heart flailing as for one last time she silently begged Rafael to come back, prove this cruel man wrong.
But Rafael wouldn’t come back.
And every idealistic rationalization was knocked down, replaced with the sordid truth.
Rafael had probably come out to the ball with her because he wanted to see if there was someone who’d appeal to him more before he wasted the night on her. And he had found a more beautiful woman, no doubt one who wouldn’t dream of asking him to defer his pleasure. And he’d just forgotten about her. He hadn’t even deemed her worth another word or glance, as if those hours of magic hadn’t happened.
But it hadn’t been magic. Not between them. The magic had been all his. A sorcerer casting his dark spells on a willing victim, entertaining himself while he pulled the strings of hundreds of others by remote control.
Graves knocked back the rest of his whiskey before leveling harsh eyes on her. “You’re better off. Rafael is way out of your league.”
She stared at this man of granite who hacked at her with such pitilessness. But what hurt most was that he was right. About everything.
He rolled his shoulders back, seeming to grow even more menacing as he tossed her a suggestive glance. “I’m even more out of your league, but if you’re interested...”
“Enough...please.”
And she ran away, out of this mansion she’d entered what felt like a lifetime ago, undamaged and oblivious. She now left it with a chasm in her heart, one torn open by the wanton cruelty of the only man she’d ever let her guard down with, the first tears of a deluge scouring down her cheeks.
* * *
Ferreira’s daughter.
The two words revolved in Rafael’s head until he felt it would burst.
He’d lost all sense of time, all sense period, since he’d realized who Eliana was. He’d had to get away before he did something catastrophic. But shock and rage only got more out of control the more they sank their talons in his flesh.
Eliana, the woman he wanted with every fiber of his being, who’d stormed his barriers and brought down his defenses, was the daughter of his slave broker.
Rafael, this is my father, Teobaldo Ferreira.
And he’d once been Rafael’s father’s best friend and partner.
He remembered all too clearly when Ferreira had been a constant presence in his family’s life. Her father hadn’t changed much in the twenty-four years since he’d last seen him. As a matter of fact, at sixty-four, he’d aged very well. Contrary to Rafael’s own father, who’d aged beyond his years. Thanks to Ferreira’s heinous crime against him, the man he used to love and trust.
He remembered how he’d loved and trusted him. Tio Teo, he’d called him. His frequent visits had been one of the most anticipated pleasures of the child he’d been.
Then, during his investigations into his abduction, he’d found that just prior to it, his father had dissolved his partnership with Ferreira. Once he’d dug into the events, he’d found conclusive evidence that there had been only one person who could have orchestrated his abduction. Ferreira.
But remembering the man he’d run to greet whenever he’d come visiting, who’d shown him such affection and attention, he’d rejected the evidence, reinvestigated from scratch. He hadn’t wanted it to be him. He’d wanted it to be anyone but him. But every inquiry had led to the same results. And Ferreira’s motivations had been ironclad, too.
Arranging for his abduction would have hit two birds with one stone. Taking revenge on his father, the man he’d publicly accused of destroying him, and accruing enough money to make up for the major losses Ferreira thought he’d caused him. The Organization paid very well for their select subjects. He and his brothers had been the most select and costly of their acquisitions. Whoever had sold them had known their worth, had demanded top dollar...and gotten it. In his case, Ferreira.
After he’d gotten conclusive proof, Rafael had concocted the perfect revenge for him. He intended to initiate a real collaboration with him, giving him a taste of the profits and the boost in status, letting his ambitions and greed soar, before he smashed him down from an incredible height. Then he planned to send Ferreira to prison, as he’d sent him. He didn’t intend for him to ever get out. Not in this lifetime.
Yet he still hadn’t rushed to exact his revenge. The truth was he still struggled with superimposing the image of the monster who’d sold him into slavery onto that of the indulgent uncle he’d loved. He still hadn’t relished a face-to-face meeting.
Then he’d seen Eliana and everything but her had ceased to matter. It was literally the last thing he could have anticipated, for Ferreira to be her father.
A roar tore from his depths.
Something detonated against the wall.
Then the door burst back on its hinges and Richard exploded in, gun drawn and ready to blow any intruder away.
His partner’s all-seeing eyes summed up the scene, before tucking his firearm back into the holster at his side. “Redecorating already?”
Rafael turned to where Richard had pointed, staring at the extensive damage to the exquisite plaster wall and the smashed remains of his executive desk and everything that had been on it. He hadn’t even thought he could lift it, let alone toss it into the wall. He hadn’t gone berserk like that in...ever.
Richard closed the door then approached to circle him. “I thought that redhead would defuse you better than that.”
“What redhead?”
“Forgotten her already? You’re in worse condition than I thought.”
Rafael shook his head, struggling with the adrenaline crashing in his system. He had to get himself under control. Before he had a heart attack.
“How did you find out?” The word Richard had wanted to have with him must have been about Eliana’s true identity. Once Ferreira had descended on them, it had become redundant, and he’d left, letting him deal with it on his own.
“About your fantasy girl being Ferreira’s daughter? How didn’t you? Didn’t you investigate the man to death? The first thing you must have known about him was his family history.”
“I already knew his three sons from his first marriage. The youngest was my age. They were my best friends when we were in and out of each other’s homes, even after he divorced their mother two years before my abduction. I found out he remarried right after it and had a daughter with his second wife, who died three years later. So yes, I know everything about him, but I considered the details of his personal life irrelevant to my plans.”
“That’s the one flaw I see in your plan—that you don’t intend to incorporate damages to his personal life.”
“His children have nothing to do with his crimes.”
“Are you certain about that?”
“I’m certain they had
