12
Isa
Rafael’s eyes met mine as he pushed open the unlocked bathroom door. I ran the comb through my damp hair from the shower I’d taken alone while he made sure the men were ready to leave. The thought of returning toEl Infiernodidn’t fill me with the same comfort it had only hours before. Not now that I knew what deals had once been struck long before I called the island home.
I never could have imagined the depths of the connection between Rafael and I, never would have begun to anticipate how entwined our pasts were. As if phantom hands guided us together, making us dance like puppets on a string.
I knew that couldn’t be the case, knew that all the driving forces in our lives had worked to keep us separate. Between the river that should have killed me and his father’s attempt to sell me when that failed, the fact that I still lived could be nothing short of a miracle.
If anyoneof the actions that had brought us together hadn’t come to pass, would we still be standing where we were? If Rafael hadn’t been drawn into the Bellandi war, would he ever have known I existed as more than just the ghost of a girl he’d allowed to be sold?
The answer wasn’t clear. Even though logic said that a happenstance meeting on the street had been the catalyst that brought us together, every coincidental connection in our pasts made it feel like something else drove us toward one another. Whether it was the spirit of his mother or just a twist of the mind, I suspected we would never know.
Was it possible that Rafe had recognized me as the girl from that photo the first time he saw me? That deep down, even if he hadn’t realized it, he’d seen in me a chance to make amends for the children he’d failed to save and protect?
Was it just his subconscious that caught his eyes on me initially, telling him he’d seen me before and his obsession developed from there?
As my eyes met his in the mirror and he stepped behind me, I didn’t know that it mattered. Whatever had brought us to this moment, whatever had happened to makethispossible, it was in our past.
I didn’t want it to decide our future.
He took the comb from my hand, resuming the task of gently working it through the knots in my hair after a restless night of sleep. “Do you believe me?” he asked, and despite the harsh set to his features in the reflection, I knew my answer mattered to him in a way I wouldn’t have expected.
“I do,” I said, huffing a disbelieving laugh. I shouldn’t have believed a word that came from Rafe’s mouth, not when he’d fed me countless, beautiful lies and omitted the truth more times than I could count.
But whereas the times before had been lies that benefited him and kept him from having to deal with the consequences of my reactions, this one felt different. Yes, he stood to lose me if I reacted poorly to the news of what he’d done when I was a child—or rather hadn’t done. But more than that, he protected me from knowing the truth of what my life had almost become.
He protected me from the knowledge that the man who wanted to rape me as a thirteen-year-old girl now had the twin sister who looked exactly like me within his grasp.
Something that Rafael had arranged,knowingwhat she would suffer.
“Out of everything you’ve done, keeping this a secret is hardly your worst offense,” I said, thinking of the sister I needed to free. I was at a loss for how to accomplish that when Rafe himself had clearly stated he wouldn’t risk his men for her.
I’d known he hated her, and that he would kill her if the time came when it was necessary, but the fate he’d condemned her to was unforgivable.
It was far worse than death.
Rafe set the comb on the counter, watching my hard face in the reflection of the mirror above the vanity as he rested his hands on the edge of the counter and leaned his weight into mine. “So where do we go from here?” he asked, and the question caressed my skin.
It felt like a choice, the first one I’d had since he came into my life. Even if I knew he would still never let me go, I’d stopped wanting that and it didn’t matter anymore. But I’d gotten so used to him dictating where we went and what we did, that there was a moment of shock within me as I tried to remember what it was tochoose.
“We go home,” I said, letting warmth fill my eyes even as my jaw remained tightly clenched. His right hand lifted from the counter, resting on my hip as he sighed in relief. “And you teach me how to not be helpless anymore.”
He paused, his fingers going still at my hip. “Mi reina, you’re pregnant.”
“The last I knew, being pregnant did not make me an invalid. You can teach me to take care of myself without kicking me in the stomach, and that is exactly what you’re going to do,” I said, grasping the hand at my hip within mine and dragging it toward my belly that would swell soon enough. “I need to do this.”
He watched my face, searching for any signs of hesitation in whether or not I would be ready for this. “It won’t change what happened, and it definitely won’t get her back.”
“I know that. After what you did, I don’t truly believe that Icouldsave her. She was already broken from when we were kids, but to be drugged and offered up in my place will push her over the edge. Of all the things you’ve done, that is probably the worst,” I said, watching as his eyes widened in shock.
I knew he expected the fertility shot to be the worst for me, but while that had been a terrible thing to do, I had also always known Rafael wanted me pregnant. He’d left out some details, violated my body, but in the end the result was the same.
If he hadn’t offered Odina up as a sacrifice, more of his men might have been killed. That was true, and I didn’t doubt the sincerity of that assertion.
But it didn’t excuse what Odina would suffer, and I found it difficult to reconcile the man who held me while I cried and fed me strawberries in the bath with the man who could condemn my sister to that kind of fate and never even bat an eye.
“She drugged you to help her friend rape you,” he reminded me, and I nodded.