Page 69 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Isa

Rafe stepped out of the French doors as I hurried from my seat to meet him. Spots of blood covered his white dress shirt, the signs of the torture more evident than ever on his clothes. Rafael was always so immaculate, so undisturbed when he came home, even after being gone for an entire day of violence.

“Rafe?” I asked, watching as I stepped up to him. His eyes snapped to mine, something missing in that stare as he walked toward me. “Did you get answers?” I asked, letting him pull me into his arms.

“Yes,” he murmured against the top of my head, breathing deep as he nuzzled into my hair. Shrugging off his shirt and pants quickly, he ran a hand through his hair and didn’t seem to care that his men might see him in his boxer briefs. “Your mother was telling the truth. She had an affair with my uncle.”

“How? How is it possible that all of this is connected and we never knew?” I asked, watching as he moved toward me. He wrapped his arms around me, lifting me off the floor and carting me toward the lounge. Laying me out beneath him, he brushed his nose up the side of mine sweetly. “Your uncle...and my mom.”

He shuddered, shoving the thought away with a shake of his head. “My father kept tabs on her to make sure she didn’t talk. He saw you when he was checking on her.”

“So he threw me in the river because of his issues with her?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around it. I’d started to accept the truth to Rafe’s statement that my mother had spent her life blaming me for going off with the stranger who threw Odina and I into the water. I’d watched shock fill her face as she realized that it might not have been my fault at all.

But a result of the affair she had thought long since buried in her past.

“No,” Rafe said sadly as if he could follow the path my thoughts wandered. “He saw your eyes, and decided to give my mother the daughter she’d always wanted.”

“A daughter through death?” I asked, considering the thought processes of a man so deranged by his fantastical beliefs that he actually believed it worked that way. “Like a gift?”

“Yes. Like a gift for her. I think that’s why he muttered something about her not deserving two daughters to Odina. She was just there and she had to be a witch too because she had the same eyes. You were the target, whether it was because he saw you first or just because you were the one who was willing to go with him, I guess we’ll never know.”

“When I didn’t die, he hurt other kids with eyes like ours. He hurt other people because of me,” I whispered, my heart aching for the ones who hadn’t been so lucky to survive his ruthlessness. “Why not just come finish the job?”

Rafe sighed, hanging his head as he paused. “I’m not entirely certain,” he admitted, but something in his voice felt like a lie. Something felt like guilt, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for the truth if it was worse than what he’d already told me. “You said you heard a woman screaming when you were in the water, that you heard an inferno burning.”

“It was just the water rushing and my mother. That’s all that’s possible,” I said, dismissing the way the reminder made me feel. I’d questioned my memory far too many times over the years to even consider it anymore.

“We’ll never know what really happened in that river. I don’t believe in God or anything of the sort, but I remember how fierce my mother was when it came to protecting me. I remember her standing against my father and trying to fight back. If anyone could protect you in that river, it’s her,” he said, touching his lips to mine. “She knew I needed you more than she ever would, so she kept you safe. And then she led me to you,” he said, murmuring the words against my mouth. The sentiment was oddly sweet, coming from the man I knew didn’t believe in anything beautiful after life.

Only suffering and pain.

“My grandmother would say that her ghost was discontent,” I said, smiling lightly at his words. “That she stayed here to keep an eye on you.”

“Your grandmother sounds like a very wise woman,” Rafe said with a grin, touching his lips to mine again. I didn’t know what I believed regarding his mother and the path that had led to him finding me, of all the people in the world who didn’t share this odd connection.

All I knew was that he was mine, and that was what mattered in the end.

But his father was Miguel Ibarra, and I’d seen the marks on Rafael’s flesh as proof of what happened should he disappoint his father. The burns on his chest were horrible. They were the physical reminder of everything that was evil about Miguel. But they were nothing compared to what the other kids, taken after the day in the river, must have suffered at the hands of people like Pavel Kuznetsov.

The stars twinkled overhead as I lay back on the lounger. In some ways, Rafe was no better than his father. He’d branded me. He’d abducted me.

He’d taken things I didn’t want to give and pushed my body in ways I hadn’t imagined possible.

But he’d also freed me from the cage of my mind, showing me that there could be freedom in physical submission, but there would never be freedom with my darkness locked away. He’d taught me to embrace who I was, instead of living a life for someone else.

The other kids would never find freedom, and I would carry the weight of that with me every day. We still didn’t know for certain that I’d been the first, but Iknew.Deep in my heart, I knew the fact that I’d lived had been what set Miguel over the edge into this frantic pursuit.

Rafael sat on the edge of the lounge cushion, leaning back onto his hand and staring down at me. There was silence between us for a moment as I kept staring at the stars, thinking of what must have happened to the little boy who’d counted them with his mother. What he must have survived between that version of Rafe and the young man who could watch children sold into slavery without trying to stop it.

“My father never kept any of the children for himself,” he said, lying down beside me and staring up at the sky as he heaved a sigh. The weight of the confession that would come settled over my skin. It wasn’t often that he spoke of his upbringing or what life had been like onEl Infiernowith his father. “That wasn’t his particular taste. He preferred his victims to be women, especially women who had children that they would do anything to protect. His favorite pastime was making a mother think she could find a way back to her child if she just did as he asked, and usually, if they did, he would let them go when he was done,” he murmured, his voice oddly distant as if he could remember the pain.

I could only imagine the screams of a woman howling to be set free, trying desperately to get back to her child, and the knowledge of what came when she finally went quiet. My heart felt heavy, sinking into the sound of Rafe’s distant voice and trying to set aside the emotion it brought.

“And if they didn’t?” I asked, even if I didn’t want to know the answer. I knew whatever he’d come to tell me would have a purpose, because he would never volunteer information about his childhood without reason.

“It depended on any number of things. If the child was particularly ‘pretty’ he might sell them after he killed the mother. But sometimes the children stayed onEl Infierno. Knowing my father, he thought that raising the children in his lifestyle, to work for him, was the ultimate way to get even with the women who refused to give him what he wanted. The kids weren’t treated poorly, but my father was fond of threatening me with them,” he said.

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