Chapter 6
LORETTA
Everything stopped.
My breath caught so sharply it almost hurt.
Did I hear him correctly?
“What...?” The word slipped out before I could stop it.
“That’s the only way you stay in her life,” he said calmly.
As if discussing logistics.
“Marry me, and you remain her mother.”
A pause.
“Refuse, and you forget about her. Completely.”
The words landed like impact.
I went completely still.
My mind refused to make sense of what I had just heard.
Marry him?
The words echoed in my head, absurd and impossible.
Marriage had never been part of my plans. Not anymore.
And certainly not with someone like Rafael Perez.
A woman like me had no place in a man like his world.
Besides...
Why would he want a blind wife?
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry.
“This isn’t a solution,” I said finally, voice trembling now despite my effort. “This is... blackmail wrapped in silk.”
“No,” Rafael said smoothly. “It’s an offer.”
The calm certainty in his voice was somehow more unsettling than his anger.
“You keep the child you’ve become attached to. She keeps the only mother figure she remembers. And I get my daughter back under my roof—where she belongs.”
My jaw tightened.
He continued, quieter now—but no less absolute:
“Think about it carefully, Loretta.”
A pause.
One that felt deliberately timed.
“You have until the end of this conversation to decide.”
“I could be her nanny,” I said quickly, grasping for the first alternative I could find. “Surely that’s a better arrangement than marrying a man I barely know.”
The words rushed out.
“I can’t be your wife, Mr. Perez. Marriage isn’t a decision people make in a single afternoon. It’s not something you agree to without thought.”
Rafael was silent for a moment.
Then—
“You speak as though you’re negotiating.”
The calmness in his voice sent a chill down my spine.
“If I wanted a nanny, I would hire one.”
A beat.
“The last woman I trusted with my daughter sold information to my enemies. She was one of the reasons Tess disappeared.”
The room went still.
“I have no interest in repeating that mistake.”
His voice remained maddeningly composed.
“You asked to remain in her life. I offered a solution.”
A pause.
“Become my wife.”
Silence.
“Or don’t.”
Then I heard movement.
Fabric shifting.
The unmistakable sound of a child being lifted into strong arms.
My heart stopped.
No.
He was leaving.
Actually leaving.
My cane struck the edge of the desk as I moved too quickly.
Pain shot through my hand, but I barely noticed.
“Mr. Rafael, wait!”
For the first time, panic broke through my composure.
Silence.
He had stopped.
I could feel it.
Tess remained quiet in his arms, making no effort to resist.
The realization hurt almost as much as losing her.
My hands trembled.
“I...”
The word barely formed.
“If that’s the price...”
My throat tightened.
“If that’s the sacrifice I have to make, then fine.”
A long silence followed.
“I’ll marry you.”
The words left me in a rush.
Before courage could abandon me.
“I’ll marry you,” I repeated, my voice cracking. “As long as I can stay with her. As long as she’s safe and loved.”
A painful breath escaped me.
“That’s all I care about.”
“Good.”
Rafael’s voice settled back into that terrifying calm.
The voice of a man who had just concluded a business deal.
“We’ll be married on Saturday.”
A beat.
“So you can move into my house immediately.”
My mind stalled.
“Sir...” I blinked uselessly into the darkness. “Today is Friday.”
I swallowed.
“You mean next Saturday?”
“If you can spend seven days away from her, we’ll do it next week.”
My stomach dropped.
A step sounded closer. “But we both know you can’t.”
His voice lowered. “So I meant tomorrow.”
My jaw dropped slightly.
For a moment, I genuinely forgot how to respond.
Tomorrow.
Marriage.
To a man I barely understood.
To a man the world whispered about like a warning disguised as a name.
Rafael “El Mencho” Pérez.
My pulse hammered harder.
This wasn’t just fast—it was violent in its urgency.
My hands clenched at my sides so tightly my nails bit into my palms, grounding me back into the present with sharp, physical pain.
“Tomorrow...” I repeated quietly.
The word tasted foreign.
But there was no point fighting anymore.
Not when every path led to the same choice.
Not when the only thing waiting on the other side of refusal was losing the child who had become the center of my world.
“Wise choice.”
I stood very still.
I lifted my chin slightly toward where I sensed him standing.
My unseeing eyes stayed fixed in his direction, not because I could see him, but because refusing to look away was the only form of resistance I had left.
