44
Rafael
Tears flowed down Isa’s cheeks as we stood on the docks, Gabriel’s bag packed for his trip. The yacht would serve as his headquarters while he hunted for Faye. He tossed the backpack with the last of his clothes onto the loading deck, his laptop and tech equipment already safely loaded and stored on board.
“Where will you start?”mi reinaasked, her voice nearly breaking.
“It’s better that you don’t know the details,” Gabriel said, pulling her into his chest for a quick hug. The fact that my wife seemed so lost, so uncertain of how she was supposed to feel didn’t sit well with me. There’d been a time when I would have been nothing but jealous over the relationship she had formed with the brothers, but there was something else in its place now.
A hollow feeling at the realization that they were her family—the family she’d chosen to embrace and who had shown her that they loved her as she was and not who they expected her to be.
As much as my possessiveness drove me to pull her from his embrace and into mine, I restrained myself. I could give my wife the goodbye she needed with the man who had been able to do what I could not.
The one who’d been brave enough to risk Isa never being able to look him in the eye again, so long as it meant she would be alive to hate him.
“It’s okay to be angry with me,” Gabriel said, staring down at her as she took a step backward so that his brothers could have their goodbyes.
“I am,” she whispered brokenly. A sob claimed her throat, and her hand came up to grasp it like she could refortify it with strength through the contact. “But I don’t want to be.”
“I’ll see you soon,mi reina,”he said, nodding as she took a few steps back toward the end of the dock. She went to the beach, dropping off the wooden planks and burying her toes in the sand. I resolved to take her swimming in the water soon enough, because after everything she’d survived, there was no doubt my wife was ready to conquer that fear in truth.
We had all the time in the world.
I stepped forward, my own goodbyes hanging heavy on my chest. “Thank you,” I said, raising an eyebrow at the man who’d become more serious since Isa became a part of their lives. He’d been rambunctious when he was younger, caught in an eternal loop of humor and technology that I wasn’t sure would ever be of use outside of his hacking skills.
He’d proven himself and then some, taking matters into his own hands when he knew that my love for my wife had rendered me unable to make the only choice that could be made. He’d saved me from being culpable for Odina’s death, giving us the greatest gift I could ever ask for.
A future.
“It needed to be done,” he said, his eyes tracking over to where Isa stood and shifted her toes around in the sand beneath her feet.
“It did. But thank you for being the one to do it,” I said. “Now I don’t need to live with the guilt of her falling victim to an unfortunate accident in Peru.” I smirked at the other man, knowing that he knew me as well as anyone.
Odina would never have been allowed to live, but sometimes the truth was too ugly to know.
Sometimes a beautiful lie was the greatest gift.
“Find her. Bring her to me, and I’ll make sure Isa has come to terms with Odina’s death by then. This will always be your home,” I said pointedly, ignoring the swell of emotion in his throat as I turned and left him to say goodbye to Joaquin and Hugo.
I left them to their private moment, collectingmi reinaand taking her into the car. We drove up the hill slowly, the winding roads curving until we reached the village just beyond the house. It was a detour for sure, but I wanted Isa to understand something before she wandered there on her own inadvertently.
“I’ve had Odina buried next to your mother’s memorial,” I said, watching as she snapped her head toward me. Tears stained her face, and I hoped it hadn’t been a mistake to do it without consulting her. As much as it had pained me to see her name so close to my mother’s, knowing that I would have sooner disposed of her in an unmarked grave where no one could mourn her, I’d done what I thought Isa would want. “I can have her moved somewhere else if you’d prefer—”
“No,” Isa said, easing the nerves I felt over the choice. “I’m just—I’m not ready to see it yet.”
“Whenever you’re ready,mi reina. We have all the time in the world,” I told her, and finally, she smiled.
I still had one last thing to show my wife, and then I intended to spend the rest of my day, the rest of our lives, inside her.