Until Death Do Us Part by Adelaide Forrest

6

Rafael

Iwalked into the kitchen, dropping onto one of the stools at the kitchen island. Anna hurried to the counter, brewing a cup of coffee and busying herself with taking care of me. While I didn’t know her well, I suspected most women would want to care for the man who had only managed to grab a few hours of sleep after holding his grieving wife for hours.

“How is she?” Hugo asked, wringing his hands as he looked toward the stairs.

“Sleeping,” I said, accepting the cup of coffee from Anna gratefully.

“Did you manage to get any sleep?” Mariano asked, watching me pointedly. He was barely ten years older than me, and had a son who was older than my wife. It wasn’t often that I remembered just how young Isa truly was, given she felt older than her age. I recalled her grandmother’s words in one of the many conversations I’d listened to in the time when I waited to make Isa mine.

Isa had an old soul trapped inside the body of an eighteen-year-old.

“Not much,” I admitted. “It took a while for her to cry herself to sleep.”

“She didn’t revolt against you touching her after what we did?” Gabriel asked, leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I didn’t get that far. She knows about her parents, but not Odina yet,” I said, taking a sip of the hot coffee and letting it rejuvenate me. The late hour didn’t matter, since I had business to tend to that night and wouldn’t find my way back to bed with Isa for a long while yet.

A glance out the window confirmed the sun had already set, hours prior from the look of things, and I’d been so preoccupied with comforting Isa through her grief that I hadn’t even noticed.

I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt sadness as intensely as what I’d watched her suffer through; the loss of my mother being the closest memory. I only had vague memories of loving her, brief flashes of affection in stolen moments when my father wasn’t around to witness them. I’d done everything I could to avenge her death out of the echo of that love in my life and how empty everything felt in the absence of it, but it had happened so many years ago, and I’d only been a boy. Until Isa entered my life, the kind of love that made you truly grieve when someone was gone seemed...impossible for a man like me. I wasn’t sure I would be capable of the kind of sadness I’d seen wrack Isa’s body.

Unless I lost her.

She was the one weakness that could bring me to my knees and break me, because a life without her in it would be empty all over again. Hollow, in a way I didn’t plan to ever experience. I’d die right along with her.

“You have to tell her,” Joaquin reprimanded me, giving me a stern look. I glared right back to remind him of who I was. No matter what his relationship with Isa had grown to be, he’d mind his place and do as he was told.

“Have we heard anything?” I asked instead of replying, wondering what the timeline would look like for my business in Brighton Beach. I suspected that Viktor Kuznetsov would quickly vacate his home once Pavel realized he’d taken Odina instead of Isa. “Does Pavel know yet?”

Gabriel nodded. “Pavel sent word to Alejandro, advising you to return his son to him in exchange for Isa’s sister. Alejandro was vague in his response since he didn’t know Timofey was already dead at the time. Pavel indicated that if a deal couldn’t be struck for his son’s return, then he would trade Odina for you or Isa.”

“He knows that’s never going to happen. No smart man trades his Queen for a pawn,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. Odina’s wellbeing mattered little to me aside from the pain it would cause my already broken wife.

The room went still as the sound of creaking floorboards behind me alerted me to the presence of my wife. I’d had every intention of telling Isa the truth of what I’d done, but she deserved to hear it in privacy—without an audience who knew the truth before she did.

I turned to look back at her, taking in the sight of her tired, grief-stricken face for just a moment before she spoke. “What are they talking about?” she asked, her arms crossed over her stomach. She looked so painfully small, her face pinched and exhausted despite all the sleep she’d gotten. Dark circles were under her red-rimmed eyes, her cheeks and nose blotted and pink from the crying she’d done before finally falling asleep in my arms. Her cheeks were wet, and I knew without a doubt that she’d cried when she woke up alone—that I hadn’t been there to comfort her like I should have been. The others exchanged glances, and Mariano, Anna, and Luca nodded and left the room through the other hallway. I was grateful for the reprieve and the fact that Isa would only need to be around people she knew during the final phase of her grief.

“Sit down, mi reina,” I instructed, standing from the stool and motioning for her to take it. She hesitated in the doorway, watching my face until she placed one foot in front of the other. She hadn’t moved so slowly since the day we were married, the day she walked down the aisle as though she approached her final resting place.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she perched on the edge of the stool. Placing my hands on her waist, I hefted her up onto the seat more fully and stepped between her slightly parted knees. I left enough space for her to not feel so vulnerable when I admitted the truth of what we’d done, but kept her trapped so she couldn’t run until she heard me out.

“Pavel’s son Dima mistook Odina for you and took her from the house in the middle of the shoot out,” I said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

She bit her bottom lip, tears pooling in her eyes as she nodded slowly. Her nostrils flared as she fought to suppress the emotion. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let her go off on her own.”

“No, Isa. It isn’t your fault,” I said, glancing at Gabriel over her shoulder. “It’s mine.”

“Odina isn’t your responsibility. You don’t owe her anything, but I do. She’s my sister,” she murmured softly, the guilt in her voice giving me almost a sense of relief. Even if she would hate me for the choice I’d made, at the very least I would be able to strip that guilt away from her.

Her hand grabbed mine, clenching it tightly as she tried to work her way through her plan of action. Even in her grief, Isa’s brain was always working. Always connecting the dots and searching for solutions, even if the problems weren’t hers to solve.

It was why she’d spent so much of her life making other people happy, why she’d sacrificed her childhood in favor of responsibility. Because she wanted to fix everyone else’s problems for them.

