Until Forever Ends: A Dark Mafia Romance by Adelaide Forrest (free children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

and that it should have been her soothing the pain she'd caused somehow made it worse.

"Then what was the problem, exactly?" Regina asked.

"She was dismissive about our bond," I said, shrugging my shoulders. I knew she would disapprove of the words, and so did Alejandro as he chuckled in the chair across from me.

"Excuse me? Did that poor girl not wake up in a strange bed just a few hours ago, after being brought here while she was unconscious?" she asked, pinching me with the sharp ends of the tweezers.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I don't recall asking for your opinion."

"Well, you're getting it anyway. You must find a way to forget your anger. She left you. She doesn't understand what's at stake. She is young, and she's scared. You set her up to think that your relationship would never be anything more than a fling on her vacation, and then you ripped the rug out from under her and changed the rules. Give her time."

"I don't have time. I already know what it was to have her as mine. I can't just forget that," I grunted, watching as she set the tweezers on the table beside me.

"Of course you can't. You love her, mi hijo. This too shall pass, but not if you abuse her in your anger," Regina said, standing and moving to drop into one of the empty chairs across from me.

"I don't love her," I grunted. Men like me weren't capable of love. Obsession wasn't love, and as mad as it drove me, I would never be able to return the emotion I demanded from her.

She was my everything, but to love was to lose. I couldn't risk that, and I wouldn't even if I could. I still remembered the sensation of my heart being torn from my body, of watching the only person who had ever truly loved me burn on the pyre for her husband’s insanity. The boy my mother loved had died with her.

Any traces of goodness she’d managed to instill in me as a child had been lost as I listened to her screams and my father forced me to watch her body turn to ash in the wind. He’d succeeded in making me a monster. La criatura, a man with no heart beating in my chest.

There was nothing that could love Isa as she loved me.

“I can’t,” I said, staring at Regina’s mischievous smile and reiterating the point as if she had any say in what my body and soul determined was impossible. Of all the people on El Infierno, she would be the one who interacted with Isa more than all the rest.

She needed to understand her place in my life just as much as Isa did.

"You keep telling yourself that, mi hijo," Regina laughed, raising an eyebrow at me mockingly as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and strode back toward the house.

I might not be ready to know if my obsession loved me in the way I needed her to, but that didn't mean I wasn't ready for other answers.

"Rafael!" Regina called. I turned back to her, watching as she considered her next words. "You are not your father. Show her how you feel about her. You're the only one besides her who doesn't know that you are absolutely head over heels in love with that girl."

I ignored her, storming my way through the house to get to my office. I was grateful for the fact that it was on the other side of the house, as far away from Isa as I could get. I needed the clarity that distance brought, and yet as I sat at my desk, I brought up the camera feed from our bedroom.

Isa wasn't in bed but curled up in the chair. Her head leaned on her shoulder as she slept. I'd need to remember to change the bedding when I brought her food in a little while. The blood clearly made her uncomfortable, and I could imagine it would take some time for her to get as used to it as I'd become at a young age.

I wouldn't flinch at the sight of blood, but even I wouldn't want to sleep in a bed stained with it.

I picked my cell phone up off the desktop, dialing Ryker's number and waiting for Matteo's famed executioner to answer the phone. It was early evening in Spain, meaning that Ryker wouldn't want to kill me for calling since it wasn't as early as it would have been had I called when I first wanted to.

"How's Isa?" he asked in lieu of a greeting.

"Distressed," I admitted.

"I take it your plan didn't work out so well?" he asked, a low whistle as he followed the line of thought. "She'll come around if she's really meant to be yours. Just treat her right and give her some time."

"Like you gave Calla?" I asked, pursing my lips as he chuckled.

"Fair enough. Just treat her right and everything else will follow. You're a sick bastard, Rafael. Don't take it out on her that she never stood a chance," he said. "If you want her to love you, you can't treat her like she's one of your marks and torture her into it."

"I didn't call you for relationship advice," I growled. "I'll treat her well enough that my agreement with Matteo will be met. I've no interest in abusing her."

"If you didn't call for advice, then what the fuck do you want?"

"I want you to find the cop who filed the accident report when Isa fell in the river. She's hiding something, and I want to know what."

"And if he's not on Matteo's payroll and doesn't want to talk? What would you like me to do?"

"I don't give a fuck who you have to kill, but I want answers. I want to know what really happened and not the bullshit cover story of a girl falling into the river."

He paused. "Matteo won't like that. I'll see what