Rafe would find me. I had to believe that, or I wouldn’t be able to keep going.
Joaquin returned me to the girl I’d been helping walk, and I forced through my fear to wrap an arm around her waist and support the weight she couldn’t on her own.
We walked, and we walked some more. My arm and leg ached on the right side of my body where I supported the girl who wouldn’t allow Joaquin to touch her.
And then finally we made our way out of the other side of the woods, the trees opening into a clearing where the chain link fence had been peeled back to give us room to walk through. I recognized people from the Tessin’s house in Sweden waiting to help, standing around the vehicles parked there to take us to safety.
Women stood among the vehicles, wives and daughters who had come to do what they could to help but couldn’t leave the safety of the cars. Just the fact that they’d come, that they’d stepped outside of their comfortable lives to help women who were less fortunate, gave me hope.
Hope for a better future. Hope for a world where families like the Kuznetsovs were dead and buried where they belonged.
Zuri swept in beside me, helping me with the girl until she was tucked safely within the backseat of one of the vehicles. The group of women eyed Faye curiously, and it didn’t take an expert to realize that they knew she’d been involved.
My attention went to the others, helping load them into vehicles with reassuring words that they’d be safe. When I turned back to check on Faye, the space she’d occupied before was empty. I spun, peering into the windows of all the cars but knowing I wouldn’t find her there.
She was gone, like a ghost in the wind.
I wrapped my arms around my waist as the vehicles left one by one, hoping that wherever they were taken they’d be safe. That there’d be someone gentle to receive them.
What would happen to them from here, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Would they go back to the lives they’d lived before? Would they choose to become someone new, never trying to reconcile the person they’d once been with the one they’d been forced to become?
I hoped they found comfort in loved ones’ arms, no matter where they ended up.
I turned my back on the evacuation, staring at the woods and the burning building in the distance. I watched. I waited. For what felt like hours, I stood there and kept my eyes peeled for any movement in the woods. For stragglers, and for my captor who had become the love of my life.
My reason for living.
My fingers dug into my stomach, staring at the stars above and begging for him to come back to me. “You have to go back for him,” I said, not bothering to turn my head back to where Joaquin watched over me.
“The last time I took my eyes off of you, they took you from us. We have to go,mi reina,” Joaquin said gently, touching a hand to my shoulder. “I’ll send back more of the men to find the others, but we need to get you to a doctor.”
“I’m fine,” I said, brushing off his touch. “I’m not leaving.”
“You’re leaving even if I have to put your ass in the vehicle by force,” Joaquin argued, the deep notes of his voice leaving no room for argument. I knew he would do it, especially with his guilt over my being taken at all plaguing him. “I care about Rafael too, and do not forget that my brother went back for him. We all have people we care about in that house right now. The right thing to do is make sure you and the baby are safe.”
Joaquin would never be able to live with himself if something happened to the baby that he could have prevented with medical attention, but there’d been no injury that caused me concern.
“Just a little longer,” I begged, watching the dark woods. He tightened his grip on my shoulder before releasing me, and then his presence at my back disappeared. I knew my time was limited, that I’d only delayed the inevitable.
I lowered myself to the ground anyway, sitting on the cold grass and letting the sharp blades dig into the bare skin of my legs. The scratching feeling rooted me in the moment, keeping my thoughts from wandering as I watched the tree line.
But then there was movement in the woods, and the soot-stained face of Rafael emerged as he limped his way over tree roots and stepped into the light from the starry sky. The other men who’d gone with Gabriel followed behind him, all except for Gabriel himself.
Rafael looked up and froze when he saw me, stilling and heaving out a sigh of relief that I felt within my soul. Those eyes shifted from relief to that same intensity I recognized from the first moment I’d seen him in Ibiza.
I moved without realizing it, bolting to my feet, racing forward, and closing the distance between us. I crashed into him, his pained groan reaching my ears when he staggered back a step onto the leg that seemed to be the source of his pain.
He chuckled deep in his throat, raising his arms to surround me as his mouth came down to touch the top of my head. “Mi reina,” he murmured.
“I thought you were dead,” I sobbed, staining his vest with my tears.
“I was made to love you,” he said, sinking to the ground beneath us and pulling me into his lap. “Not even death could stop me.”
Despite the foreign landscape surrounding us, I was home.