22
Isa
Regina plied me with food to try to pull me out of the mood that had consumed me since I’d woken up alone that morning. Rafael and I hadn't spoken since we'd fallen into bed the night before, and I was left with the feeling that I'd made a grave mistake.
What could I do about a life I didn't want, but hadn't chosen to escape? What I shared with Rafael was too dark and twisted to explain, but I couldn't kill him either. My poor family was probably worried sick about me, and here I was eating lunch in a glamorous kitchen while they thought I was lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Even with a day to consider my choice, I was no closer to coming to any real decision. It didn’t help that I spent more time away from him than I did with him. Was that what my life with him would look like?
He'd offered me my freedom. I'd stayed, despite everything I had waiting for me back home. We’d had sex in the pool, pushing me past all my limits that I would have thought I had for myself. And despite all of that and his words that he would be faithful, at some point in the middle of the night, he'd slipped out of the bed we shared to go do God knows what in his office. Music played over the speakers, drowning out any sounds I might have heard when I'd been brave enough to go looking for him.
It only drove my suspicion higher, wondering what he could be so determined to hide from me.
"It's not a woman," Regina assured me, reading the expression on my face as I looked down the hall toward his office.
"What?" I forced myself to shovel another skewer ofmelon con jamoninto my mouth. The salty serrano ham complemented the honeydew perfectly as Regina turned back to the stove to stir a soup while I ate. Joaquin lurked in the breakfast nook, a smirk forming on his face at Regina's words. "What's so funny?"
"Rafe with another woman," he laughed, shoveling a bite of food into his mouth. "Even if he was tempted, he's smart enough to know you'd cut him before you shared him."
"That's not true! I'm not violent," I argued.
"Mi reina,did you know that Rafael allows the men to use his personal gym in the basement?" Joaquin asked with a broad smile. "He regularly displays your claw and bite marks for all to see. It is a point of pride for him that his woman marks him so."
I blushed as my eyes darted back to my plate. If those marks had been scandalous enough, my name carved into his chest was ten times worse. "Shit," I muttered, refusing to meet Regina's eyes as she looked between us.
"Love marks are not so bad," she said sympathetically. "Spanish women are passionate, and your mother is Latina is she not?"
"Do you often cut your name into your lover's heart?" Joaquin asked her, grinning broadly as I tried to sink down into the stool. My stomach turned suddenly, the melon and ham no longer seeming appealing as I thought about what he'd made me do.
"He made me do it!" I said in shame, shaking my head to protest the insinuation that it had been my idea. "I could have killed him, but I didn't. Surely that says that I am the exact opposite of violent."
"Ah, but if you were so against violence, wouldn't you have wanted to kill the criminal who murders without thought? You had the chance to rid the world of a monster, but instead you let him live. Because you do not blame him for his violent impulses. I would guess the very same ones run through you," Joaquin said.
I forced another bite into my mouth, knowing there was truth to his words. I wanted to be free of Rafael because it was what Ishouldwant, but not because I felt any level of disgust when he touched me. Not because I wanted to turn him in to the police or see him go down in a rain of gunfire.
He could murder someone right then and return to me with the blood of his enemies staining his hands. I'd still welcome him to my bed, and that waswrong.I'd become a product of what he made me, a demon to match his devil. But I couldn't cross that line and be violent myself.
Accepting it as part of him was one thing, becoming it myself was another.
Right?
The devil himself appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, leaning into the wall with a smile as if he hadn't abandoned me for an entire day and left our bed in the night.
The insecurity in me drove me to ask the question that burned in my mind as I glared at him. "Where have you been?"
He crossed his arms over his chest, smirking as if he could feel the jealousy in the words. He was just the type to want me that way, to want to drive me mad with it until I had no choice but to verbally confess the words I'd withheld from him. I couldn't bring myself to say them, not when there was so much undecided and up in the air between us. I had no idea how our relationship could work, but it didn't seem possible for it to have a happy ending, given how we'd begun.
My eyes narrowed in on the skin of his forearm and the black ink that swirled and covered his flesh in an intricate design. The Queen chess piece stood out, the negative space of her not filled in and gleaming in contrast to the dark ink. The barbed wire wrapped around her made my eyes go wide as my hand drifted down to touch my thigh with a loud swallow.
He'd permanently inked my greatest shame onto his skin.
"I have something to show you," Rafael said, holding out a hand for me as he stepped into the kitchen. I glanced at Regina, nervous about going anywhere alone with him.
"You mean aside fromthat," I said, the breath leaving me in a sudden gasp as I stood from the stool and placed my hand in his. The tattoo bled lightly in the darkest areas as I looked down at it.
"Yes," he said with a slight chuckle, guiding me down the hallway. As we rounded the corner into his office, I looked around the room for the first time. If I'd expected trophies from his victims to line the walls, I was sorely disappointed.
The space was distinctly masculine, with a black built-in unit of shelves on one wall and the accent wall painted a matching ebony to contrast the stark white paint of the other three. Natural light flooded the room, from one end where Rafael's desk sat to the other where a brown leather sofa sat in front of the built-in unit. Two black upholstered chairs and a round table completed the sitting area, though I couldn't imagine many people spent their free time in his workspace.
Directly in front of his desk, a Spanish man stood facing the leather tattoo chair they'd presumably brought in for Rafe's ink. He worked to take the back off the chair, unscrewing the bolts where it connected to the base. I swallowed down my apprehension, watching as he finished with that and grabbed a bandage off the desk. Fixing it to Rafe's forearm now that I'd seen the artwork, he didn't so much as glance at me despite my presence. I was instantly reminded of the day in the Penthouse when Rafael had forbidden the man from looking at me when he delivered our breakfast.