows just for him?” asked Eugênia, her voice failing for the first time.
“I’ve been condemned since I opened that trunk in the attic,” replied Mariana with a chilling calmness. “Now go and convince Papa that you changed your mind. Tell him that Francisco is indispensable here, or tomorrow’s sun will bring the end of the family.”
The tension had reached the breaking point. For the first time, Eugênia was afraid of the daughter she herself had created. The hierarchy was dead. What remained was a desperate pact of survival between two women whom destiny and a man had turned into mortal enemies. Destiny, in its cruel irony, decided to intervene before Mariana or Eugênia could strike the final blow against each other.
The colonel, who had always been the rock upon which the farm’s facade of morality rested, collapsed during a horseback ride, what began as a faint under the scorching sun. It revealed itself to be a devastating stroke. In a few days, the man who had made the province tremble was reduced to an inert body in a canopy bed, his gaze lost on the ceiling and his speech slurred.
With the patriarch incapacitated, the veil of decorum that covered the Big House was torn from top to bottom. Eugênia and Mariana, in a tacit truce born of convenience, took the reins of the empire. However, the most visible and scandalous change was not the management of the lands, but Francisco’s presence. The slave quarters became a vague memory for him. Under the pretext of being the only trusted man capable of assisting the colonel with his mobility, Francisco began to inhabit the hallways of the Big House full-time. The freedom he enjoyed now was an insult to the standards of the time. He no longer frequented the back areas. He circulated through the dining room, sat in the library’s leather armchairs to receive orders from Mariana, and was frequently seen on the upper porches late at night.
The maids whispered in the corners. The other slaves watched with a mixture of envy and fear, but no one dared say anything. Power was now a somber triumph.
“He no longer needs to hide in the closet when someone knocks on the door, Mother,” said Mariana as she drank her liquor in the living room, watching Francisco give orders to the other servants in the courtyard, dressed in clothes that were clearly not for a farm worker.
“You are being reckless, Mariana,” retorted Eugênia, although her voice no longer had the authority it once had. “The doctor comes every day. The neighbors are starting to ask why a slave enjoys so much freedom?”
“Let them ask. Who is going to question us? The man who runs this house can’t even hold a spoon.”
The structure of the house had changed physically. The room next to Mariana’s had been transformed into a room for Francisco, under the justification of promptly attending to the colonel. In practice, the sound of his boots on the wooden floor became the metronome that ruled the lives of the two women. Francisco, sensing the power vacuum, began to dictate the rhythm. He no longer asked. He suggested with a tone that bordered on command. The reversal was total. In the colonel’s bed, death lurked. In the rest of the house, life pulsed at a scandalous frequency, where the man, who should have been property, had become the pillar that sustained the lust and secrets of the new owners of the plantation.
The colonel, in his rare moments of lucidity, saw shadows and heard laughter he did not recognize, oblivious to the fact that his own daughter and wife had turned his sanctuary into a stage of debauchery and subverted power. The colonel’s office, once a sacred territory of cigar smoke and patriarchal decisions, now had a different smell: Mariana’s vanilla perfume and the aroma of fresh ink. Sitting in the immense leather armchair, Mariana reviewed the accounting books with a precision her mother never possessed. Eugênia had always governed through manipulation and whispers. Mariana, however, had learned that true power resided in the coldness of numbers and the absolute control of force. She was no longer the girl who caught her mother in the shed. The crime in the swamp and the forbidden passion had hardened her soul.
“These contracts with the English are outdated,” said Mariana, without taking her eyes off the paper, while Francisco stood by her side, not as a servant, but as a silent counselor. “Papa was too lenient. We will renegotiate.”
Eugênia entered the office trying to maintain the posture of the mistress of the house, but the way Mariana occupied the space made her look like an unwanted visitor.
“Mariana, the neighbors are commenting on your aggressiveness in business. They are saying that you act like a soul-less businessman,” criticized her mother, her voice heavy with a bitterness she could no longer hide.
