20. Chapter 20 #3
Rafael never came often enough to raise anyone’s suspicions, and when he did, he was careful.
Always quiet. He would slip through the wardrobe with a book or something small he thought might make me smile, then sit with me while I read or would tell me stories until I forgot for a little while how empty my life felt without my mother.
There had been stories about him growing up, trouble he’d gotten into as a boy, and one ridiculous goat that had eaten half his mother’s washing from the line.
I’d thought he was keeping me company because he’d promised my mother he would take care of me.
But he had been grieving her too.
And every time he risked slipping through that passage to bring me a treat, make me laugh, or sit beside me when I was lonely, he hadn’t been acting as my mother’s loyal protector.
He had been finding the only safe way he could to be my father.
“Oh, God.” I leaned closer.
“You were always there.”
“As much as I could be.”
His breathing shuddered.
“I could not give you my name. Could not call you mine where anyone could hear.” His eyes closed for a moment. “But I knew every birthday. Every fever. Every book you hid beneath your blankets.”
A laugh broke through my crying.
“You knew about those?”
“I gave you half of them.”
I studied his face, suddenly terrified of forgetting any part of it.
He managed the smallest smile.
“You have your mother’s mind.”
I shook my head, crying harder.
“Her courage too.”
His fingers tightened weakly around my hand.
“You and your mother were the loves of my life.”
I couldn’t breathe.
He looked at me as though there was nothing else in the courtyard.
“Being your father was the greatest honor of my life.”
I stared at him through my tears, not knowing how to fit twenty-five years of love into an answer.
“You were the only man who never demanded anything from me. The man who’d spent twenty-five years loving me without being allowed to say the words that would have gotten us both killed. You gave me the greatest gift anyone ever could.”
His brow pulled together faintly.
I cupped his cheek with one bloody hand.
“I’m not his daughter.” My voice shook.
“I’m yours.”
Rafael closed his eyes, and a tear slipped from beneath one lid.
“Sí.”
“Papá.”
His eyes fluttered open again. He smiled—barely, but enough for me to see what hearing the word meant to him.
I kissed his cheek.
“Oh, Papá.”
His hand came up behind my head, weak but still warm.
“Te amo,” he whispered.
My voice cracked.
“Te amo, Papá.”
His mouth trembled.
“Te amo, mi nina.”
I pressed my forehead to his and tried to hold him there by force, as though loving him now could make up for all the years we’d lost.
As though calling him Papá enough times could make death wait.
Papá’s hand slipped from my hair and reached past me toward Lachlan.
Lachlan understood and moved closer.
Papá closed his hand around the back of Lachlan’s neck and pulled him down.
“I’ve kept her safe from these monsters.”
Rafael paused, struggling to breathe.
“Now you’re honor-bound to keep her safe from yours.”
Lachlan’s answer came firm and immediate.
“On my life, she’s safe.”
Rafael studied him for several seconds.
Whatever he saw was enough, and he loosened his grip.
Lachlan caught his hand before it fell.
Papá’s eyes returned to mine one last time.
“My daughter.”
“I’m here.”
His chest rose.
Barely.
“Papá.”
The breath left him.
It didn’t come back.
I waited anyway.
One second.
Two.
Three.
“Papá?”
Nothing.
I bent over him, burying my face against his shoulder as my fingers knotted in his shirt. For a few seconds, nothing else existed.
“I can’t leave him here,” I murmured.
Lachlan didn’t speak—didn’t tell me we had no choice. Instead, he placed one hand firmly against my back and gave me the few seconds Papá had died to buy us this moment.
A shot cracked somewhere across the courtyard. Lachlan’s hand left my back, and he was on his feet in a heartbeat, angling between me and the sound with Ciro’s pistol raised.
“Stay down.”
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and followed the direction of his gun.
Movement came from the other side of the cab.
Lachlan’s pistol snapped toward it at the same time a rifle barrel appeared around the front of the cab, already aimed at me.
Lachlan stopped.
The man holding it stepped into view.
Mateo appeared behind him with his pistol trained on Lachlan.
Then Marcela stepped into view.
Blood still stained the front of her white blouse, and there was something almost feverish in the way she stared at us.
My stomach twisted.
They hadn’t come across the open courtyard. They’d come up the service road from below, using the truck to hide their approach.
How long had they been standing on the other side?
The guard kept his rifle on me. Mateo kept his pistol on Lachlan.
Lachlan carefully moved farther in front of me without lowering his pistol.
Marcela lifted one hand.
“Nobody shoots.”
Mateo held.
So did the guard.
Marcela’s attention moved past Lachlan to Papá’s body, then back to me.
Then she had the audacity to smile.
God, I hated that smile.
I hated her face.
I hated that she was standing while Papá lay dead beneath my hands.
Her attention settled on Lachlan, on the way he’d positioned himself partly between me and the guns.
Her smile faltered.
Only for a second, then it came back meaner.
“How touching.”