20. Chapter 20 #2
Rafael staggered, and I grabbed for him.
“Rafael!”
His hand closed around my arm with surprising strength.
“Stay behind the truck.”
“But, but you’ve been shot.”
Even bleeding, he shoved me closer to the side of the truck, and I stumbled.
Lachlan caught Rafael around the upper body just as his knees gave out.
Together they moved along the narrow space between the truck and the retaining wall until they reached the cab, out of the direct line of fire.
Rafael sagged against Lachlan.
“Easy,” Lachlan said in a low voice.
I was already dropping to my knees as Lachlan lowered Rafael onto the concrete near the service door, keeping us behind the truck’s cover. The single key hanging from a short leather strap slipped from his hand and clattered onto the concrete.
The truck blocked most of the courtyard from view, as gunfire and shouted orders continued on the other side.
Lachlan checked the courtyard past the front of the truck, then returned and knelt on Rafael’s other side with his gun at the ready.
The door we had spent all those hours plotting to escape through was close enough for me to touch.
But blood was pouring through Rafael’s shirt.
“No. No, no, no.”
I pressed both hands against the wound, and hot blood seeped between my fingers.
“Rafael, hang on. We’ll get you help.”
He quickly assessed the wound, his mouth forming a hard line.
I saw the answer on Lachlan’s face.
“Please, no. Don’t you dare leave me.”
Rafael’s eyelids fluttered.
His face had gone gray.
I pressed harder, determined to do something—anything.
“Rafael, look at me.”
He opened his eyes.
“Mi nina.”
“I’m here.” My voice broke. “I’m right here.”
His hand moved to my forearm, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. I kept my palms pressed against the wound.
“Go.”
“No.”
“Isabella, you must.”
“No.” More blood slipped between my fingers. “We can get you out. Lachlan can help me carry you. We can—”
“Mouse.”
Lachlan’s voice was low beside me.
I glanced up at him.
He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to because the set of his mouth told me I had no choice.
I shook my head.
“I can’t leave him.”
“Go, mi nina, my daughter.”
A sob caught somewhere behind my ribs.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“My daughter,” he said again.
He drew a shallow breath that ended in a wet cough.
He’d always called me mi nina, but never daughter—my heart stuttered.
“Daughter?” I asked in confusion.
“Yes.” His voice was barely more than air. “My daughter. Truly.”
I didn’t understand.
The courtyard disappeared.
The gunfire.
The shouting.
Even the blood beneath my hands blurred.
“What? I don’t understand.”
Rafael swallowed.
“Ciro was never your father.”
The words made no sense, and all I could do was stare at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“I am your father.”
My pulse raced as the edges of my vision began to darken. A hundred thoughts and questions came at once, leaving me unable to ask any of them.
“No,” I gasped.
Not denial, not exactly, just the only word I had.
“You are my daughter.”
My lower lip trembled as the realization washed over me.
Lachlan went completely still. His eyes met mine, and the grief on his face hit almost as hard as the word daughter. He knew what I was being given and what I was about to lose.
I turned back to the man who had always been there, only now understanding who he had really been to me.
“You’re going to be okay. We can talk about this once we get you out of here. To a hospital.” My breath caught. “I’ll—I’ll—”
“Isabella—”
“When we’re out of here, you can tell me.” I could barely get the words out. “About you. About Mamá. Everything.”
His fingers tightened around my wrist.
“I need you to hear me now.”
His expression was so gentle it hurt.
And I knew. I knew he was telling me now because there would be no later.
The truth of this horrible moment tore my heart open. I couldn’t escape the fact that there was no way to save him.
My hands went still against his shirt.
Rafael lifted his hand from my wrist and touched my cheek.
“There is no Delgado blood in you.”
For twenty-five years, that name had lived inside me like a sentence already passed.
His temper, his cruelty, his appetites—every ugly thing I had ever known about the man had come with the private fear that some piece of it might be waiting inside me too.
I’d spent years telling myself blood didn’t decide what kind of person I became.
Relief hit so hard it hurt.
Then guilt followed because Rafael was dying beneath my hands.
I wasn’t Ciro Delgado’s daughter.
I was—
I looked at Rafael.
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
The word came without hesitation.
I made a broken sound.
Rafael’s thumb brushed beneath my eye.
“Your mother loved you before you ever took your first breath.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks.
“She loved me too.” He smiled softly.
Rafael’s gaze drifted for one second, not toward the courtyard but somewhere much farther away.
“Ciro controlled where she slept. Where she went. What name she carried.” His breathing hitched. “He never owned her heart.”
I thought of my mother standing at the bedroom window. Of her stories about Eslovenya. And the way sadness sometimes came over her when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“She loved you.”
Rafael nodded once. “We loved each other.”
Tears blurred him.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because Ciro would have killed you.”
I hated the truth of it.
“He would have killed your mother. Me. You. The moment he learned.”
I knew Ciro well enough not to doubt it.
Rafael’s hand slid from my cheek and closed over mine.
“The lie kept you alive. It was the only way, mi nina.”
I bent over him.
“All these years, you kept me safe.”
“All of them.” He swallowed hard. “Ciro thought I guarded what belonged to him. No—I was protecting my own daughter all along.”
A sob escaped me. Suddenly, memories I had spent my life filing under Rafael changed shape.
His hand on the back of my head when I was small.
The quiet mi nina he’d called me for as long as I could remember.
The way he’d looked at me after the guy I trusted forced himself on me. I had believed he was making an example for Ciro’s household.
Instead, he had been a father avenging his daughter.
Another memory hit harder.
I had been thirteen and locked in my new room over the dungeon after my mother died, crying so hard I could barely breathe. Ciro had ordered everyone to leave me alone because he was tired of hearing it.
Rafael hadn’t.
Sometime after dark, the back of my wardrobe had moved.
I still remembered staring at it through swollen eyes as he stepped through an opening I hadn’t known existed.
He’d put one finger to his lips.
“Quiet, mi nina.”
That was the night he showed me the hidden passage.
After that, it became our most guarded secret.