17. Chapter 17 #2
“Thank you.”
I took them, then reached for a couple of water bottles sitting near the end of the counter.
A scream tore through the compound, deep, ragged, and full of agony.
The sound cut through walls, conversation, and the clatter of the kitchen.
Not an angry shout.
Pain.
My heart lurched into my throat.
Every person in the room froze.
A knife stopped halfway through a tomato.
Marta’s hand went still against the counter.
One of the guards near the door lifted his head and listened.
The dungeon was on the other side of the compound, yet his scream had carried all the way here.
Then the guard looked away.
The knife came down.
Someone opened a cabinet.
The kitchen started moving again as if nothing had happened.
As though a man screaming beneath the house was no more remarkable than a dog barking outside.
Something inside me flared.
I tightened my fingers around the bottles and food and walked out.
I had to walk, not run.
I had to keep my face composed and pretend the sound hadn’t nearly ripped me apart.
Then came another strangled scream.
My stride broke. I caught myself, dug my nails into the packets of food, and kept moving, every step making me angrier.
By the time I reached my room, I was barely holding myself together.
I slammed the door shut, crossed to the vanity, and dropped the water and food on the surface hard enough to rattle Mother’s perfume bottles.
“Damn it.”
I stomped toward the bed, turned before I reached it, and crossed the room again. My teeth caught the edge of my thumbnail while my mind raced through everything I could do and every reason I couldn’t do any of it.
Another turn.
Another trip across the room.
“I can’t just stand here.”
Something struck below with a hard, ugly crack that carried through the floor.
I stopped dead.
Then Lachlan screamed again.
“No!”
I couldn’t pace in this room and tell myself patience was intelligence while Marcela destroyed him beneath my feet.
I’d spent my entire life waiting.
Waiting for Father to loosen his grip.
Waiting for someone to make a mistake.
Waiting had kept me alive.
It had also kept me here.
A groan rose from below.
“Fuck this!”
I turned toward the door.
I needed the guards away from the cellar.
I needed noise.
Smoke.
Panic.
Something big enough to make everyone move.
Fire!
The idea hit, and that was all it took to send me into motion.
Not a plan, but an answer.
I ran from my room and headed back to the kitchen.
A servant stepped aside when she saw me coming.
Another called my name.
I ignored her.
Father kept his expensive liquor near the veranda in the smoking lounge, where men sat with cigars and talked as though they were important.
I went straight to the cabinet.
One bottle.
Then another.
I didn’t bother reading the labels.
I grabbed the heavy cigar lighter from the table beside a crystal ashtray.
Someone behind me called out, “Senorita?”
I kept moving.
By then, I must have looked half-crazed.
Nothing like the quiet daughter everyone expected to move calmly through the house and ask permission before taking up space.
I was almost to the kitchen when Rafael stepped into my path.
“Isabella.”
“Move.”
His eyes dropped to the bottles and the lighter in my hands.
“What are you doing?”
“I said move.”
He caught my arm, but I jerked away.
“Let go of me.”
“Lower your voice.”
“No.”
I tried to go around him.
He blocked me again.
Rage exploded through me so fast I barely recognized my own voice.
“I’m going to burn this fucking place down.”
Rafael moved instantly.
One arm wrapped around me from behind and pinned my arms against my body. His other hand covered my mouth before I could shout again.
I fought him.
A bottle knocked against his forearm.
“Mi nina,” he said quietly beside my ear. “Stop.”
I kicked backward.
He tightened his hold just enough to keep me from breaking free.
“Stop fighting me.”
I screamed against his palm.
“I know,” he murmured. “I know. But you cannot say those things where anyone can hear you.”
I twisted again.
“Isabella. Please.”
Something in his voice finally got through.
Not command.
Fear.
For me.
He waited until I stopped struggling, then pulled me into a small service room off the corridor and kicked the door shut behind us.
Only then did he remove his hand from my mouth.
I spun on him.
“They’re killing him.”
“No. Just working him over.”
“You said you would keep them from—”
“I said I would do what I could.”
“He’s screaming.”
“I know.”
“I can’t keep listening to it.”
Rafael reached for the bottles.
I pulled them away.
“Don’t.”
“Give them to me, Isabella.”
“I can get the guards out of the cellar. If there’s enough smoke, everyone will have to move. I can get to him.”
His brows lifted as the pieces came together. “Or they lock down the lower level.”
I stared at him.
