Page 30 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Rafael

Everything in my body narrowed down to the sight of Isa's delicate arm encased in Matteo's harsh grip. His thumb stroked over the brand, glaring at me as if he had never been more disappointed in my actions.

Admittedly, there had been some pretty shitty ones.

"Take your fucking hand off my wife," I growled a warning. He couldn't understand that the brands united Isa and me, that they were another part of my claim on her body and her claim on mysoul.I shrugged off my suit jacket, tossing it over one of the stools before I uncuffed my sleeve and rolled it up my forearm to reveal my coordinating tattoo.

Matteo's gaze narrowed in on themi reinabrand close to my wrist, some of the anger bleeding out of his gaze. Ivory backed away to the other side of the island, wisely leaving us to determine what agreements may or may not have been violated.

"The brands were part of our wedding. Some people exchange rings, we got brands. What we do in our marriage is none of your business," I said, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Excuse me?" Isa asked, tearing her arm out of Matteo's grip so suddenly that he actually released her. She spun to glare at me, placing a hand on her hip and cocking it to the side. "Wedid no such thing. I had no part in this, but I'll be damned if some man I don't know gets all indignant because of anagreement. What the hell does that even mean?" she asked, spinning and pinning Matteo with the fire of her glare.

He cocked a smirk, staring down at her with a furrowed brow despite his obvious amusement. "It means I gave him permission to take you so long as he treated you well."

"In other words, you gave him permission to kidnap me and then tried to ease your conscience with this bullshit notion that I'd be cared for. Don't bother with that, because the only person who benefits from it is you, with your own guilt," she said, smacking my arm as I hooked it around her waist and tugged her back into my arms.

Ivory laughed beneath her breath, trying to stifle the sound as her husband leveled her with a grin. "Fair enough," Matteo said, turning his eyes back to Isa and giving her a look that was full of all the confusion I was sure most people felt when they faced the spitfire of her personality, which came out more and more with every day that passed.

She wasmi reinafor a reason.

"I like her," Ivory said, drawing her husband's stare back to her. "It isn't often that someone puts your stubborn ass in your place.”

"Of course you would," Matteo smiled, the easy gesture making something inside me settle. Isa moved her hand to my other cuff, unbuttoning it and rolling my sleeve up my arm as we waited in the awkward silence. She patted the skin, running caressing fingers over the area in a slow tease that made me want those fingers on other parts of my body despite the unfortunate audience.

Since I didn't have an interest in spooning out Matteo's eyeballs, I'd have to keep my dick in my pants for the time being.

"Well, now that I’ve made a terrible impression of being self-serving—" Matteo started.

"Which you are," Ivory input helpfully.

Matteo continued on as if his wife hadn't spoken, though his smile widened. "Why don't I make my exit? Rafael, the files are in the basement." He didn’t ask about the bandage on her shoulder or what horror might be concealed beneath it, and, even knowing it would probably become a battle another day, I was glad for it.

I wasn’t sure who might kill me first if I stripped off my shirt to show Isa’s name carved into my chest: my wife or Ivory’s husband.

I leaned forward, touching my lips to the side of her head affectionately. "You'll be okay with Ivory?" I asked.

Isa looked at the woman who smiled back at her, then shrugged as if she couldn't really say otherwise with her right there. "Why can't I go with you? I thought we were here to find out about the river."

"We are," I responded, turning her in my arms so I could look down at her and tuck her hair behind her ear. With her intense eyes on mine, I sighed. "But Franco Bellandi’s files are no place for you. Make cookies, spend some time with Luna. I wish I could be with you instead."

"He's right. You don't want to see the kinds of things my father kept documentation of," Matteo agreed, crossing his arms over his chest as he returned to the back hallway. The entrance to the basement was located at the end, and I wondered if it would be as dark as I remembered it when we finally went downstairs.

I didn't fear the dark, instead welcoming it like I was returning home, but Isa would have been a different story altogether. Some kinds of darkness were complete, like a void that eclipsed all the light and nothing else existed.

She wasn't ready for that.

"No offense, but you don't know the first thing about what I've seen," Isa said, warning Matteo that she wasn't some delicate flower to be protected. I might have agreed with her, but there was a distinct difference between looking at photos and videos of innocent people suffering and feeling the blood of a murderer coating her hands.

Matteo nodded, though he didn't speak to tell her the thoughts that were so clearly running through his head. A dismissal of just how emotionless Isa thought she might be, and I imagined that if she was with me long enough she would become desensitized to certain things. It just wasn't that day.

"Stay here, little demon," I said, teasing her as I touched my lips to hers. "I'll tell you if we find anything." Pulling away from her arms and ignoring the fury that radiated off her at being dismissed so casually, I followed Matteo down the back hall toward his office. Walking past it and to the entrance to the basement, Matteo flicked on a light for the stairwell. "Good to see the lights have been fixed."

"It would be hard to sort through my father's records without them," Matteo laughed, making his way down the new stairs and into the basement itself. The main space was large enough, giving the illusion that it might be the only part of the massive basement. Where there would normally be a false wall at the back, the two halves of the false wall were thrown open to reveal a small group of Matteo's men sorting through the endless files of Franco Bellandi. "It's not as organized as it once was, but everything should still be here. We just have to find it."

"We're looking for why he would have thrown Isa in the river. How would your father have filed that?" I asked, pinning him with a look and then studying the sheer vastness of the amount of files. It would take years to comb through everything and even then there was no guarantee that we would find the answers within them. Who knew what a man like Franco deemed worthy of documenting?

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