Yet all too soon she severs contact. “Please,” she rasps, the plea for honesty not seduction. “I love you, Raffael. But I need you to tell me.”
Love?
The declaration strikes like a branding iron, burning into my soul, demanding I confess in return.
“Please,” she repeats.
She’s drowning in uncertainty and I’m the one holding her underwater. Lengthening her suffering.
The need to do right by her grows rampant, the truth clawing for freedom faster than I can beat it back.
We could’ve been flawless together. In another life. Without legacy, debt, and the secret that’s about to ruin it all.
“You’re under the impression you were imprisoned by the men who boarded the yacht.” I force the words out slowly, indulging in one last glimpse of civility. “That’s not the case.”
She stands taller, as if bracing for impact. “If not them, then who?”
“It was one man, Isla. And he didn’t work for my father.”
Her breath catches, the fear of the unknown blinking back at me. “Tell me.”
I stand my ground, ashamed, fucking resentful. “It was Eliseo. My brother did this to you.”
Chapter
Thirty-Three
ISLA
“Eliseo?”His name chokes from my mouth as I relive what I went through, seeing it in a new light… The interrogation… The same question over and over…Wait. “Were you involved?”
“No.” Raffael’s answer is emphatic. “I had no fucking idea, Isla. I swear.”
I inch away, hearing his truth, seeing it. But I don’tfeelit. What consumes me is dissonance, tearing and tugging, while paranoia gnaws through what’s left of my composure.
That’swhy the cops haven’t been called. Why Raffael didn’t want me talking to Quinn.
I swallow over the acrid lump in my throat. “You were stalling. You didn’t want me to know.”
He approaches. “What I wanted was for you to have time to get over what you’d been through before I added more?—”
“Stop.” I raise my hands, trying to ward him off. “He choked me with pepper gas.”
Raffael’s nostrils flare. “He told me.”
“Hesedatedme.Undressedme while unconscious.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides. “I’m aware.”
“And at the time you had no clue what was happening?”
He squares his shoulders, his once effortless confidence now seeming forced. “I was oblivious. I’d been too caught up trying to forget how I felt about you to see what was going on right in front of me. I’ll never forgive myself for not noticing the signs.”
Humiliation crawls under my skin. “And I’ll never forgive you for the lengths you’ll go to in an effort to save him.”
“What—”
“‘I can’t live without you’?” I repeat what he’d said. “‘I want us to be together’?” Every tender word curdles in my mind, recontextualized, weaponized, rewritten as strategy instead of sincerity. “The moment your brother’s future is in my hands, suddenly you backflip on our ability to be together?”
