Chapter 21 #5
The realization hit like a bullet. My blood ran cold. Someone knew . Someone had led them here. And as they forced my arms tighter behind my back, dragging me toward Rafael but not to him—I felt it. That final drop in my stomach. The silence between orders. The moment before the storm cracks open.
Someone else was coming.
I twisted hard in the grip of the man behind me, his arm like iron around my chest, breath hot at my ear.
No.
I wasn’t going to stand here and let this happen.
Without thinking—without even breathing—I lunged back and bit down , sinking my teeth into the side of his gloved hand, right where the fabric stretched over skin.
He hissed in pain, jerking his arm back, grip loosening. And I shoved myself free. But I didn’t make it far.
A second man—one who had been standing just a step too close—moved fast, slamming the butt of his rifle into my shoulder and sending me sprawling to the ground, gravel biting into my palms.
Pain flared through my chest. My jaw clenched. The world blurred.
“ Don’t touch her! ”
Rafael.
I heard the clatter of movement—his voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. But then—A thud. A grunt. The sharp crack of a knee colliding with bone.
I looked up just in time to see one of the guards driving his boot into Rafael’s ribs, sending him reeling sideways where they’d forced him to kneel. Another man yanked him upright, pinning him in place.
His jaw was tight. Blood at the corner of his mouth. But his eyes— they were only on me.
I was dragged back to my feet. My head was spinning, but I held onto his stare like a lifeline.
“Isa,” he ground out. “Don’t move. Don’t fight. Not now.”
Not now. Not now.
My heart was breaking open. I didn’t even realize I was crying. I wanted to scream. And then— They moved.
The circle of men shifted slightly, parting just enough to make room for someone walking forward. Boots. Slow. Heavy. Covered head to toe in tactical black gear, a balaclava covering their face.
My stomach dropped. The energy shifted. Tightened. Like the night itself recoiled. The figure stepped into the glow of the headlights, standing still for a heartbeat… then reached up slowly—fingers finding the edge of the mask—and pulled it off.
And just like that…
Anna.
The woman who raised me. Who kissed my forehead when I cried. Who poured tea like we lived in another century. The woman I called family .
I froze. Everything inside me collapsed at once, sucked out of my chest in a single, brutal breath.
“No.”
My voice barely left my throat.
“No— no. ”
She didn’t look at me. Didn’t even glance in my direction. She walked right past me. Like I was no one. Like I had never been anyone. My legs buckled, and the man behind me had to yank me upright again, harder this time.
She stopped in front of Rafael. He was still kneeling. Still bloody. Still watching me. But when she reached out… and touched his face, brushing her gloved fingers along his cheek like it was affection —I saw it.
His jaw locked. His spine turned to steel. His gaze finally shifted to hers. And hers softened, cruel and cold.
“My beautiful son,” she said, voice smooth. Familiar. And deadly. “How you’ve grown.”
I couldn’t breathe. My body turned to ice.
“You’re—” My voice cracked. “You’re his mother .”
She didn’t turn. Didn’t deny it. Didn’t say a word to me. She just looked at Rafael like he was a ruined thing she once owned and was now ready to destroy.
“I trusted you,” I screamed. “I told you everything! I loved you, I believed you—and you were watching the whole time like it was a game! I’m going to kill you with my own hands!”
Still nothing. No apology. No regret.
She stepped back with the same calm, measured grace she always had. And then she nodded toward one of the men restraining Rafael.
“Do it,” she said. Cold. Final. Like it was nothing.
The command echoed like a curse, slicing through the air with no mercy. I felt it in my bones before I heard the shot. The sound cracked through the night like lightning.
And Rafael— Rafael jerked . Hard. His body recoiled with the force of it, his head snapping slightly to the side, his shoulders collapsing forward.
Then—he fell.
I screamed.
A sound so loud, so guttural, I didn’t even recognize it as my own. My knees buckled, but the grip behind me yanked me up, arms like iron across my chest.
No no no no ? —
My lungs stopped working. My vision tunneled, blurred and white-hot with horror as I watched him crumple to the ground.
Blood. It bloomed across his shirt like ink in water. Right over his heart.
They shot him ? —
They killed him ? —
They killed Rafael.
“RAFAEL!”
I screamed his name until my throat burned raw. I thrashed so hard the man restraining me nearly lost his grip.
The world shattered around me. And then—more headlights. Roaring engines. Tires grinding into gravel. Dozens of vehicles. The sound cut through the madness just as guns began to rise again—this time on both sides.
More men poured out— our men. I knew them. I recognized them. Nikolai. Yuri. YURI.
“YURI!!” I screamed, fighting like a feral animal in the guard’s grip.
He turned instantly—his eyes scanning the battlefield, his expression shifting from razor focus to pure panic when they landed on Rafael’s body… and me.
“GET HER!” I heard him shout.
And then— Gunfire.
The air exploded. Shots cracked across the cliffside like fireworks in hell. Screams. Commands. Boots stomping, men scattering.
Bullets hissed past. Somewhere to my left, one of the trees burst into splinters. But I didn’t stop fighting. I didn’t care. I wasn’t thinking. I needed to get to him. I needed to?—
“LET ME GO!”
My heel drove into the shin of the man gripping me. He grunted, tried to haul me tighter, but I twisted with everything I had.
The chaos around us worsened. Men were falling. Screaming. Firing wildly into the dark.
And then—something gave.
The man holding me stumbled, slipping on the gravel as I jerked forward. His boot hit a jagged rock. We lost balance. His hand grabbed my arm—tight, panicked. Too tight.
He tried to drag me back, but the ground beneath us tilted. Slid.
I felt the edge before I saw it. I saw his eyes widen. Then the gravel crumbled. My body dropped out from under me. His weight pulled me with him.
And then— we were falling.
Air rushed past me. My scream vanished into the wind. The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me— Was Rafael’s body, lying still in a pool of red, just before he disappeared from view.
Everything was black. Heavy. Cold. Still. And then— A piercing burn shot through my lungs. My eyes snapped open . Water. Dark, freezing, all around me.
Choking my throat, filling my nose, dragging me under like it wanted to bury me alive. The pressure crushed against my ribs. My limbs thrashed instinctively, but they were sluggish. Numb.
Where—
The weight hit me all at once. I was underwater. Under the cliff.
The fall. The man. The shot. Rafael.
No. No no no no?—
My lungs screamed. I kicked hard, legs pumping, arms slicing through the water as I clawed upward, toward whatever sliver of light might exist above. But everything looked the same. The darkness bled into itself, endless and suffocating.
The man who’d dragged me down was nowhere. Maybe dead. Maybe gone.
My body ached, every movement slower than the last. My fingers reached— Nothing. No surface. No air. Just the cold. Just the weight.
Rafael is gone.
The thought sliced through the panic like a razor. And suddenly, none of it mattered.
The fight. The water. My life. Gone.
Because he was.
I saw him fall. I saw the blood. I saw the way his eyes locked on mine right before they went still.
He was the last thing I saw before the cliff swallowed me whole. And now there was just this. Water. Silence. And me.
I stopped kicking. My arms drifted to my sides. My eyes fluttered half-shut. I could feel it, the way it crept in—slow, quiet, merciful.
Maybe it was better this way. Maybe I wasn’t meant to survive any of this. Maybe the fire that started the night my parents died was always going to end here —with the truth crashing over me like a tide I couldn’t outswim.
My chest spasmed once. Then again.
But I didn’t fight. Not anymore.
I let the dark take me. Let the cold wrap around my skin like a blanket. And the last thing I thought before everything slipped away… Was his name.
Rafael.