Page 21 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Isa

In all my life, there had never been a day when I was more aware of my family's financial mess than that moment when we pulled up in front of my parents’ house the next day. Given that most of my time was spent in beaten-down homes where I tutored and a run-down school that hadn't been cared for in decades, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that my outlook had been skewed.

It was harder to see poverty when it was all you knew. The peeling paint of our home just seemed normal. The grass had at one point been alive and thriving due to my grandmother's attention and the love she gave to the land. When she'd gotten sick, she hadn't been able to take care of it anymore.

When she'd gotten sick, I'd started helping to pay her medical bills. In the time since the surgery things should have gotten easier, but with college on the horizon they hadn't. My entire life stared me in the face, all the hard work I'd done to get a scholarship feeling like a total and complete waste with the man sitting in the back seat beside me as we stared at my parents' home across the street.

"Has it always been like this?" I asked him. He didn't hesitate before he answered, his deep voice filling the silence that had consumed the vehicle since we parked.

"Yes," he agreed.

We were far from the poorest house on the block. We weren't even in the worst neighborhood, where abandoned houses were more common than occupied ones, but the signs of our struggle could be felt in every crooked floorboard on the porch. They could be felt in the screen door where the metal at the bottom was dislodged. Jagged and dangerous, it popped out from the framing. In the old and weathered front door that had long since faded from the sunny yellow I'd chosen as a girl, when I'd had the brilliant idea that a fresh coat of paint on the door could make our house more welcoming for my friends.

"I can't leave them to this, not knowing how we live," I told him, spinning to stare at him intently. "Don't ask me to do that."

"I won't,mi reina.I'll take care of them, if they let me. I believe your parents will come around to my assistance eventually, but I'm not certain about your grandmother."

I frowned, trying to think about my grandmother's reaction to this man coming in and stealing me away in the night. Even if she had no clue how true the sentiment was, she would feel that way regardless. She would see it as him buying me, paying my family for the theft of their future and her legacy. I groaned, suspecting my grandmother would be the greatest battle in the fight for peace between Rafael and my family.

Rafael grew tired of waiting for me to make my move to step out of the vehicle, shoving open his door to make that choice for me. I'd spent the entire morning nagging him, pushing to get to my family's house, but now that we were there all that bravado was gone.

I wanted to go back to bed.

"It will not be easy, Isa. Nothing worth fighting for ever is," Rafael reminded me as he opened my door. "I know you're afraid, and you have good reason to be. But what does fear do?"

"It makes us feel alive," I said, accepting the hand he held out for me. Allowing him to pull me from the vehicle, I watched out of the corner of my eye as Santiago and Joaquin stepped out of the front seats. In the time since Rafael had first introduced me to the advantages of confronting my fears, I'd come to understand one simple truth.

It didn't only make me feel alive in those moments when he dangled me over the edge of a cliff or pushed me into the water of a natural pool. It made me appreciate the moments of quiet, and see the value in the things I'd once feared. It made me understand that the tinge of fear and anticipation I always had with Rafael didn't have to be a bad thing.

He excited me. He made it so I never knew what he would do or how he would react to any given situation.

He guided me across the street with my hand firmly encased in his, tension bleeding into the lines of his body as his shoe touched the sidewalk in front of my parent's home. No matter what words of encouragement he offered me, he cared what they thought. If only because he cared about my happiness.

He knew as well as I did that this first meeting with them couldn't possibly end well.

"Stay here," he barked to Santiago and Joaquin as we started up the crumbling walkway. The stones were uneven, jagged where winter’s frozen ground and the thaw in the spring had shifted the earth beneath them. I moved carefully, stepping over the raised sides to avoid twisting my ankle and wondering how I'd ever sprinted up to the house.

Everything was unfamiliar, even the place that had been my home and my sanctuary for eighteen years.

The door burst open suddenly, my mother's frame filling the front porch. With a hand covering her mouth, tears stung her eyes as I paused on the walkway. Rafe's hand clenched mine tightly, grounding me against the surge of emotions that came from seeing her. Dark circles stained the skin beneath her eyes, her cheeks more hollow than I could ever remember seeing.

"Isa?" she asked in a quiet voice as she finally drew her hand away from her mouth.

"Hi, Mom," I said, the quiet words seeming to crack through the air as she sprang into action. She hurried down the steps too quickly, racing over the uneven walkway until her arms surrounded me and she pulled me into her embrace. Rafe had no choice but to release my hand, and even then I could feel his displeasure in the act.

With my hands around my mother's thin frame, I patted her back awkwardly. Even in the moments when I could be nothing but grateful to be back with her, the sinking feeling that nothing would ever be the same in our relationship hovered on the horizon.

How could she ever love me, when I was no longer the daughter she’d raised?

"Waban!" she yelled when she finally pulled back. The neighbors next door poked their heads out the window, and I winced as I felt their gaze slide up over me in my expensive clothes with a man at my side. I knew what many thought of girls from our neighborhood when they found themselves a wealthy boyfriend, and it had never felt more pungent than the moment when all that bitterness was turned on me.

They knew nothing of my marriage, just like they knew nothing of the other girls who'd found a way out of the endless cycle of poverty that trapped so many. But that wouldn't stop them from whispering.

"Don't cry," I said, reaching up to touch her cheek with my hand. I brushed away the tears streaming down her face, guilt stabbing me in the chest as I thought of how worried she must have been. While my relationship with Rafael and time onEl Infiernohad felt like a whirlwind to me and flown by, I imagined it must have felt like a lifetime to a mother worried for her daughter.

"You're alright? Truly?" she asked, pressing her lips to my forehead.

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