Page 88 of Chains of Recompense
I turn onto my side, careful not to wake him.
He sleeps on his back, one arm flung above his head, lashes casting dark shadows on his cheeks.
He looks younger like this, less carved from stone, less dangerous, and it’s strange to think of him as anything but impervious.
But tonight, he showed me that beneath his stone-cold exterior, he feels pain, guilt, and remorse just like the rest of us.
That realization unsettles me more than any threat he’s ever made.
I press my palm flat against my ribs, as if I can quiet the anxiety buzzing there.
Everything he told me makes sense now—the way he holds himself like loving anyone is a liability he can’t afford.
Though I know logically that our marriage is fake, it still stings to have confirmed Raf’s heart belongs to another woman.
But it’s not at all in the way I imagined.
It isn’t lust for another he was clinging to when he was with me.
It’s grief, a kind of grief so deep, it fossilized around him, turning love into something sacred and forbidden all at once.
It hurts more than I expect it to.
Swallowing hard, I squeeze my eyes shut, pushing the unwanted emotion deep down inside me.
And in its place rises a slow and persistent anxiety as I consider just how close his apology came to the truth of our reality.
Raf didn’t just carelessly break my heart and walk away.
He made the choice based on what was right for his family.
And he left before he knew what he’d done to me—beforeIknew what he’d done to me.
My hand drifts unconsciously to my stomach, fingers splaying over fabric and skin like I can feel the echo of my past.
The fear, the shock, the moment my entire world tilted on its axis and never quite righted itself again.
He doesn’t know.
He has no idea that when he walked away, convinced he was preventing a violent conflict, he left me pregnant and terrified and utterly alone.
He doesn’t know that my family didn’t just hate the Chiaroscuros on principle.
They didn’t just hate Raf for taking my virginity or ruining my marriage prospects.
They hated him for stealing my future and leaving me with an impossible choice.
Unmarried and pregnant at just eighteen?
In our world, it was nothing short of condemning me.
So the alliance with the Tanakas wasn’t just about territory or power or vengeance for slights real and imagined.
It was personal.
It was blood-deep.
It was my brothers and my father looking at me, pale and shaking, utterly broken when I confessed I was carrying Rafael Chiaroscuro’s baby and that he wanted nothing to do with me, and deciding no one would ever hurt me like that again.
