Page 1 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

1

Isa

Afirm hand clenched the back of my shirt, gripping me tightly by the material and lifting so suddenly that the sound of fabric tearing filled the air.

Dark and impossibly cruel eyes met mine as he lifted me off my feet.

As if I was the kitten he'd tempted me with, he kept me at arm's length. Like I was a dirty and diseased thing he couldn’t bear to taint himself with.

I screamed as my body was tossed backwards. Cold water filled my lungs suddenly when I broke through the surface, sinking fast and rapidly caught in the current. I kicked my legs, lost in the darkness of the river as it roared around me. Phantom shadows came from the depths, surrounding me as my body was swept away.

A sharp bite of pain caught my leg, ripping through skin —

"Isa!" Rafael snapped, drawing me back to the present as he grasped my shoulders and shook me roughly. I stumbled backward, slapping away his touch and desperate to get free from him. My back hit the opposite wall in the hallway, the impact making me feel solid compared to the liquid feeling that had taken over my body when I remembered what it was like to drown.

How it felt to be filled with the same water that surrounded me, as if I could dissolve into nothingness and cease to exist.

The man who had ruined me, who’d had changed everything in my life and taken my sister away...was my father-in-law. Dead or not, we'd somehow become bound by the bonds of marriage.

I wished I'd been there to watch him burn for what he’d done to me and my family, but fate, and my husband, had stripped me of that right.

"Mi reina," Rafael said, stepping toward me cautiously. My feet moved faster than my body could keep up, sliding further along the wall to keep that distance between us. "Stop and think about this. I need you to be very,verycertain it was him.”

"Stay away from me," I gasped, backing down the hall toward the kitchen where I'd left Martina. He reached out for me again, his face a complex mix of concern and rage as I threw myself back to avoid his touch. "Why?" I asked. Tears streamed down my face steadily as I tried to understand and tried to wrap my head around all the moving pieces in the game I hadn’t even known we were playing.

Hadn't his father done enough?

I turned, running down the rest of the hallway and bursting into the open-concept living room. Rafael followed at my heels, the sound of him vaulting into motion behind me erupting in the more enclosed space.

I turned to look back, watching his face harden for a brief moment before I collided with a wall of muscle. I screamed as Sebastian wrapped his arms around me, holding me still despite my struggles and the foot I stomped on top of his.

"What's going on?" Andrésasked, stepping up beside me as Sebastian spun me in his arms. Facing Rafael, I watched his gaze settle on his cousin's hands wrapped around my stomach and my chest to hold me still.

"Unhand. My. Wife," Rafael growled, his voice dropping to a tone that bordered on animalistic.

"He will, as soon as you tell me why you're chasing her through my home, and she looks like she's seen a ghost. Iknowwhat your father taught you was acceptable behavior, Boy. I will not tolerate that in my house," Andrés argued, forcing Rafael's eyes to turn to him. Whatever he saw in Andrés’ expression calmed the beast in him somewhat, and he stepped forward slowly to touch gentle fingers to my face as I flinched back.

"I promise you, I didn't know," he murmured, touching his forehead to mine as if he could make me feel the truth to the words.

"You expect me to believe that?" I said through gritted teeth. My throat clenched around the words, a sob that I wouldn’t give into threatening to break free. Of all the people in the world, there couldn't be any way that Rafael obsessed over the same girl his father had tried to kill, and it was all just a coincidence.

It wasn’t possible.

"I've been searching for answers. I have men looking into the accident in Chicago to find out what happened to you and who did it. I wouldn't have done that if I already knew the answer,mi reina," he reassured me.

I eyed him warily. Though his words felt like the truth, I’d come to learn that coincidences didn’t exist when it came to Rafael. In the place of happenstance there was only cool calculation and manipulation — a master hand on the chess pieces of life, guiding those around him to do exactly as he pleased.

My bottom lip trembled as I remembered how desperate he’d been for the answers to what happened in the river that he’d thought to coerce me into revealing them under the threat of branding. He’d stood nothing to gain in that moment aside from the information he lacked that had plagued him.

He must have thought he saw acceptance in my eyes, because he tore Sebastian’s hands from my body, moving to draw me into his embrace. Dropping to the floor, I scurried out beneath his arms and rounded his cousin’s legs, letting him unknowingly serve as a temporary obstacle as I scrambled to my feet and raced for the back doors.

My arms pumped with the desperation consuming me. A glance over my shoulder as I threw open the French door showed Rafael brutally shoving his cousin to the side to get past him. The breath froze in my lungs as I moved, my chest unnaturally tight as I ran.

The view of the shed up ahead in the distance served as a cruel reminder of all the ways Rafe had ruined me.

He’d taken an innocent girl who’d survived his father’s wrath and done what he’d failed to do. He killed her—turned her into a phantom of his own making.

A murderer.

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