Page 6 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Rafael

Iswept the hair off Isa’s neck, staring at the name I’d carved into her skin. She tilted her head to the side, soft and compliant as I ran the washcloth over the wounds and cleaned away the blood. The taste of her on my tongue, of the blood that coursed through her veins, tormented me.

I briefly wondered if my obsession with her would ever settle. If there would ever come a moment where I was just content with having her in my arms and didn’t feel the need to possess her every waking thought and every dream.

If I didn’t need to consume her nightmares and make them part of me.

“I didn’t know,” I murmured, watching her reflection as her body twitched in my grip. The reminder of what she saw as a great betrayal immediately tensed the body that had been relaxed after the adrenaline surge that consumed her. The aftercare of having me clean her wound had settled her down, until she’d practically purred in my grip in spite of what I knew had to be painful. “I swear to you on my mother’s grave,mi reina.I didn’t know that my father threw you in that river.”

She turned those stunning eyes up to me, the brightness of them in the wake of her tears startling as they met mine. Never in my life had I swornanythingon my mother’s grave. Nothing had been important enough for those words and the sacrifice they embodied. I ran my nose up the uninjured side of her neck, breathing in her unique scent to settle myself.

Everything in me felt taut, agonizing in the wake of her revelation. With me overcome with the need to hunt my father and slaughter him all over again for what he’d done, Isa’s choice to run had been the very worst thing she could have done.

She called to the predator, to the nightmare who needed to hunt. Fuck.Kill.

She nodded back at me, her gaze still wary as if she couldn’t quite believe me. Logically, I knew I’d given her no reason to trust me and take me at my word. In time she’d come to understand I very rarely lied.

Only when I thought it would protect her from the realities she could not change and the facts of life that would only hurt her. My father’s involvement in her drowning was not one of those instances.

I hoped she never learned the truth of the rest.

I dressed her in a pair of sleep shorts and one of my comfortable shirts that covered the fresh wounds on her shoulder. The last thing she needed to deal with was the pity from my aunt and the condemnation I would face from my family.

Marking her skin in the way I did should be a crime. I would punish anyone else who did it to a woman, but something about it just made sense for Isa and me. As if the toxicity of our love and the history we didn’t understand demanded that we bleed for one another.

I pulled her into my arms, cradling her gently as I carried her off the yacht and back up to the house. She rested her head against my chest, settling in with a complacency that bothered me. I wanted her to fight me, to rage against the injustices done to her.

Not run and retreat into herself.

I strolled into the open back doors, my family studying Isa as I set her on the sofa and took a seat next to her. Keeping her cuddled tightly into my side, I drew in a deep breath and prepared to explain the very same thing that I myself didn’t understand.

“What the fuck was that about?” my uncle asked, meeting my eyes over Isa's head. With anyone else, I may have hesitated to answer him. The reality of my father’s involvement meant there may be very few people I could trust. Only the knowledge that he might know the information to fill in the gaps of my knowledge led me to answer him.

"I keep all reminders of my father's existence isolated to the spare office," I said. "Isa has never seen him until that photo in your hallway."

My uncle had known my father before the loss of his humanity turned him into a beast who acted on impulse without fear of repercussions. He'd clung to the hope that the brother he remembered still remained locked inside him, trapped beneath the madness that plagued him. That one day he would see the error of his ways and agree to do whatever it took to bring him back from the place where he danced at the edges of reality.

The knowledge of just how far his brother had fallen into his madness wouldn't come as a shock, but it brought back the painful memories I knew Andrés would rather forget. I almost wished I could spare him the pain of knowing that his own brother would drown an innocent child for no reason, but the answers I needed were far more important than his precious feelings.

"When Isa was five, a stranger tossed her into the river and attempted to drown her. She never knew his name, and he was never brought to justice because of his connections in high places," I said, watching as my uncle's eyes widened. "She never saw him again."

"What would your father stand to gain from harming a girl in such a way?" Martina asked, her hand raising to touch her mouth as she stared at Isa in horror. "The man was completely unhinged, but everything he did benefitted him. His selfishness wouldn't allow for anything else."

"He married Regina as a final fuck you to my mother, because burning her alive wasn't enough. If he truly only acted in ways that benefited him, he would have chosen someone younger and more likely to give him the sons he so desperately wanted," I reminded. My father had been a monster, and he would do something monstrous just to prove it.

I'd been forced to sit through many of his conversations with Pavel about his latest property acquisitions. Even from a young age, I'd known exactly what they meant.

People.

"Why did my father throw her in the river, Andrés?" I asked, glaring at the man as he fiddled with his hands nervously.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Your mother was a special circumstance. She always brought out the worst of his madness. What he did to spite her wouldn't necessarily translate to other people—"

"She was drowned on the anniversary of my mother's death," I said, wondering how I hadn't thought to make the connection previously. I'd thought it only a coincidence, a twist of fate, that the worst days of our lives were so irrevocably entwined. My uncle fell silent, his gaze dropping to Isa in sympathy as he accepted the truth.

My father had tried to drown my wife. The only question waswhy?

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