Chapter Sixteen #3
"You're awake," Azar said, her voice attempting the flat, clinical politeness she had weaponized for six months.
But she failed. Her voice shook. And when Raphael looked into her hazel eyes, he saw the unmistakable tremble of her pupils. He saw the frantic, desperate attempt to be stoic. She was trying so incredibly hard to push him away, to don the armor of the apathetic employee.
Beneath the tremble, however, he also saw the deep, lingering distrust. It was carved into her gaze, a permanent scar left by the war room tribunal.
And looking at her now, Raphael realized something.
He did not blame her.
He didn't feel a shred of anger or frustration at her walls. Whatever she felt right now was fine. If she distrusted him, he had earned it. If she hated him, he would accept it as his rightful punishment. He had thrown her to the wolves, he had no right to demand that she ever trust him again.
But that did not mean he was going to surrender.
Raphael looked at her, his thumb weakly brushing against the soft skin of her knuckles. He did not speak. His chest was too tight, his lungs too damaged to form the words, but he poured every ounce of his soul into his gaze.
I will prove my devotion to you for the rest of my life, Raphael vowed to himself, the promise cementing itself in his blood. You can distrust me. You can push me away. You can count down the days on your calendar.
He knew she still planned to leave. He knew she had fifteen months left on her contract.
Let the clock run out, he thought, surrendering his empire for the woman sitting beside him.
If you leave in fifteen months, I will follow.
If you go to Switzerland, I will buy the mountain.
If you go to London, I will pave the streets.
You can do whatever you want, Azarelle Maren.
But I am going to build the rest of my life around you.
Azar felt the intense, burning weight of his stare. It was too much. The vulnerability of the room, the lingering terror of his near-death, the devotion in his eyes—it was overwhelming her meticulously constructed control.
She gently, firmly pulled her hand free from his weakened grip.
"I will inform Ezra that you are conscious," Azar said, her voice returning to a strained, polite whisper. She stood up from the armchair, smoothing her sweater, refusing to meet his eyes again. "The family has been waiting for an update."
"Azar," Raphael breathed, the single word scraping painfully from his damaged throat.
She paused near the door, her hand resting on the brass handle. She did not turn around. She could not afford to look at him again, for fear the remaining ice would melt leaving her defenseless.
"Rest, Don Raphael," Azar murmured. She pushed the door open and slipped out into the corridor, leaving the dim blue light of the medical suite behind her.
Over the next few weeks, as the brutal winter began to yield to the damp thaw of spring, the Castellan-Marchetti estate settled into a period of recovery.
Damian Voss survived, his iron constitution pulling him back from the brink, though he remained confined to the medical wing, relentlessly cursing the doctors and the Albanian faction in equal measure.
Raphael’s recovery was slow, hindered by the structural damage to his ribs, but he healed with the resilience of the Iron Saint. Within two weeks, he was sitting up, demanding his encrypted tablets, running the war against the Albanians from his hospital bed.
But while Raphael healed, Azar vanished.
She was hardly around. Now that she had seen him open his eyes, now that she knew he would survive and the immediate terror had passed, she absolutely did not need the proximity.
In fact, she avoided him with a strategic, ruthless efficiency.
She retreated to the subterranean encryption hub, burying herself in the complex logistics of the Albanian extermination campaign.
When she needed to deliver reports to the medical wing, she handed them directly to Ezra or the guards stationed outside Suite A. She took her meals in her room.
She needed the distance. She needed the isolation to regain control of her emotions and repair the glaring crack he had put in her armor simply by bleeding. She sat in the server room, staring at the calendar, meticulously crossing off the days.
Fourteen months.
But up in the medical wing, Raphael did not despair at her absence. The frantic panic that had plagued him for the last half-year was gone.
He sat against the pillows, reviewing the data packets she had sent, a faint, resolute smile touching his lips. He knew she was avoiding him. He knew she was attempting to rebuild her walls.
It didn't matter. The Iron Saint was a patient man.
He had seen the tears on her face. He had felt the desperate grip of her hand.
She could hide in the basement for the next fourteen months, but Raphael now had a singular, unshakeable purpose.
The war with the Albanians was just business, his true life's work had just begun.