Page 11 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Rafael

The night sky greeted us as we stepped outside and wrapped us in a familiar embrace. Joaquin emerged from the patio, a silent sentry at Isa’s side as he walked us toward the yacht at the berth. Isa’s movements were slow at my side, unsteady as if her exhaustion was finally catching up with her.

I reached over to scoop her into my arms, sighing as she tucked her head into my neck and breathed deep. It was impossible to believe we’d arrived in Barcelona earlier that day, and that everything had changed so drastically in a matter of hours.

By the time we reached the end of the dock, my men shuffled behind us and allowed me to make my way onboard. I nodded to Joaquin briefly, silently telling him he was off duty for the rest of the night and carrying Isa to the bedroom cabin. The sleek white lines greeted me as I stepped inside, and Isa lifted her head slightly to look around the space as if she hadn’t been aware enough to do it the first time.

She’d been far too distracted by the murder she’d committed to worry herself over the luxury of her new life with me.

I placed Isa in the center of the bed as gently as I could, taking a seat beside her at the edge and leaning forward to place my elbows on my knees. She shifted behind me, the warmth of her palm touching my spine through the thin cotton of my shirt as I studied the floor.

“Has anyone told you about my mother’s death?” I asked, turning to meet the shock of her green eyes as she opened them suddenly. Her body was languid, as if sleep was the only thing on her mind.

A kinder man might have left her to rest, but the overwhelming need to talk came so rarely it would have felt like a foolish opportunity to waste. Her eyes widened as she moved to a new position, her face going alert as she seemed to realize the seriousness of my mood.

She nodded, pursing her lips as she waited for me to continue. Uncertainty swam in her gaze, an underlying hesitance that perhaps she shouldn’t have known the truth about my mother’s demise.

I sighed, returning her nod. I’d fully expected that answer, and the details of her murder were far from a secret. “I’m not surprised,” I murmured, turning my body so that I could pick up a stray strand of her hair where it sprawled against the pillow. “Her heterochromia was more like yours, but her eyes were blue with a green piece at the top of her right eye.” My hand drifted up to my face, unintentionally touching the skin under my blue eye. Suddenly craving the contact with one of the pieces of my mother I carried within me, I let the comfort of it wash over me as I prepared to open old wounds that were better left untouched.

My father’s eyes had been dark, so deep a brown that they bordered on the black of night. There was no trace of my father in me.

"She used to tell stories of how my father loved that they made her unique. That of all the women he could have been contracted to marry, his was special. He believed God had sent her to him, but still he did not love her. Miguel Ibarra was incapable of love, but from what I remember of my early memories and what Regina and others have confirmed, there was a time when he was good to her. When he was kind, particularly compared to the monster he became." I sighed, shifting my hand to cup her cheek.

"You don't have to tell me this," Isa murmured. She was always so in tune to my moods. Curiosity must have threatened to consume her, the gaps in her knowledge of my life so vast in comparison to the few details I didn’t have of hers.

And yet she still gave me an out. A way to walk away from the difficult subject.

I would never deserve her, but she was mine regardless.

"I'm not certain which came first. My memories from the time when my mother was alive are hazy at best, but he became obsessed with religion around the same time he started murdering his men without reason. His paranoia knew no bounds, and his friend Franco Bellandi was going through something similar. They fed into one another's ridiculous notion that no one was trustworthy. Not even their wives and sons. Franco dealt with his problems by documenting everything and hoarding information. My father murdered and buried himself in his newfound Catholicism. He found a priest who encouraged his radical views, bringing him here to drag his people into the abomination he made of God inside the very Church where we were married." I stood from the bed and moved to the vanity at the side of the room. My eyes caught on the reflection in the mirror briefly before I turned away, unable to face the reminder of my mother so plainly. I stripped off my shirt, draping it over the back of the chair. “The Priest convinced my father that the disfiguration in our eyes was the mark of the devil. That my mother was a witch who had been sent to turn my father’s soul against God. He believed I wasn’t really his son, but the child of my mother’s affair with the devil himself.”

I paused, watching as the gears turned in Isa’s head and she worked to connect the dots to the origin of my name. “El Diablo?”she murmured, furrowing her brow as she studied me.

“The name given to me by my father after my mother’s death,” I confirmed. “What I doubt anyone has told you, is that I was meant to die that day alongside my mother. He intended to strap me to the pyre across from her, so she could watch her spawn burn along with her. My mother pleaded with him, and she promised that she would go to the pyre willingly if he would just allow me to live. She sacrificed herself, walking toward a slow and painful death so that her six-year-old son could live," I scoffed, shaking my head as I spun away from her. "My father and the priest believed my mother would live and they would have their answer. Witches can survive the flames, of course. At least that's how it worked during the witch hunts. She was proven innocent in my father's eyes when she died, and me along with her though he made sure to brand me for crying as she burned."

"He wasn't stable, Rafael," she said, shifting toward me and drawing my attention back to her. "You can't blame yourself for the choice your mother made.Anyreal mother would beg for her son's life, no matter what the cost was. I would do it in a heartbeat," she confessed. Her voice trailed off as she realized the weight of her confession, and once again considered the reality that she would be a mother sooner than later.

I smiled at her, the motion feeling heavier than it should as the injustice of my mother’s death threatened to make me combust. “My uncle would have you believe that my father was sick, that medication or treatment could have helped him. But the sickness that plagued him wasn’t an illness that could be changed. He was a sociopath and a sadist. He got off on hurting people, and he thought himself a God. I’m no different, and I think that would be what makes my mother turn in her grave. That after everything I survived at my father’s hands and everything she sacrificed, I’m no better than him in the end.”

She swallowed, fidgeting slowly. “From what Regina said, your father was a rapist.”

“How is that different from what I did with you? I may not have forced myself on you,mi reina, but I didn’t give you a choice either. I took away your ability to consent by hiding the truth from you. If you’d known all I’d done, you never would have let me touch you,” I said, my voice dropping lower with the next words and the dark truth that lingered in them. “And I think we both know that I would have stopped at nothing to have you.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. I reached further into the bed, grabbing the waistband of her shorts and tugging them down her legs. She didn’t resist as I stripped her clothes off, watching me with wary eyes. “Why are you trying to make me believe you’re a monster when I’ve finally come to terms with what you are and who I am?” she asked, raising her arms so I could lift the shirt over her head.

She winced as her shoulder and neck pained her, the fresh wounds stretching until she returned her arm to her side. I shoved the pants down my legs and kicked off my shoes, climbing into the bed beside her.

Turning to her side, she stared at me and waited for the answer.

“Have you? Come to terms with who you are and who the man you’ve married is?” I asked, raising a brow as I cupped her cheek in my palm. She leaned into the touch, soft and sleepy.

It hinted at all the sweetness she’d had before I took her. Before I corrupted her.

I hoped one day she could be bothmi princesaandmi reina. A combination of the queen who would defy me when I crossed the line and the princess who could take my dominance and return it with the sweet submission only she could make me crave.

“You ran from me,” I murmured, leaning forward to tease her mouth with mine. “That does not feel like acceptance.”

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