Page 50 of Jetmir

I shook my head. “They’ll always be kids to me.”

“I know. Me too.” He skimmed his knuckles down my cheek. “We’re getting old.”

“I suppose, although you’re getting more and more handsome with age.” I stared up at this man who was everything to me—my husband, my lover, and my savior. His brows dipped as he cupped my face with his large palm. “Is something the matter?”

It took all my inner strength not to let the emotions smother me, nor the images I’d managed to keep in check for so long.

“I think we have a problem.”

“Such as?”

“Anya… she’s not happy. And her ex-husband…”

His expression darkened. “He is nothing to her.”

“Your detest for him… is it because of me?”

He went still, his muscles tightening against my hold. “What do you mean?”

“Raphael, I know you see Santiago in him. I’m worried that we took Anya’s chance at happiness.”

Raphael wrapped me in his arms and picked me up, ferrying me to the sofa where he sat down, placing me on his lap. He stroked my cheek soothingly while his other hand wrapped around me in a tight hug,

“That boy fucked up and lost the chance to have Anya, not us. Good riddance to the Volkov-Tijuana lineage. Now that he’s permanently out of our lives, Anya will move on. Just wait and see.”

I dug my fingers into his shirt and stared up at him with blurry eyes.

“I’m not so sure, Raphael. She… changed.” I sighed heavily. “I don’t know how it was possible for her to fall for him so fast and marry him. I always thought…”

I trailed off because there was no sense in revisiting the past and the wedding of our daughter we missed.

“It’s all that boy’s fault,” he grumbled. “If he’d kept his distance, none of it would have happened and my wife would be happy.”

He didn’t like that his baby girl had grown wings and almost left us. Yes, it was with the boy from a family we had qualms with, but the fact remained: she was her own person—a young woman searching for happiness.

“I want to kill that bastard. He dared to touch my baby daughter,” Raphael growled, watching me with so much love. “He isn’t good enough to walk this earth.”

“But what if she loved him?” I questioned. “Or even worse, still does?”

“A few years down the line, she won’t even remember him.”

I wasn’t so sure. I feared that whatever had happened between that boy and Anya had changed my baby girl forever. Would we ever get the old Anya back?

“He grew up around different men. He wasn’t embedded in the Tijuana Cartel. Maybe he’s not as cruel as they were.” I shuddered recalling the torture I endured under his father. “Besides, it’s not his fault who his parents are,” I murmured. “We don’t even know him, really, and Anya has never shared anything about her time with him.”

His expression darkened. He despised talking about Jetmir. “I should at least get to beat the crap out of him.”

“Raphael, absolutely not. Promise me.”

He let out a grumble. “Fine, fine. I promise. But only because I love you so much.”

“I love you too, my diablo.” I took his chin between my fingers. “I wish… Oh, I don’t know. I feel like we should talk to Anya and explain our reservations about aligning our family with his.”

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” he offered.

I shook my head. “No, it should be a mother-daughter talk. It’s long overdue.”

He gazed at me with so much care I could have drowned in it. “Will you be okay?”