Chapter 27 Twenty-Six
It’d been eight hours since Rafael had nearly bled out in the snow, and I still wasn’t sure he was going to live.
The plane ride blurred together. Diego had gotten the bleeding to stop, but Rafael's face remained gray and still, his breathing shallow. The two-and-a-half-hour plane ride stretched into forever.
Then there was the scramble to get him into Diego's truck, the drive through the Seattle rain to this safe house.
Diego's aunt Florica had met us at the door without questions, her son Andrei already waiting.
The unlicensed field surgeon had taken one look at Rafael and disappeared upstairs with him.
That had been four hours ago. Four hours without knowing whether Rafael was alive or dead.
Now I paced Diego's aunt's living room while strong coffee and rain coated the back of my throat, mixing with the copper tang of dried blood still under my fingernails.
I couldn't stop moving. Window to archway to window again, my boots tracking dirt across worn hardwood that creaked in the same spots every time.
Rain hammered the windows. Gray light filtered through lace curtains that probably belonged to someone's grandmother.
Outside on the porch, Jasper lit another cigarette, his third since we'd arrived.
Maybe his fourth. His eyes kept cutting to the corner of the room where Eight crouched over wooden blocks.
The girl stacked them one by one. Then she'd reach the top and her fist would come down, scattering pieces across the floor in one violent sweep.
Stack. Destroy. Stack. Destroy.
I knew that pattern. I'd lived it.
Diego's relatives drifted through the house speaking rapid Spanish I couldn't follow.
Florica had gray hair and broad shoulders and hadn't asked a single question when we'd shown up covered in blood with eight sedated children.
Andrei was upstairs right now with Rafael, doing things I couldn't let myself think about.
"Eat something."
Diego materialized beside me with a plate of bread and cheese. My stomach turned over.
"No."
"Lorenzo—"
"I said no."
He set the plate down anyway, squeezing it between embroidered pillows and framed family photos on the cluttered coffee table.
Icons stared down from the walls, dark-eyed saints in gold leaf watching my spiral.
A crocheted blanket in deep reds draped over the couch.
Everything in this house was warm, lived-in, and safe.
Rafael was upstairs dying, and these people had crocheted blankets.
"He's going to be okay," Diego said.
My jaw ached from clenching my teeth. I took three steps from the window to the archway, turned, then took six steps back. The loose floorboard by the window groaned under my weight.
"You don't know that."
"Andrei is good. Best field surgeon I know."
"His face was torn open." The words tasted like ash. "There was so much blood. I couldn't—"
Diego's mouth opened, then closed.
In the corner, Eight's tower went up again, block by block, her blonde hair falling in her face. The number eight on her shoulder blade showed through the borrowed t-shirt someone had given her. It was too big. She was nine years old, and someone had tattooed a number on her like cattle.
Her fist came down. Blocks scattered. One hit the wall with a sharp crack.
Jasper's glare could have melted steel.
I'd lost count of how many loops I'd made. The floorboards betrayed me every time, creaking at the window and groaning by the archway. Back and forth. Back and forth. If I stopped moving, I’d have to scream.
Andrei appeared in the archway with a blood-stained towel in his hands. His glasses had fallen down his nose, but he looked too tired to notice. The towel was soaked red. Too much red. He kept wiping his hands, scrubbing between his fingers like he could wash away what he'd just done upstairs.
"Well?" I demanded.
Andrei looked at me. His hands kept moving, kept wiping, and the silence stretched until I couldn't breathe.
"He's alive."
The floor dropped out from under me. My hand shot out, gripping the back of the couch so hard the wood frame dug into my palm. Alive! Rafael was alive.
"Barely." Andrei tossed the towel into the trash. "We gave him donor blood. Two units. He'll be weak for a while. Needs time to recover."
"But he's alive." I needed to hear it again, needed the words to be real.
"Yes." Andrei's expression remained neutral. "The eye is gone. The damage was too extensive. I did what I could to clean the wound, prevent infection, but there's no saving it."
"Can I see him?"
Andrei frowned. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. He’s resting. The damage was extensive. He might not want you to see him like this.”
"I don't give a fuck." The words came out sharp enough to cut. "Can I see him or not?"
