23
Isa
The white dress hung off my shoulders as I stepped into the hallway. With my heart in my throat, I glared back at the door as Rafael tugged it closed and locked it using the key Sigrid had given him. Men like my husband didn’t sleep in an estate filled with ruthless people without buying the extra time a locked door would provide, even if that estate was filled with those he trusted.
I wouldn’t have said he was capable of trusting anyone, and yet, he trusted those present enough to bring me. Considering what had happened in Chicago, it wasn’t a small concession.
“You’ll be fine,” he murmured, chuckling under his breath and taking my hand in his. The feeling of his warmth surrounding my palm and entwining between my fingers was a comfort—even if I felt like I was flailing and the reality of what I was about to do threatened to crush me.
Brunch with the other wives and daughters, while Rafe went off with the rest of the men. After the way he’d involved me in his conversations the night before, I’d foolishly begun to hope maybe I wouldn’t need to be separated from him. “You don’t know that. You’re relegating me to the typical wife role. That isn’t where I want to be.”
“And you’d rather talk about cocaine distribution between territories? Or is it the arms deals that interest you? The men talking about what stable girls they’d like to visit in Stockholm while they’re visiting? Maybe youshouldbe privy to that conversation. We could find a girl to join us if that’s what you’re inclined to,” he said, the mocking glaze to his eyes the only thing that prevented me from ripping off his cock as soon as he said the words.
“Don’t make me stab you,” I threatened, blowing out a breath. “You know I would share you about as well as you’d share me. Is that your way of hinting you want to bring another man to our bed?”
Rafael scoffed, amusement lighting his eyes even as a dark edge tightened his jaw. “I would cut him up for even looking at you, and then Istillwouldn’t let you touch the pieces of him when I was done. Does that answer your question?”
“This conversation took a ridiculous turn,” I said, rolling my eyes with a huff of laughter. It probably said something about me that his threat to dismember someone for looking at me no longer bothered me. Somehow, I found it endearing.
There was mostdefinitelysomething wrong with me.
“I’m not asking you to go to brunch because it's where the men tuck their wives when they aren’t needed. That may be the case for some of the assholes in that room, but anyone with half a brain knows that women are powerful in their own way. Those women make their own friendships. They go home to their husbands at night and whisper in their ears about all the things they want for the world. The changes may not happen overnight, but to think a man is not swayed by the sweet murmurs of his wife over time is naive. Most of the men in that room value their wives, even if they are not a love match,” Rafe explained.
“I don’t need to whisper in your ear at night. You’ve never made me feel like I can’t express my opinion openly. So what good will that do me?”
“Because it will be your words that they whisper in their husbands’ ears,mi reina. Not the other way around,” Rafe said. “You are a queen in truth, and after last night they will know that for certain. You have what most of them have never dared to hope for, and they’ll look to you to find a way to achieve that. You have power. Once again, all you need to do is step into your role and take it.”
We came to the top of the staircase, and I let Rafe guide me down the steps slowly with an outstretched arm for me to take. Joaquin lurked behind us, a solid presence that fortified me against the terror I felt being away from my devil.
Being this far out of my element made me stand out enough as it was; I wasn’t certain that Rafe setting me further apart from the rest of the wives would be as beneficial as he thought.
Women could be incredible. They could raise each other up and offer the kind of support that men would never be capable of, understanding that we weren’t in competition with one another but a unit moving as one.
But there were those who ruined it, who saw a competitor where they could have seen an ally and a friend. Those who were ruled by their jealousy and pettiness. Those weren’t my women.
I wanted to befriend the women who understood that a rising tide lifts all boats. I just had to hope this community I wasn’t a part of would accept me enough to let me find them.
We hit the bottom of the stairs, and I turned toward the main dining room where I knew the women were holding brunch. Rafe stopped at the foot of the stairs, letting my hand slip along his suit-clad arm until his hand grasped mine firmly. “What?” I asked, letting him tug me back into him. His body pressed against the front of mine as he wrapped an arm around me and released my hand. That free hand came up to cup my face, and I leaned into the touch despite my best intentions to remain stubbornly irritated with the situation he’d thrust me into.
Sometimes, it felt like Rafe forgot that only a few months prior I’d been a barely eighteen-year-old girl whose greatest hope was to start college in the fall. Rafe didn’t do anything halfway, and the transition of me from that innocent and wide-eyed girl who’d first smelled the almond flowers in Ibiza to the queen he wanted at his side had been nothing short of drastic.
“You amaze me,” he said, leaning forward to touch his forehead to mine as if he could sense the thoughts trailing through my head. We were so in sync, so wrapped up in one another that sometimes it felt as if we shared a wavelength all our own. I wasn’t even sure when it had happened or what had prompted the shift. There’d been a time when the man in front of me terrified me.
In spite of the marks on my body and the things he’d done, I knew I would never find a safer place than tucked inside his arm. His outbursts came from a place of possession, not of sadism, and I’d survived them even as I transformed.
“I amaze you?” I asked, raising a brow at him in an attempt to dispel the suddenly heavy conversation. I didn’twantto be this deep in a conversation with him.
Rafael, when he was sincere and oddly sweet was...disarming. Like he saw straight into me and knew all the doubts that swirled in my head, when that should have been the one place I was safe from him.
“You’re everything I thought didn’t exist. So yes,mi reina, you amaze me. You gave me hope for the first time,” he murmured, touching his lips to my forehead as I tipped my head further to look at him.
“Hope for what?”
“Even the devil himself can love,” he said, giving me that rare and stunning smile that made the breath catch in my lungs every single time I saw it. He reached into his pocket, taking out a fine gold chain and dangling it in front of me. I reached out to grasp the queen charm, running my fingers over the smooth, solid gold. “I was saving it for a more private moment, but I think it would do you some good to wear it today. To rememberwhoyou are when I’m away from you, since you seem to forget in the moments when I’m not watching.”
He reached out, clasping it around my neck and removing the diamond necklace Regina had packed for me, that dangled next to the hollow in my throat. My shaking fingers touched it, drawing strength from the symbol of all I’d become. “Thank you,” I whispered, my voice cracking as I leaned forward and touched my lips to Rafe’s. He’d given me exactly what I needed to feel strong enough to face the day, somehow understanding the self-doubt that crippled me.
He reminded me that I wasn’t the girl from Chicago any longer.