“Taking care of the house is a luxury I leave to those who have time to pray, Mother,” retorted Mariana with a cold look. “While you worry about what the neighbors think in church, I am ensuring that this farm survives the death that already inhabits the room next door.”
Francisco, observing the scene, made his final decision. He saw in Mariana a determination that bordered on cruelty, a youthful force eclipsing the setting sun that was Eugênia. He realized that, to guarantee his own freedom and future, he needed to choose a side. That night, Eugênia waited for Francisco in her room, as she did every Monday, following the old schedule, but the door did not open. She walked down the hallway and, through the crack in the office door, saw Francisco kneeling at Mariana’s feet, but it was not the submission of desire. He was kissing her hand in a gesture of royal vassalage.
“My loyalty is yours, Mariana,” whispered Francisco firmly. “Your mother belongs to the past. You are the future of this land. I will do whatever it takes.”
Mariana stroked his face with absolute possessiveness. She no longer loved him with the vulnerability of before. She possessed him as she possessed the land and the cattle. Francisco had become her general, her executioner. Eugênia retreated into the shadows of the hallway, feeling the cold of isolation. She realized that she had been defeated by the creature she herself had helped awaken. Mariana had not only taken her mother’s lover, she had taken her voice, her authority, and her relevance. The daughter had become the colonel in skirts, more ruthless than her own father, while Eugênia had become merely a decorative ghost, trapped in a blood pact that forced her to watch in absolute silence the triumph of her own daughter over her ruins.
The colonel’s last breath was as discreet as his presence had become in the final months. When the doctor left the room and shook his head negatively, there were no screams or desperation. There was only a quick exchange of looks between the two women in the hallway. The era of patriarchy had ended. The Empire of Shadows was ready to be officialized. The funeral was a grand event, a farce of hypocrisy that paralyzed the province.
Mariana and Eugênia were the image of devotion and sorrow, dressed in heavy black silk dresses and lace veils that hid their eyes. They looked like ebony statues sculpted by grief. The neighbors whispered about the poor widow and the orphan daughter, admiring the dignity with which they endured their loss. No one suspected that, under the satin gloves, Mariana carried the hardness of someone who now signed all the checks, and that Eugênia carried the burden of knowing that her only function now was to keep up appearances.
After the burial, when the last carriage of curious onlookers crossed the farm gate, silence finally settled. But it was not a deadly silence, it was the silence of someone who could finally breathe. The two climbed to the porch of the main house. The sun was setting, staining the cane fields a red that resembled the blood spilled in the swamp and in the shed. Mariana removed her veil, revealing a face devoid of tears, only an implacable determination. Eugênia did the same, but her movements were slower, burdened by the realization that she was a queen mother without a crown. They inherited everything: the lands, the debts, the hidden gold, and the fear of their subordinates.
In the background, in the dimness of the living room, Francisco appeared. He no longer wore slave clothes. He wore a fine linen shirt and tailored pants. He did not ask for permission to approach. He stopped a few steps from them, maintaining the necessary distance from the outside world, but with the proximity of someone who was now an intrinsic part of that power structure.
“Coffee is served in the library, ladies,” he said, his voice resonating with an authority that no other man on that farm possessed.
Mariana looked at her mother, Eugênia looked at her daughter. There was no longer a need for schedules.
“A toast to the future, Mother?” asked Mariana, her tone refusing to accept a refusal.
“There is a future, Mariana,” replied Eugênia, accepting that her defeat had been, in a way, her only means of survival.
The two remained there, looking at the horizon from their vast properties. On that porch, the world saw only two women in mourning, but in the shadows of that house pulsed a truth that no one would ever dare name. The power was now feminine, it was forbidden, and it was absolute.
I am very happy that you have followed this intense saga to the end. Stories like this, full of twists, secrets, and power struggles, show how fiction can be captivating. I hope these 13 chapters have served as excellent material for your project or video. Thank you very much to everyone who stayed until the end and delved into this story with me.