Andrei's jaw worked, but he gave a short nod. "He's sedated. Won't wake for hours. Maybe not until morning."
I was already moving. My boots hit the stairs hard, taking them two at a time.
The second floor was quieter, darker, the only sound rain drumming against windows in a steady rhythm that matched my pulse.
Three doors lined the hallway. Rafael's was half-open with warm light spilling out into the shadows.
I stopped in the doorway, and my breath caught.
Rafael lay on a narrow bed against the far wall, so pale he was barely recognizable.
White bandages covered half his face, wrapped around his head in layers of gauze that Andrei had secured with surgical tape.
His right eye was closed, lashes dark against bloodless skin. The left side was hidden completely.
An IV line ran from his arm to a bag hanging on a makeshift stand. The clear fluid dripped steadily, each drop marking time I couldn't get back.
I crossed the room on legs that didn't feel like mine and sank into the chair someone had placed beside the bed. I took Rafael's hand. His fingers were cold and limp against my palm.
"I'm sorry." The words were useless, empty. "God, I'm so sorry."
Rafael didn't move. The sedatives kept him under, away from the pain that would come when he woke up and realized what he'd lost.
Because of me.
I squeezed his hand, careful not to press too hard, and tried to remember how to breathe.
"Florica sent coffee." Diego said from the doorway. He moved into the room and set a chipped mug on the small table beside the bed. The smell of it was strong, bitter, mixed with something sweet I couldn't identify. "And flaó. Cheese pastry. She says you need to eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"I know." Diego pulled over a second chair and dropped into it with a sigh. "She'll come up here herself if you don't at least try. Trust me, you don't want that. She's scarier than Jasper when she's determined."
I said nothing. My thumb moved over Rafael's knuckles.
Diego was quiet for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight.
"My bunica—my grandmother—used to tell me stories about the war. She was just a girl when the Nazis came, maybe twelve, living with the Kalderash kumpania that moved through Spain and Southern France."
I didn't look at him, but I was listening.
"Her father was a smuggler. Moved goods across borders, helped people disappear.
When the Nazis started rounding up Jews, he didn't stop.
Neither did she." Diego's hands moved as he talked, painting pictures in the air.
"They hid people in wagons, moved them at night through mountain passes the Nazis didn't know existed.
My grandmother was small and fast. Could slip through checkpoints, carry messages, scout routes. "
Rain continued its steady drum against the windows. I watched Rafael's chest rise and fall, each breath a small miracle.
"She saved seventy-three people," Diego continued. "She kept count by carving notches into a wooden box my great-grandfather made. When she died, she left it to my mother, and my mother left it to me."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked quietly.
Diego was quiet for a beat. "Because helping people run is in my blood.
My grandmother did it. My parents did it during Franco's regime, smuggling dissidents and revolutionaries out of Spain when the regime wanted them dead.
My father's family—they go back to medieval merchant castes, people who knew how to move goods and bodies across borders when borders meant death.
" He paused. "And my mother's people, the Romani, we've always been smugglers and storytellers. It's what we do. It's what I do."
I turned to look at him. Diego met my eyes, his hands relaxed on his knees.
"I can get you out," he said quietly. "Both of you.
New identities, new life. The Kalderash have connections everywhere—Eastern Europe, South America, places Constantine will never find you.
You could disappear. Really disappear. Rafael could heal somewhere safe, somewhere quiet. You could both just... stop."
Stop. The word hung in the air between us like a promise I couldn't take.
"You've done enough, Lorenzo. You saved those kids. You've bled for this. Let me do what my family does best. Let me get you somewhere Constantine can't touch you."
I looked back at Rafael, at the bandages covering half his face, at the IV drip keeping him stable. We could run. Diego would make it happen. We could disappear into some small town where no one knew our names, where Rafael could recover and we could pretend to be normal people living normal lives.
Together.
But I wasn't normal. Neither was Rafael.
"No," I said.
Diego sighed. He'd expected that answer. “You intend to see it through, then.”
I nodded and squeezed Rafael's hand. "We did the Alaska mission. Earned Hades's seal. Once we collect it, we'll have everything we need to formally challenge Constantine to trial by combat."
"And if you lose?"