I clawed at his wrist, silent and defiant even as my lungs burned.
Suddenly he released me.
I stumbled back, gasping and coughing violently.
I had never heard Rafael unravel like this.
“Stop running your mouth about things you know nothing about!” he roared. “Or I’ll make sure you never open that mouth again.
This was the first time he had ever been this vicious with me.
But I was past caring. “Fuck you, Rafael!” I screamed back, voice raw. “Fuck you a thousand times, you son of a bitch!”
His breathing was ragged.
“You’ve gone too far, Loretta,” Rafael snarled.
“No one speaks to me like that. No one makes reckless assumptions about Zara. Keep running that reckless mouth and I’ll make you regret it.”
“What can you do?” I challenged. “Shoot me? Kill me? I’m only asking—if you never loved Zara, why do you still hold her in such high esteem? Why does her name turn you into this?”
“You’re not entitled to anything from me—least of all my past. Stay in your lane before I remind you exactly who owns you now.” He bit out coldly.
I let out a sharp, bitter laugh.
“Tell me—did she die trying to escape your suffocating control? Or did you finally grow bored of your precious trophy wife and put a bullet in her yourself? Is that why you guard her memory like a dirty secret? Because even you know you destroyed her?”
“Ramiro!” he barked.
I heard Ramiro’s heavy footsteps approaching.
“I have no more compassion left for a woman who keeps spitting on Zara’s name,” Rafael snarled, his voice dropping into something feral and deadly.
“I warned you. Now you’re going to learn exactly how sacred she was to me.”
“Force her to kneel.” He ordered Ramiro. “Let the snow fall on her all night if needed. Soak her to the bone. Break that defiant spirit. She gets nothing— no fire, no blanket, no comfort—until she feels the full cost of spitting on Zara’s name.”
“And she will not rise,” he added, each word clipped and final, “until she begs Zara’s forgiveness. Until she understands the gravity of what she’s defiled.”
Before I could protest, Ramiro’s strong hands clamped onto my shoulders.
I twisted and fought, but he was far too powerful.
He forced me down. My knees slammed into the hard ground with a sickening thud, the impact shooting white-hot pain through my bones.
Almost immediately, the sky opened.
The first heavy flakes hit like icy needles, stinging my cheeks and exposed neck.
I clenched my jaw, enduring it.
I can take this, I told myself.
More snow came—sharp, relentless, piling on my shoulders and soaking through my clothes.
The cold bit deep, but I stayed silent, trembling with rage more than fear.
Then it grew heavier.
