The mere thought of contact with the Chevez family gives me major headaches."

"Your brother and sister are both members of the Chevez family, Colby. You would have been too if the adoption had gone through."

Colby ducked her head, his words hitting her dead center in her heart. Armando Chevez had never adopted her. He had confessed his reasons on his deathbed, hanging his head in shame, tears swimming in his eyes while she held his hand. He had wanted his grandfather to relent, to accept him back into the family. Due to the circumstances of Colby's birth, Armando had known if he adopted her, his grandfather in Brazil would never allow him to come back to the family. It had been too late, then, to push the paperwork through. Armando Chevez was ashamed that he had betrayed her unconditional love for him for a family who had never answered a dying man's letter. Colby had remained loyal and loving, nursing him, reading to him, comforting him right up until the day he died. And she still remained loyal to him. It didn't matter that he had died before the adoption-Armando Chevez wasn't her biological father, but he was her father all the same. In her heart, where it counted.

The way the Chevez family hated her had never mattered to her, but she loved Armando with every fiber of her being. She loved him with the same fierceness with which she loved her brother and sister. As far as she was concerned, the Chevez family didn't deserve Armando and his children. And the two De La Cruz brothers, guardians and bullies for the Chevez family, could go straight back to whatever hell had spawned them. They were directly responsible for Armando's grandfather's bitter hatred of her. She wasn't good enough to he a member of the Chevez family. Neither was her beloved mother. Armando's grandfather had pronounced they would never be accepted into his illustrious family and his reasons had been abundantly clear. Colby's mother had never married her father, there was no name on Colby's birth certificate, and Armando's grandfather would never accept an Anglo harlot and her bastard into his pureblood family.