6
Rafael
Iwalked into the kitchen, dropping onto one of the stools at the kitchen island. Anna hurried to the counter, brewing a cup of coffee and busying herself with taking care of me. While I didn’t know her well, I suspected most women would want to care for the man who had only managed to grab a few hours of sleep after holding his grieving wife for hours.
“How is she?” Hugo asked, wringing his hands as he looked toward the stairs.
“Sleeping,” I said, accepting the cup of coffee from Anna gratefully.
“Didyoumanage to get any sleep?” Mariano asked, watching me pointedly. He was barely ten years older than me, and had a son who was older than my wife. It wasn’t often that I remembered just how young Isa truly was, given shefeltolder than her age. I recalled her grandmother’s words in one of the many conversations I’d listened to in the time when I waited to make Isa mine.
Isa had an old soul trapped inside the body of an eighteen-year-old.
“Not much,” I admitted. “It took a while for her to cry herself to sleep.”
“She didn’t revolt against you touching her after what we did?” Gabriel asked, leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
“I didn’t get that far. She knows about her parents, but not Odina yet,” I said, taking a sip of the hot coffee and letting it rejuvenate me. The late hour didn’t matter, since I had business to tend to that night and wouldn’t find my way back to bed with Isa for a long while yet.
A glance out the window confirmed the sun had already set, hours prior from the look of things, and I’d been so preoccupied with comforting Isa through her grief that I hadn’t even noticed.
I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt sadness as intensely as what I’d watched her suffer through; the loss of my mother being the closest memory. I only had vague memories of loving her, brief flashes of affection in stolen moments when my father wasn’t around to witness them. I’d done everything I could to avenge her death out of the echo of that love in my life and how empty everything felt in the absence of it, but it had happened so many years ago, and I’d only been a boy. Until Isa entered my life, the kind of love that made you truly grieve when someone was gone seemed...impossible for a man like me. I wasn’t sure I would be capable of the kind of sadness I’d seen wrack Isa’s body.
Unless I lost her.
She was the one weakness that could bring me to my knees and break me, because a life without her in it would be empty all over again. Hollow, in a way I didn’t plan to ever experience. I’d die right along with her.
“You have to tell her,” Joaquin reprimanded me, giving me a stern look. I glared right back to remind him of who I was. No matter what his relationship with Isa had grown to be, he’d mind his place and do as he was told.
“Have we heard anything?” I asked instead of replying, wondering what the timeline would look like for my business in Brighton Beach. I suspected that Viktor Kuznetsov would quickly vacate his home once Pavel realized he’d taken Odina instead of Isa. “Does Pavel know yet?”
Gabriel nodded. “Pavel sent word to Alejandro, advising you to return his son to him in exchange for Isa’s sister. Alejandro was vague in his response since he didn’t know Timofey was already dead at the time. Pavel indicated that if a deal couldn’t be struck for his son’s return, then he would trade Odina for you or Isa.”
“He knows that’s never going to happen. No smart man trades his Queen for a pawn,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. Odina’s wellbeing mattered little to me aside from the pain it would cause my already broken wife.
The room went still as the sound of creaking floorboards behind me alerted me to the presence of my wife. I’d had every intention of telling Isa the truth of what I’d done, but she deserved to hear it in privacy—without an audience who knew the truth before she did.
I turned to look back at her, taking in the sight of her tired, grief-stricken face for just a moment before she spoke. “What are they talking about?” she asked, her arms crossed over her stomach. She looked so painfully small, her face pinched and exhausted despite all the sleep she’d gotten. Dark circles were under her red-rimmed eyes, her cheeks and nose blotted and pink from the crying she’d done before finally falling asleep in my arms. Her cheeks were wet, and I knew without a doubt that she’d cried when she woke up alone—that I hadn’t been there to comfort her like I should have been. The others exchanged glances, and Mariano, Anna, and Luca nodded and left the room through the other hallway. I was grateful for the reprieve and the fact that Isa would only need to be around people she knew during the final phase of her grief.
“Sit down,mi reina,” I instructed, standing from the stool and motioning for her to take it. She hesitated in the doorway, watching my face until she placed one foot in front of the other. She hadn’t moved so slowly since the day we were married, the day she walked down the aisle as though she approached her final resting place.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she perched on the edge of the stool. Placing my hands on her waist, I hefted her up onto the seat more fully and stepped between her slightly parted knees. I left enough space for her to not feel so vulnerable when I admitted the truth of what we’d done, but kept her trapped so she couldn’t run until she heard me out.
“Pavel’s son Dima mistook Odina for you and took her from the house in the middle of the shoot out,” I said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.
She bit her bottom lip, tears pooling in her eyes as she nodded slowly. Her nostrils flared as she fought to suppress the emotion. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let her go off on her own.”
“No, Isa. It isn’t your fault,” I said, glancing at Gabriel over her shoulder. “It’s mine.”
“Odina isn’t your responsibility. You don’t owe her anything, but I do. She’s my sister,” she murmured softly, the guilt in her voice giving me almost a sense of relief. Even if she would hate me for the choice I’d made, at the very least I would be able to strip that guilt away from her.
Her hand grabbed mine, clenching it tightly as she tried to work her way through her plan of action. Even in her grief, Isa’s brain was always working. Always connecting the dots and searching for solutions, even if the problems weren’t hers to solve.
It was why she’d spent so much of her life making other people happy, why she’d sacrificed her childhood in favor of responsibility. Because she wanted to fix everyone else’s problems for them.
“We set her up,mi reina,” I said, giving her the truth she deserved and freeing her from the blame she’d placed on herself.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, staring up at me with rage building in her eyes. She didn’t yet understand the depths of what I’d done, but she knew me enough to understand I’d thrown her sister to the wolves.