Page 37 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

17

Isa

Ringing filled my ears, the sight of the fire in the backyard where Rafael’s men and the Cortes brothers who were off-duty sat around the pool and socialized drawing me in and holding me captive. I curled my arms around myself, feeling the scabbed over scrapes on the back of my arms as pain flared from the wounds.

The flames drifted to smoke, the wisps of it lost in the air as it rose to the night sky overhead. Three nights in a row I’d been left in the house while Rafael went to torment the man who’d tried to kill me. He left shortly after breakfast every day, going to Matteo’s house to oversee the investigation in the basement. Only coming home briefly at night to tend to my wounds and see how I was feeling, he’d quickly tuck me back into bed to get more rest before leaving to deal with the man who’d tried to harm me.

As if just the sight of my lingering wounds was enough to drive him back to the point of rage where he needed to take it out on Timofey’s flesh.

The words he’d said with such cold, calculating malice as Santiago dragged him up the steps echoed in my head, muffled by the ringing that filled my ears with the memory of heat licking my skin. Gabriel stood from the fire, leaving his brothers to catch up with the men who must have been his friends. They’d arrived the night after the accident along with the additional security Rafe summoned.

Even if I’d wanted to leave the house, the knowledge of just how many people would need to accompany me would have made it impossible. I didn’t know why it bothered me so much that people I’d never met might want me dead, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something deeper to it.

Something that went far beyond me being a way to hurt Rafael.

Of all the choices for a way to threaten me, a way to kill me, he’d chosen toburnme.

“You okay?” Gabriel said, appearing behind me and making me spin away from the window to face him. Sound crashed into my head following his words, the voices of the men from outside and the cheeriness to their entertainment too loud with the sudden intrusion. My head throbbed, almost missing the vibrations of my thoughts and the familiar embrace of a painful memory.

“Yeah,” I said, looking away as my cheeks warmed. It wasn’t the first time the quietest of the Cortes brothers had approached me in the days since the explosion, his eyes too knowing and his voice too gentle. Of the three of them, he was the one who’d kept his distance the most while Hugo deceived me. And yet when Hugo and Joaquin seemed content to give me distance, he was the one who pushed through to draw me out of that haunting place.

The place where the lines between the living and the dead blurred, shadows dancing in my vision as bright white light was licked by flames.

“Liar,” he said with a chuckle, smiling as he stepped up next to me. He stared out at the fire, grunting at whatever antic the men around it engaged in. I watched them, but I didn’t see them.

I couldn’t see anything but the flames.

“Where do you go?” he asked, turning his body so that he stared down at me. “When you get quiet?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, forcing myself away from the window and making my way toward the kitchen for some water. I couldn’t look at fire without remembering the painful cracking in my lips, the dryness of my throat as all the moisture in the air evaporated in the heat. I tugged the refrigerator open, grabbing a bottled water off the door before I turned back to face him.

“You’ve always done it,” he said, following me and leaning his elbows on the counter. "Before Rafael, it was in your room at night. You were sosilent. It was like you didn’t exist. Did you go back to that river?”

“That’s none of your business,” I snapped, slamming the bottle of water onto the counter without even taking a drink.

“What about now? Is it the river or the explosion that makes you stare out the window like you can’t even see us?” he pushed, following me toward the stairs as I went to retreat. He hurried around me, stepping into the path I would need to take and blocking off my only exit from the inquiries I didn’t want to answer.

“Stop it,” I said, the pleading note in my voice taking me by surprise. I’d thought myself beyond the trauma of the river, thought I’d worked through the worst of it, but my inability to talk about it with Gabriel hinted at the lingering effects that I suspected would never really go away.

“If you think I’m being pushy, just you wait until Rafe realizes what’s going on with you,” Gabriel snorted a laugh. “He’s distracted with Timofey Kuznetsov and not here to see you like this. I have to admit you put on a good show for his sake, but he won’t be this absent forever.”

“I don’t think he’s well-versed in understanding the effects of trauma. He was shot and didn’t even bat an eye. I bumped my head and can’t sleep,” I scoffed, bumping his shoulder with mine as I pushed past him to get to the stairs.

“Probably more than you think. He might not show it, but I promise you he was just as affected by the explosion as you. Except it isn’t fear for his own life that drives him to that warehouse every night to get answers. It’s fear foryours. He would die one thousand times over before he willingly allowed any harm to come to you. Just talk to him, Isa.”

“What good will it do? I’ll still be stuck inside watching the fire burn from a safe distance. I’ll still be terrified of being burned alive.” I sighed, shaking my head. “Even if he knows I’m scared, he can’t do anything to change it. It will only make him feel worse than he already does. I’d like my husband to stop hunting the phantom threats to my life and come home at some point.”

“He’ll come home,mi reina. You need him to be home with you. Ryker is perfectly capable of getting answers from Timofey, and Rafael knows it. He’s there because he feels like he needs to be and trusts that you would tell him if you weren’t okay,” Gabriel murmured, turning his back on me as he made his way back for the backyard. “Get some sleep.”

I turned on my heel, making my way up the steps and passing one of Rafael’s men where he lurked outside our bedroom. He nodded as I went in, wordless but polite until I finally closed myself into the private space.

I grabbed a nightgown, stepping into the bathroom and depositing it on the counter while I started the shower. Cold water sprayed from the shower head, casting a chill to the room as I stripped off my clothes and stepped beneath the icy rainfall.

The cold surrounded me, raising goosebumps on my skin as I tipped my head back and sank into the shivers of my body. Letting them consume me, letting them remind me that the fire outside wasn’t the one that had nearly covered my skin, I heaved a sigh as I worked shampoo through my hair. My fingers brushed over the bald spot at the back of my head where stitches tied my skin together, the sting of shampoo against them grounding me against the chill.

Curling my hair over my shoulder, I combed the conditioner through my hair slowly, my lips trembling as I chased back the dark eyes in my memory. One trauma bled into another, the haunting image of Rafael’s mother’s face as I’d seen in the photo hovering at the edge of my vision.

Her screams echoed in my head, the sound of a raging fire filling my ears as the cold water of Chicago poured over my skin and brought me back to the river where everything had begun.

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