Chapter 11 #7
“Stop running your mouth about things you know nothing about!” he roared. “Or I’ll make sure you never open that mouth again.
This was the first time he had ever been this vicious with me.
But I was past caring. “Fuck you, Rafael!” I screamed back, voice raw. “Fuck you a thousand times, you son of a bitch!”
His breathing was ragged.
“You’ve gone too far, Loretta,” Rafael snarled.
“No one speaks to me like that. No one makes reckless assumptions about Zara. Keep running that reckless mouth and I’ll make you regret it.”
“What can you do?” I challenged. “Shoot me? Kill me? I’m only asking—if you never loved Zara, why do you still hold her in such high esteem? Why does her name turn you into this?”
“You’re not entitled to anything from me—least of all my past. Stay in your lane before I remind you exactly who owns you now.” He bit out coldly.
I let out a sharp, bitter laugh.
“Tell me—did she die trying to escape your suffocating control? Or did you finally grow bored of your precious trophy wife and put a bullet in her yourself? Is that why you guard her memory like a dirty secret? Because even you know you destroyed her?”
“Ramiro!” he barked.
I heard Ramiro’s heavy footsteps approaching.
“I have no more compassion left for a woman who keeps spitting on Zara’s name,” Rafael snarled, his voice dropping into something feral and deadly.
“I warned you. Now you’re going to learn exactly how sacred she was to me.”
“Force her to kneel.” He ordered Ramiro. “Let the snow fall on her all night if needed. Soak her to the bone. Break that defiant spirit. She gets nothing— no fire, no blanket, no comfort—until she feels the full cost of spitting on Zara’s name.”
“And she will not rise,” he added, each word clipped and final, “until she begs Zara’s forgiveness. Until she understands the gravity of what she’s defiled.”
Before I could protest, Ramiro’s strong hands clamped onto my shoulders.
I twisted and fought, but he was far too powerful.
He forced me down. My knees slammed into the hard ground with a sickening thud, the impact shooting white-hot pain through my bones.
Almost immediately, the sky opened.
The first heavy flakes hit like icy needles, stinging my cheeks and exposed neck.
I clenched my jaw, enduring it.
I can take this, I told myself.
More snow came—sharp, relentless, piling on my shoulders and soaking through my clothes.
The cold bit deep, but I stayed silent, trembling with rage more than fear.
Then it grew heavier.
Each fat, wet clump struck harder, like tiny hammers of ice.
The wind drove them into my face, my hair, my blind eyes.
Freezing water ran down my spine.
My thin dress clung to my skin, turning to ice.
The cold became unbearable, burrowing into my marrow.
I grunted with every brutal impact, teeth chattering violently.
“Ah—fuck!”
Another heavy sheet of snow slammed into me, and I gasped sharply.
My shoulders shook uncontrollably.
The pain in my bruised knees throbbed in time with the freezing assault.
“Ramiro...” I whimpered through gritted teeth.
No answer. The snow only fell harder.
I broke.
A raw scream tore from my throat as another wave crashed over me, the cold so intense it felt like fire.
“Ramiro! Please—help me!” I begged, voice cracking.
My whole body convulsed under the downpour. “It hurts—God, it hurts! Make it stop! I can’t... I can’t breathe!”
Tears froze on my lashes as I crumpled forward, forehead nearly touching the ground.
Sobs wracked me between screams.
Every muscle burned with cold and exhaustion.
Seconds dragged into what felt like an eternity.
The snow hammered down harder, each heavy clump striking like frozen stones against my back and shoulders.
I could hear it piling up around me—the wet, crushing thud of fresh layers building on the ground, on my hair, on my soaked dress that now felt like a second skin of ice.
My knees throbbed from the earlier impact, the pain flaring hotter against the freezing ground.
“Ramiro...” I gasped, turning my head toward the sound of his steady breathing.
Even blind, I could sense him—his solid presence just to my right, the faint shift of his boots in the snow.
I reached out blindly, fingers numb and shaking, until they brushed against his leg.
Desperation gave me strength.
I grabbed hold of his pant leg, then slid my hand down to clutch his foot. “Please... take me away from here. I’ll apologize—just get me inside. Please!”
The snow intensified, turning from heavy flakes to a blinding white fury driven by the wind.
It stung my face, clogged my nostrils, and made every breath a labored fight.
Minutes passed—two, maybe three—each one longer than the last.
My teeth chattered so violently I bit my tongue.
The cold had seeped into my bones, turning my blood to slush.
“I can’t breathe...” I whimpered, gripping his foot tighter, my frozen fingers slipping on the wet fabric.
“It’s too much—Ramiro, I’m going to die out here. Please... help me. Lift me up. I’ll do anything.”
Ramiro’s voice finally came, low and strained, almost regretful. “I wish I could, Loretta. But this is his order. I can’t disobey.”
His words shattered the last fragile piece of hope.
A fresh wave of snow slammed into me, heavier now, accumulating so fast it weighed me down like a wet blanket of ice.
I screamed again, raw and broken, pressing my face against his leg. “Please! Breathing is too hard—I’m dying! Don’t let me die like this!”
More minutes crawled by.
My grip on his foot weakened as feeling left my hands.
The cold was everywhere—inside my chest, squeezing my lungs, making every inhale a shallow, painful rasp.
I kept begging between sobs, voice growing hoarse. “Ramiro... I can’t... I can’t take it anymore...”
My hand slipped slowly from his leg, fingers uncurling one by one despite my desperate attempts to hold on.
The world tilted.
Blackness—deeper than my usual darkness—closed in at the edges of my mind.
The snow kept falling, merciless, burying me under its frozen assault.
Then everything went silent.
I passed out.