“And I do hope you’ve thought this through,” I said, forcing some steel back into my voice. “A blind wife?”
I let the question hang.
“Your business partners. Your investors. The media.” A bitter laugh escaped me. “The great Rafael ‘El Mencho’ Pérez marrying a blind intern from his own company isn’t exactly the image of untouchable power you’ve spent years cultivating.”
I wanted him to hear reason.
To realize how absurd this was.
To change his mind.
Instead, he sounded almost amused.
“Society can choke on its opinion.”
The words were delivered with effortless contempt.
“I don’t seek approval, Loretta. I take what I want.”
A chill crept down my spine.
Then his voice lowered.
“I told you before that we have unfinished business.”
“Unfinished business?” I repeated. “I’ve never done anything to you.”
A dark chuckle escaped him.
“No. But your family did.”
The words lodged themselves deep inside my chest.
My family?
Was he planning to make me pay for something my family had done to him?
“Tess is the reason this marriage is happening tomorrow.”
My heart eased for the briefest second.
Then he continued. “But she isn’t the only reason.”
The relief vanished.
“Years ago, your family took something from me.”
The room seemed to grow colder.
“And unlike most men, I don’t forget my losses.”
My pulse stumbled.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “you stop being a Orisini. You become a Perez by law.”
The words sent a chill through me.
“After all these years, it’s only fair that something belonging to your family finally ends up in my hands.”
His voice carried a quiet satisfaction that terrified me far more than his anger ever had.
A cold weight settled in my chest.
Not fear alone.
Recognition that I was being moved through a sequence I had not been allowed to fully understand.
I understood enough about the history between our families to know it wasn’t a simple grudge.
The Spanish and Italian mafia have been locked in generations of unending war—an inheritance of rivalry, betrayal, and bloodshed passed down like a cursed legacy that neither side has ever been willing to lay to rest.
Had my family crossed the Pérez family in some unforgivable way?
Had they taken something from him that could never be returned?
And now he wanted me to pay for it.
The uncertainty was driving me insane.
He kept speaking in fragments. In threats. In promises wrapped in riddles.
Never clearly. Never enough.
I needed answers.
I needed to know what my family had done.
Needed to know whether I should spend the remaining hours before tomorrow’s wedding planning my escape instead of my vows.
Because there was still time.
A little time.
Enough to run.
Enough to disappear.
Enough to choose whether marrying Tess’s father for the privilege of remaining in her life was worth whatever revenge Rafael had planned for me.
“There is no running from this, Loretta.”
My breath caught.
The words landed with unnerving precision.
As though he had reached into my head and plucked the thought directly from my mind.
“Not anymore.”
A chill spread through me.
“Ramiro will handle the arrangements,” he continued. “Everything you need for the wedding will be provided.”
The wedding.
The word felt surreal.
My chest rose and fell slowly.
I had survived worse than fear.
Worse than the endless darkness that had swallowed my sight and changed the course of my life forever.
But the thought of belonging to Rafael Perez—legally, physically, irrevocably—made something deep inside me twist.
Not because I wanted him. Not because I trusted him.
But because I didn’t.
“Be at the chapel tomorrow.”
His footsteps began to move away.
The sound sent panic racing through me.
“Sir.”
My voice came out small.
Desperate.
“Sir, please—”
I didn’t even know what I was asking for anymore.
Answers.
Mercy.
One more minute with Tess.
But he never responded.
His footsteps continued.
Then they disappeared beyond the doorway.
So did Tess.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
I stood alone in the office, hollowed out from the inside.
As though someone had reached into my chest and removed something vital.
Three weeks with Tess—three weeks of slowly becoming her friend, and something far closer to a mother than I ever expected to be.
And yet the absence she left behind in an instant felt enormous.
Like something had been torn out of my life without warning, leaving a hollow space that echoed with everything she used to be.
I sank back into the ergonomic chair, the leather creaking softly beneath me, too loud in the emptiness she left behind.
My hands trembled where they rested on my lap, fingers curling inward as if I could hold onto something that was already slipping away.
Selfishly, I wished I had never brought Zara to the office.
Selfishly... I wished I had never let her see him.
Because part of me had known—some deep, instinctive part of me had known—that Rafael Pérez did not enter lives gently. He entered them like inevitability.
And inevitability always took something with it when it left.
I pressed my lips together hard, swallowing the sting rising in my throat.
The memories hit without warning—sharp, relentless—dragging me back into a past I had never truly escaped.