The older woman shook her head, smiling through the motion. Rafe strode over to me, tilting my face up and kissing me gently before continuing across the kitchen to the little hallway that led to his office. "You didn't ask me," Joaquin said to his back.
"Because I don't care what you think," Rafe called back, making Joaquin chuckle at my side.
"Eat your breakfast,mi hija," Regina said, drawing my attention away from Rafael's retreating figure. "You've gone hungry too often lately, and this is good for fertility," she added.
I dropped my fork to the plate with a clatter, turning disbelieving eyes up to Regina. She smiled in response, as if there was nothing unusual about discussing fertility with a woman she hardly knew who had already expressed the desire to not be pregnant. I picked the napkin up off the counter, wiping my mouth as I thought over a response. "I've lost my appetite."
"Rafael will not be pleased if you don't eat," she said, a smirk tugging at her lips. "I think I would take my chances with the food, as I suspect his displeasure will be more likely to cause pregnancy than simply eating a healthy breakfast."
Joaquin snorted at my side, covering up the sound by taking a sip of his coffee. It didn't escape my notice that nobody bothered to offer me any. Whether that was because of my distaste for it or the seemingly unanimous desire for me to fall pregnant quickly, I couldn't know. "You have no issues with the fact that I'm eighteen and don’t want his child?" I asked her, picking up my fork as my stomach grumbled. I wish I could have said the spinach and mushroom omelet was gross, but to my famished stomach it was one of the most delicious things I'd ever tasted.
Second only to theensaimadaRafe had hand fed me inDalt Vila.
She turned her lips down into a frown. "I can understand why it might seem odd for you, coming from how you were raised, but Rafael is thirty-three years old. He needs to consider the future of his legacy. To be honest, he should have started producing heirs years ago, but by the time he realized he was interested in it, he'd found you. His plans have already waited longer than I would have thought him capable." She said the words as if they should reassure me. Instead they only confused me more.
"Why should that have mattered? I can't imagine he would have cared if he brought me here when he already had a spawn to call his own. He doesn't seem to give a shit if anything he does affects me," I said, glaring at her before turning my glare to Joaquin.
"I can understand how it might feel that way now, but Rafael loves you. He will do what it takes to have you, but he doesn't enjoy hurting you unnecessarily, aside from what had to be done to bring you here and to make you see that it isn't temporary," she said. Her words echoed in my head as my vision blurred.
I shoved the thoughts away with denial. "He doesn't love me. He would have told me if he did."
"Just as you've told him that you're in love with him?" she asked with an arrogant smirk. "Rafael doesn't understand emotions. His father beat them out of him when he was a boy and killed all traces of them along with his mother." I froze as Joaquin went still at my side. Regina closed her eyes as she realized she'd probably said something she shouldn't have.
"His father killed his mother? He told me she died in a fire," I said, shaking my head. Of all his lies, I thought that one might have been the worst.
"She did," Joaquin said at my side. I turned my stare his way, wishing I could undo the way that his face hurt me. It shouldn't feel so familiar, not when every word he'd ever spoken to me had been a game. A job. He might not have hurt me as much as Hugo, but I'd grown close to Joaquin in my own way. "He burned her alive," he added, holding my stare with deep brown eyes that sucked all warmth from the room.
Regina nodded her confirmation as tears stung her eyes, and I turned back. "But why?"
"He became unhinged as he grew older. There was never an official diagnosis since he didn't trust doctors, but he thought she was a witch. Things got worse when Rafael was born and had her eyes. He said it was the mark of her witchcraft." Regina shook her head, her lips moving as my world spun. I knew better than most how judgmental some people could be about even the most miniscule of differences, but to kill someone over their eye color was...
Deranged.
Thatwas the man who had birthed Rafael. In the event he did get me pregnant, what would my child grow to become? Another monster?
"Is that what Rafael will do with me when he tires of me?" I whispered, staring up at her in shock. No matter what Rafe said to try to assure me I was a permanent staple in his life, I couldn't imagine there hadn't been a time where his father fed his mother the same pretty lies.
"He won't grow tired of you, but even if he did, he's not his father," Regina reassured me. "He may be cruel, but the only thing that would cause him to become that unhinged would be losing you."
"Everyone gets tired of fucking the same person every day when there's no love involved," I said bitterly.
"Rafael will tell you he's obsessed with you. He doesn't know it is love yet, but he'll get there," Regina repeated, echoing her words from before as she stared at me intently and I forked a massive bite into my mouth to avoid having to respond.
"Men like Rafael have two outlets," Joaquin said at my side. "Killing and fucking. He lost one of those when he saw you and you were too young for him to touch. Trust me when I say that his men spent the last year parading all manner of tempting women in front of him to try to get him to fuck, because his cruelty knew no bounds when he didn't have you with him. He killed. He punished his people more brutally than he would have if he'd had a warm body in his bed," he said. "But never once did he show the slightest interest in any of them. Men who are only obsessed do not give monogamy to a woman who doesn't know he exists. He gave you monogamy because he loved you, even then."
I laughed, the smile fading from my face as his eyes held mine intently. "Are you saying Rafael hasn't been with anyone in sixteen months?"
"I'm saying he hasn't so much aslookedat another woman since he saw you," Joaquin said.
"Why are you telling me all this?" I asked, glancing between the two of them as they leaned in closer. As if whatever came next, they didn't want Rafe to overhear.
"Because you're so desperate to be free that you haven't stopped to consider something. You look at Rafael like he's your captor. Like he took you from your life and made you his prisoner," Regina said. "But you imprisoned him long before he ever touched you."
"The game is over when the King is lost," Joaquin said, glancing at the chessboard sitting in the breakfast nook as the sun shone in the windows. I hadn't even noticed it when I walked in, but the same pieces sat on the board.
The same ones that had haunted me in the streets of Ibiza.
"But the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board," I said, turning my head to face Joaquin in my confusion.
"You have all the power,mi reina. He's already tried to tell you as much." I bit my lip, considering his words. "All that's left is for you to use it."