Chapter 10 #3
My hands curled at my sides. “As if healing is something you can simply speak into existence.”
“It begins with a decision,” he said quietly. “I’ve watched you. I’ve never seen you smile—not truly. Not even with Tess. I noticed the way it almost happens... and then stops.”
My breath caught.
“But you can become who you were before all of this.”
My voice came out thin. “No. That woman died a long time ago.”
“No one dies completely, Loretta.”
That almost made me laugh again.
Instead, tears burned behind my blind eyes.
“You have no idea what he... what they did to me,” I managed, my voice breaking despite my effort to hold it steady. “I don’t even know how to heal.”
A shaky breath slipped out. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t heal. I would rather stay in this darkness... this is what my life has become.”
The words came out heavier than I intended.
The temperature between us seemed to drop.
Rafael didn’t speak.
But I felt it—the weight of him focusing entirely on me now, like the world outside this moment had been erased.
“Besides, why would I want to heal?” My voice trembled, but I didn’t stop. “There’s no one in my life worth holding on for—only Tess. And even she will grow up and realize I was never her mother. Or you’ll decide to send me away long before that.”
My breath shook. “And don’t talk to me about healing when you chose to marry me because of my father’s sins. You added to my pain the moment you brought me into this.”
I swallowed hard. “I understand enough. My purpose in this marriage is obvious—it is your revenge. Your debt ledger. Not my life.”
He moved as if to come closer, but I lifted my arms between us at once—an instinctive barrier. My hands trembled in the dark, a fragile shield built on nothing but reflex.
I took another careful step back.
“I’ll help you heal.”
“You can’t,” I said quietly. “A broken glass can be repaired, held together, made to look whole again. But when it shatters completely... there is nothing left to piece back.”
My breath hitched.
“That’s what I am, Rafael.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and final.
“You have no idea how deep this darkness goes. So stop telling me I can heal. Just... stop.”
He took a step closer.
I didn’t move this time.
My hands hovered inches from his chest.
I could hear the faint rustle of his shirt as he breathed, slow and controlled, like nothing in the world could rush him unless he allowed it.
The space between us felt smaller than it should have.
He stopped.
“Put your hands down,” he said softly.
That softness nearly broke me.
Because it wasn’t weakness. It was the kind of gentleness that still held authority beneath it.
I shook my head immediately, stubborn even as my throat tightened. “You talk about healing like it’s something clean. Something you can choose if you’re strong enough. You haven’t even healed from your late wife.”
My voice cracked slightly, but I didn’t stop. “You still carry her like a shrine. You still take other women to her grave like it’s some ritual of punishment you’ve decided to live with. And yet—yet—you stand there and tell me I can heal?”
He didn’t answer right away.
When he did, his voice was quieter.
“I haven’t healed from many things,” he admitted.
That honesty startled me more than any anger would have.
A beat passed.
Then he continued, carefully controlled again, “The difference between us is that I remain open to it.”
I frowned slightly, confused despite myself.
“And besides,” he added, and something in his tone hardened again, “I am a man. I was raised to endure pain. To carry it without breaking apart in public. That is what men do.”
I let out a sharp breath. “And women don’t?”
“You are strong, Loretta. But you are also fragile in ways the world has already exploited. You don’t have to remain trapped in this darkness forever.”
My chest tightened at the contradiction in his words.
All of it tangled together until I couldn’t tell what he was trying to make me anymore.
Before I could retreat again, his hands found mine.
I froze.
Not out of fear this time.
Out of uncertainty.
He simply lowered my arms with steady, deliberate patience, as if undoing a defensive habit he understood too well.
One of his hands stayed on mine, grounding. The other slid to my waist.
Then he pulled me in.
I should have resisted.
I didn’t.
My body collided gently with his chest, and suddenly there was no space left between us at all.
No distance to think. No barrier to hide behind.
Just him.
Solid. Warm. Real.
His heartbeat pressed against my cheek when I tilted my head slightly.
Steady and unshaken.
And I—
I broke.
