19
Isa
The shadow of grief wrapped me in a dark embrace, clinging to me from the sidelines and making me move through my life in a fog for the next week. I’d thought I’d been strong enough to push through the sadness and grasp onto the raging pit of anger inside me to cope with my mother’s death. But the guilt of what had been done to Odina shoved me straight into the abyss all over again.
Regina watched me with concerned eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking, making sure I ate all the food she gave me despite my grief for my sister. I did it for the sake of the baby, ignoring the fact that it all tasted like ash on my tongue.
There would be no recovering from what I’d done to Odina, from whattheyhad done to her through me and because of me. I was the catalyst that ruined her life, and they were the weapons who’d delivered the fatal blows that stripped away everything that had been vital within my sister.
I wasn’t foolish enough to think she might have survived the second murder as intact as the first, and it left me in a horrible cloud of the unknown.
What had come of her after the camera disconnected? While seeing her with her throat slit was far from being something I ever wanted, I suspected it would have at least given me a sense of clarity. Hope was a shining light at the end of the tunnel, but if the tunnel never ended then that light was unreachable. It felt like a plague that would consume my life and strip away everything that was good.
Objectively, I knew I had to go on. I knew that I had to focus on my marriage and find a way to forgive Rafael for the part he’d played in Odina’s death. I couldn’t even blame him really, because we all did what we had to in order to protect the people who mattered the most. Odina was inconsequential to him: a thorn in his side and a threat to the life we were working to build. She’d proven that in our short time in Chicago, so I didn’t really blame him.
I blamed myself instead. I could have forced her into that bunker with me. I could have refused to allow her to wander off on her own in the middle of the attack, but I’d let her go and left her open and vulnerable.
In the face of it, Rafe had taken to practically demanding that I spend my time in his office while he worked, needing his eyes on me to prove that I was okay and I was coping. I couldn’t look at his computer without seeing Dima’s haunting eyes staring back at me, the deranged touch of his stare on me feeling like a physical thing despite the distance.
I couldn’t look at it without seeing the knife carving into Odina’s neck. Living like a Queen with the King of Hell came with a price.
I just hadn’t been the one to pay it.
I lay on my stomach on the sofa in the sitting area on the other side of his office, turning the page in the fantasy novel that didn’t consume my attention in the way I’d hoped. Reaching over to the bowl of orange slices sitting on the coffee table, I popped one into my mouth and tried to ignore the feeling of Rafe’s pointed stare on me. My eyes roamed over the words, reading them and retaining nothing with the distracting way he seemed to accomplish nothing with me in the room.
The door to the office opened, and Alejandro came in. His eyes dropped to me briefly before he approached Rafael at the desk. Dropping into the seat in front of it, he cast one last uncertain glance over his shoulder to see if I was paying attention to whatever he had to say. Rafe had told him several times that he didn’t need to hesitate to speak of their business matters in front of me since there were no secrets between us, and the thought comforted me after months of secrets and lies that had threatened to tear us apart.
I genuinely hoped we were past that, and that with Rafe’s final admission of what he’d known for longer than I’d known he existed we could live our life together honestly.
What he did and who he was no longer horrified me. Sinking a knife into a man’s heart had hardened me to that.
“You look tired,” Alejandro commented, and I glanced up from my book to find his eyes on me. “Have you been sleeping alright? We can see if the doctor thinks there are any herbal supplements that could help you.”
“She’s fine,” Rafe barked, his anger coating my skin in a thin layer. Everyone wanted to help, to offer whatever advice they thought might be useful to my coping and the grief that I needed to work through at my own pace. But the precious devil himself saw every question as an insult to his ability to take care of me and anticipate my needs. “I put her through her paces this morning.”
“He’s right. I’m just sore,” I agreed, thinking back to the morning we’d spent in the meadow I was coming to think of fondly. While I neverfeltgood when I left it, my body consumed by the exhaustion of the way Rafe worked me over and pushed me to the limits of what I could handle, he usually took care of me in an entirely different way once we’d finished.
That typically involved him reminding me I was alive with the slow work of his cock inside me, driving me higher and higher and refusing to allow me to separate from him mentally or emotionally. He didn’t know that I had no intent to do that anyway, my guilt entirely focused on tearing myself apart rather than driving a wedge between our relationship.
Rafael Ibarra was the devil incarnate, and only an idiot would have expected him to be anything else.
“Was there something you wanted?” Rafe asked, raising a brow at his second-in-command and demanding his attention once more when he felt like too much focus went to me. To the baby that was somehow not just everything to Rafe and I, but to an entire community who had waited for the moment thatEl Diablofinally had an heir.
The people who said it took a village to raise a child had probably intended the statement to apply to something slightly less literal, but I’d certainly found mine.
“You have the summit in Stockholm this weekend,” Alejandro said, then he paused, pushing a folder held tightly within his grasp across the desk until it stopped in front of Rafe. “Those are all the people who are attending. I don’t think there’s anyone you don’t know on some level, but just to be safe I’d suggest going over the information briefly.”
“I can’t go to Stockholm right now,” Rafe said, leaning back in his seat and furrowing his brow. “You’ll have to go in my place.”
There was a break of silence, and I closed the book held in front of me to stop pretending I was even capable of reading. A summit for criminals sounded...like something from a movie. “I think that would be a mistake,” Alejandro said finally. “You’ve been separate from the face of the business for too long. Understandably, given everything that’s happened, but with the tensions with Pavel rising and the hostile takeovers beginning, it’s time for you to show your face again.”
Rafe studied his second-in-command, sighing deeply as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Do you understand how much I loathe you at times?” he asked finally, and Alejandro’s cheek indented with a single dimple as he grinned at his boss.
“Someone has to be the voice of reason.”
“I hate these things under the best circumstances, let alone going to be around a bunch of people who seem to think I’m their allfather.”
“You are responsible for all of them coming together. I think saying that they worship you is a stretch, but you cannot possibly hope to solidify the initial bonds of an alliance if the person who orchestrated it isn’t even present,” Alejandro said, standing to his feet and moving toward the door to make his exit.