“They could seal the cellar instead of abandoning it,” he continued. “Someone could find the hidden passage while trying to contain the fire.”
“I don’t care about the house.”
“I know you don’t.”
“Then let me go.”
His expression hardened.
“And if the fire reaches the cellar before you can get him out?”
I said nothing.
Rafael stepped closer.
The fury inside me faltered.
He took one bottle from my hand.
Then the other.
I let him.
His voice dropped. “Isabella, if that fire reaches the dungeon before you do, you could be the one who kills Lachlan.”
The last of my anger collapsed.
For one horrible second, I saw it.
Smoke pouring into the dungeon. The door locked. Lachlan still cuffed to that chair while flames spread through the house.
“No.”
The word barely came out.
Rafael took the lighter from my hand.
“What the hell am I supposed to do, then?” My voice cracked as tears burned my eyes.
I hated that.
I hated all of this.
Another groan carried faintly through the walls.
I covered my ears.
“I can’t keep listening to this.”
“Isabella—”
“I can’t.”
Rafael set the bottles and lighter on a shelf and reached for me, but I backed away.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard someone screaming beneath my floor, knowing they’re going to die down there?”
His face went still in that way it did when something worried him.
“I don’t know their names. They were all people Father decided had betrayed him. Men who owed him money. Men who knew something he wanted. Sometimes even women.”
My breath hitched.
“I’ve lain in bed and told myself there was nothing I could do. Because there wasn’t. I was a child. Then I wasn’t a child anymore, but there were still guards and locked doors and men with guns, so I kept telling myself the same thing.”
Rafael came closer.
I shook my head.
“Every time someone screamed, I lost another little piece of whatever made me believe people could be good.”
“Mi nina.”
“I learned to sleep through it.”
That admission cut me to the core.
“I learned how to eat breakfast the next morning while everyone acted as if nothing had happened. I learned which sounds meant someone was being beaten and which meant Father had brought out something worse. I learned to wait until it stopped.”
Tears blurred Rafael’s face.
“I hate all of this.”
He reached for me again.
This time I didn’t move away.
“I told myself surviving was enough.” I wiped angrily at my face. “For years, that was the answer to everything. Stay quiet and survive.”
Rafael’s expression tightened.
“And I did. I survived.” My voice broke. “I’m just tired of survival being the only thing I get.”
I sniffed, trying to breathe.
“I’m—I’m still here,” I said, stumbling over the words.
He pulled me against him.
The second his arms closed around me, whatever control I had left disappeared.
I cried into his chest.
I clutched the front of his shirt and cried until breathing became difficult, while he held the back of my head and let me fall apart.
“I’m so tired,” I said against him. “I’m tired of this place. I’m tired of Father. I’m tired of hearing people hurt and pretending I can live with it because I’m lucky enough not to be the one downstairs.”
He hugged me a little tighter.
“You should’ve grown up somewhere beautiful and safe, spoiled by your mother and surrounded by people who loved you. Not here. You should’ve been raised like the princess you are, not taught to measure your good fortune by whether someone else was being tortured instead of you.”
“There have been times I’ve thought about killing myself, Rafael.”
He went completely still.
“What?”
“I have. I’ve thought about it a lot.”
He pulled back enough to look at my face.
“Isabella.”
“I’m not saying I want to now.”
His face had gone gray with shock.
“But before Lachlan came…” I swallowed. “Sometimes dying seemed like the only door Father couldn’t lock.”
Rafael shut his eyes.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then his hands cupped my face.
“No. Never that. Please, mi nina, never think that way again.”
His voice was rough.
“You should never have been left alone. The death of—”
“I wasn’t always alone. I had you.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“You couldn’t be with me every second.”
“I should have known the depth of your sadness. Done more. Something.”
“How?”
He swallowed hard, his eyes turning glassy.
“I just should have.”
“Rafael, you couldn’t read my mind. There was nothing you could do against Father except get yourself killed.”
“I promised your mother I would protect you.”
“You did.”
“Not from wanting to kill yourself, though.”
His face twisted with pain and self-recrimination, his jaw tightening as though he were already punishing himself for not having seen it. I reached for his wrist.
“I won’t do it. I promise.”
He blinked back the unshed tears.
“I’m still here.”
“Thank God.”
His forehead touched mine for a moment.
I closed my eyes.
“Now Lachlan is here too.”
Rafael drew back slightly.
“He’s given you hope.”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly to pretend otherwise.
“And now you’re afraid for him.”