Tears came without warning, hot and unstoppable, sliding down my face and soaking into his shirt.
I didn’t stop them. I didn’t try to hide them. I hadn’t realized how long I had been holding everything in until that moment, until something in me finally gave way under the weight of it all.
His arms tightened slightly around me—not possessive, not forceful.
Just there.
I stayed inside the moment, trembling against him as the worst of the storm passed through me in violent, quiet waves.
Rafael’s hand moved slowly along my spine, a deliberate, grounding stroke that felt too controlled to be accidental and too intimate to be safe.
Possessive, yes—but not rough.
His voice dropped lower, steady against the quiet tension between us.
“Four weeks ago,” he began, “Bruno maxed out a credit card meant to last him a year—in a single day on a gambling site. The idiot genuinely believed luck was a skill.”
A small, involuntary breath left me.
“I was furious,” he continued. “I tracked him down immediately—to your apartment. And the moment I walked in and saw him trying to hurt you...”
His hand paused briefly at the middle of my back.
I stiffened at the memory he was describing. I couldn’t see it, but I remembered it too well—the fear, the chaos, the suffocating moment Bruno had cornered me, furious that I fought back after he slapped my ass.
He had been ready to silence me... to cut out my tongue for it—until Rafael walked in and stopped him.
“I felt compassion,” he said. “Real compassion,” he repeated, as though testing the word on himself.
“It was the first time I saw you—the blind intern everyone spoke about—and yet it felt like I had known you for years.”
My lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
He exhaled, slow and heavy.
“I had my people run a background check while I was still there,” he continued. “That was when I learned your full name. Your father. Your history.”
His hand tightened slightly on my back—not painful, but controlled, like he was restraining something beneath his skin.
“The man who destroyed my family.”
My throat tightened instantly.
“I should have felt rage,” he said. “Or the need for revenge.”
A pause.
“Instead... I felt nothing but the urge to keep you close.”
The confession left the air heavier than before.
My heart gave an uneven stutter in my chest, disoriented by the direction of his honesty.
“So... what you feel for me is...”
“Compassion,” he finished simply.
It struck deeper than it should have.
Compassion.
Not love.
Not desire.
Nothing I could hold onto.
Just... pity wrapped in control.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight. The warmth that had started building in my chest moments ago shifted, turning uncertain.
“Were you born blind?”
The question startled me.
I hesitated, my head lowering slightly before I forced myself to answer honestly.
“No, I wasn’t.” I said quietly.
My voice cracked despite my attempt to steady it.
“I paid a surgeon to remove my eyes.”
“You—” His voice broke slightly, something raw slipping through the control for the first time since I had known him. “You removed your own eyes?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“After what I went through with my father and his clients, I couldn’t live with the memories. Every face I saw became him. Every moment felt like I was still trapped there. I couldn’t breathe inside my own mind anymore.”
My voice wavered. “I started thinking of death as the only escape. And when I couldn’t find peace in light... I chose darkness, hoping it would finally end the pain.”
My hands trembled faintly against him.
Rafael was silent for a long time.
When he finally spoke, his voice was dangerously quiet.
“I will find that surgeon.”
A sharp breath broke from me.
“No—” I moved instinctively. “He didn’t do anything wrong. I paid him. He only carried out my request. Don’t punish him for me.”
Rafael’s hand tightened gently at my waist.
“No one has the right to do that to you—not even with your consent. It’s illegal here.”
His tone remained steady, almost controlled to the point of danger. “They should have offered you help. Therapy. Alternatives. Anything but removing your sight.”
His gaze hardened slightly. “You don’t need to tell me his name. If it happened in Barcelona, I will find him.”
A cold ripple moved through my chest.
“Rafael—”
But he was already guiding me forward.
I hated how easily my body followed.
How quickly I adjusted to him leading.
The mansion stretched around us in silence, its vastness broken only by the soft echo of our footsteps against marble and the faint hum of distant security systems.
The door opened, and we stepped inside.
“We are now in your room,” he said quietly. “I’ve noticed you only come out for three things—food, Tess, and work. That’s all. It’s becoming repetitive.”