“We set her up, mi reina,” I said, giving her the truth she deserved and freeing her from the blame she’d placed on herself.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, staring up at me with rage building in her eyes. She didn’t yet understand the depths of what I’d done, but she knew me enough to understand I’d thrown her sister to the wolves.

“It was my idea,” Gabriel said, stepping closer to us. He kept his distance, his face neutral and not giving away any of the emotion I knew he must have felt. All the brothers loved Isa like a sister, and hurting her in this way wasn’t a choice they’d made lightly.

But Odina’d needed to be dealt with, and Isa needed to be safe in that bunker.

“What did you do?” she asked, sniffling back the impending tears in favor of understanding. Of getting the answers she so desperately needed.

“I drugged her and put her in your clothes,” Gabriel answered, glancing at Joaquin who nodded even though his face pinched with the ire he knew Isa would give him. “Then Joaquin led her out, pretending to be trying to escape the fire. She couldn’t speak to warn Dima that she was the wrong sister because of the drugs.”

“And then what?” she asked, turning her tightly pinched face until she stared Joaquin in the eye. “You just handed her over and they believed that?”

“They shot me,” Joaquin said, tugging down the collar of his shirt to show the bruise from where the vest had caught the bullet meant for his heart, “and took Odina while I lay ‘bleeding’ on the ground.”

“They could have shot you,” Isa murmured, her voice twisting with anger.

“They did—”

“No! They could have really shot you! What the fuck were you thinking?” she asked, glaring at him as if endangering himself was a personal offense to her.

“Mi reina—” he started.

“Do not mi reina me. I forbid you from ever doing something so stupid ever again. Do you understand me?” she asked, her voice trailing off into a whisper as her bottom lip trembled. “My mother is dead. Odina is gone, and even if she’s a complete shit, she’s still my twin. Doesn’t it matter to you what it would do to me to lose you too? Please don’t make me lose someone else I love.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re not what? My family? If you truly believe that then you haven’t been paying attention,” she whispered, her voice trailing off.

“It’s my job to keep you safe,” Joaquin explained, his expression and voice softening with emotion as he stared at her. I’d never heard Isa speak of her bond with the brothers, of the relationship that had somehow survived the betrayal they’d dealt her over the months and grown stronger during her time at my side.

They grounded her. Gave her someone to love and spend her time with, aside from me, and as much as I hated knowing that there were other people who demanded her attention, I acknowledged the fact that Isa thrived on having people to love.

Even when those relationships were odd.

“Then you should have been in the bunker with me, not playing games with my sister’s life,” she said flatly.

“Using Odina as a decoy was necessary to end the fight quicker. It made them think they’d won, and it gave us the ability to get you off the property and to the airplane without risking you being trapped in the bunker with Hugo indefinitely. You needed a doctor as soon as we could manage it,” I explained, touching her cheek and drawing her attention back to me. I didn’t like the jealousy I felt over seeing her so bothered by another man’s theoretical death.

“It was unnecessary. You couldn’t have waited for help? You expect me to believe Matteo wouldn’t have lent a hand?”

“That takes time, mi reina,” I said, my voice trailing into a warning growl. “In the meantime, my men were dying. I owe Odina nothing, but I owe them my loyalty. I will always do what I must to protect you and to protect my people. Sacrificing your pandeja of a sister to save countless lives was no sacrifice at all considering what she’s done to you.”

Isa went silent, sliding her eyes to the floor as she processed my words. She must’ve known there was truth to them, but it was difficult for people like Isa to grasp the reality of the greater good.

One life did not justify a dozen deaths.

Mariano poked his head into the room, sympathy in his gaze as he locked eyes with Isa momentarily and then looked at me. “My men are suited up and ready to go whenever you are.”

“Where are we going?” Isa asked, giving me her eyes once more.

Cupping her cheek in my hand, I leaned down to kiss her forehead. I hated to leave her, even knowing she wouldn’t be alone. The fact that she was so willing to allow me to touch her despite her anger over the choice I’d made spoke to just how affected she was by what had happened to her parents. “You aren’t going anywhere. You’re going to stay here with Joaquin and Hugo. I have to do something in Brighton Beach.”

“You can’t just leave me here,” she protested, shaking her head from side to side. The wide depth of her gaze made me wish that I could send someone else to deal with Viktor. That I could spend the rest of the night curled up in bed with her and doing what I could to distract her from the reminder of her loss.

“I’ll be back soon.”

“What’s so important that you have to rush off in the middle of the night?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow in that way that she did when she knew I was up to no good, and that she would never approve of my plans.

“Killing Viktor Kuznetsov,” I said.

“His brother has my sister, Rafael,” Isa returned, pulling away from me as much as she could. She erected a wall between us, separating herself from me as much as she could, given our proximity, and shutting me out of her emotions as her tear-stained face went blank.

“I won’t negotiate to get her back,” I answered, placing a finger under her chin and tilting her face up until I could lean forward and brush my lips against hers tenderly. “My plans move forward regardless.”

“But it's your fault they have her in the first place!”

“Te amo, mi reina. But I think you’ve mistaken me for someone who gives a shit about what happens to her. She doesn’t deserve your care or protection. Let her go,” I said, placing one last kiss on her startled lips. “I’ll be back soon.”

Nodding to the brothers, I followed Mariano out into the hallway to go join his men. Gabriel trailed at my heels. His abilities with tech equipment and disarming alarm systems would come in useful when we broke into Viktor’s home while he slept.

We were nearing the end of my list of Kuznetsov scum to wipe from the earth, and nothing would derail those plans or my mission to make sure Isa was safe.