I exhaled quietly, turning my face toward the direction I thought he stood. “What else is there for a blind woman to do?”
The bitterness slipped out before I could stop it.
“We could eat together,” he said.
I blinked, uncertain I had heard correctly.
“Breakfast,” he continued. “Every morning. Like a couple.”
The word landed strangely.
Couple.
As if it belonged anywhere near us.
“As for the evenings,” he added, “we could play games.”
A faint breath left me. “Games?”
“Chess,” he said. “Tactile pieces. You can feel them. Cards with braille markings. Anything that keeps you outside that room.”
I swallowed.
“You think I need entertainment,” I said quietly.
“I think you need life outside routine,” he corrected.
The honesty in his tone made it harder to dismiss.
Rafael Pérez had entered my life like a controlled storm.
He had manipulated me into marriage, taken me to his late wife’s grave, and bound me to vows that denied love any chance of existing between us.
And still, his actions contradicted everything he had made me promise.
He should have been pushing me further away—toward hatred of him, of myself, of this marriage. Not drawing me closer.
My fingers tightened on the doorframe.
I nodded slowly, though the motion meant little in the darkness that defined my world.
My thoughts were no longer as sharp as they had been an hour ago.
Something in him—his steadiness, his certainty, the strange gentleness he never seemed to acknowledge as gentleness—was softening edges I had spent years hardening into armor.
It frustrated me.
It frightened me more.
“What do you say?” Rafael asked when my silence stretched too long.
I opened my mouth slightly, but no words came out yet.
Before I could respond, he continued, his voice lower now.
“During breakfast,” he said, “you will engage me in light conversation. Anything.”
I blinked at the instruction.
“The weather,” he added. “Tess’s drawings. A book you’ve listened to. Anything at all.”
My fingers twisted together in my lap, the fabric of my dress tightening under my grip as if I could hold myself together through sheer pressure.
“I’ll try,” I said quietly.
A beat.
“I can’t promise smiles,” I added, honesty slipping out before I could censor it. “And laughter feels... impossible right now.”
My throat tightened slightly.
“But I’ll try to talk,” I finished. “That’s all I can give.”
“That’s enough for now,” he said.
For now.
The phrase lingered more than it should have.
I exhaled slowly, still not fully convinced I understood what this arrangement between us was becoming.
Then he pulled away.
“Have a good rest, Loretta,” he murmured, his footsteps moving away.
The door opened.
Then closed.
I exhaled shakily.
I lay down on the bed, the mattress dipping slightly beneath my weight as I drew the heavy duvet over myself.
My throat tightened slightly as Rafael’s words kept echoing in my head.
I can help you heal.
We could eat together. Breakfast. Every morning. Like a couple.
Like a couple?
A real couple shared more than a table. They shared trust. History. Affection. They chose each other every day.
What Rafael and I had was none of those things.
The distance between us was too vast to cross.
It stretched through class and circumstance, through years of pain and bloodshed, through a history neither of us could escape.
I carried the surname of the man who had destroyed pieces of him that could never be restored.
Perhaps he felt compassion for me. Perhaps he even felt responsible for me.
But forgiveness?
No.
I could not imagine a world where Rafael Pérez truly forgave what my father had done to him.
One day, when his guilt faded or his sense of obligation finally ran out, he would send me away.
It was the inevitable ending to a story that had never been meant to begin in the first place.
I exhaled slowly, rolling slightly onto my side.
I hated how easily his words refused to fade like they were supposed to.
I closed my eyes.
Or what remained of them.
And for the first time in weeks, my mind didn’t spiral into chaos or memory or fear.
It softened.
I didn’t notice the exact moment sleep claimed me—only that the ache in my body, the weight in my chest, and the endless noise in my head slowly dissolved into darkness.
And somewhere within that darkness I had chosen for myself, where no one could reach me and nothing could hurt me, his voice followed me in.
Not as the cold, relentless authority that usually wrapped around every word he spoke.
But as something far more dangerous and unsettlingly gentle.