plush seat, facing him.
As Raiden buckled his seat belt with a bedeviling look in his slanting eyes, Rafael’s aggravation shot to maximum again.
“I would,” he snarled, “if your damn pilot picked a route where I got cellular coverage.”
Raiden aka Lightning had asked him to accompany him to Tokyo five days ago. He’d had the biggest lead yet in his quest to establish his bloodline and he needed him to examine records that couldn’t be moved out of their institutes and temples and to come up with a pattern. He had. And Raiden had finally uncovered his legacy.
Rafael had only uncovered the meaning of agony.
Richard’s prediction about time worsening his condition had come to pass. But then, hadn’t it always been that bad? It was now a full month since he’d met Eliana, and he was fully submerged.
Since he’d left her side, he’d called her a dozen times per day. Given the opportunity, he would have had her on speakerphone all day. Would have had her on webcam all night.
Then came the torture of the twenty-four hour flights from and back to Rio. For twelve of those, cellular transmission was cut. Being unable to call her for that long frayed his nerves. On the outbound flight, he’d managed to rein in his discomfort. Now, he was going ballistic.
Raiden had remained respectful of his agitation at first. But now he was outright making fun of his condition.
“My pilot says there should be transmission any time now.” Raiden smoothed back the hair he’d cut short for the first time in his life, in preparation for entering the conservative upper crust of Japanese society. “But you still can’t turn on your phone, since we’re starting our descent.”
Rafael hurled at him an infuriated glance. “Why are you talking when you don’t have something useful to say?”
“Whoa, Numbers.” Raiden grinned, stretching his long legs, the eyes he knew froze people in their tracks twinkling with mischief. “You were the last one, after Richard and Numair, that I thought I’d ever see in this state over a woman.”
“And in this state, I’m liable to do things the Numbers you know wouldn’t. So shut up, Lightning.”
Raiden didn’t shut up. Not until Rafael hurled state-of-the-art headphones at his thick skull. He outright guffawed then.
Caring nothing about their descent, Rafael had his phone out and turned on. Hands shaking with inexplicable and all-encompassing anxiety, he accessed his voice mail. There was one from Eliana.
Then the message began.
“Rafael...I—I’ve been in an accident.... They’re taking me to Copa D’or Hospital. Oh, God...where are you?”
A loud clattering noise followed, as if she’d dropped the phone.
Then there was nothing more.
Rafael lost his mind.
With every heartbeat, he lost it again and again.
Eliana’s phone was out of service. She wasn’t in Copa D’Or, the hospital that was flooded with casualties in the aftermath of the accident.
A dump truck exceeding the allowed height had smashed into a pedestrian bridge, which had collapsed onto dozens of cars in the morning rush hour. Four people were killed. Dozens had injuries ranging from minor to critical. He turned the place upside down looking for her, questioned everyone. No one could report on Eliana’s condition. Or where she’d gone.
Richard believed this meant she was well enough to walk out on her own. But the only thing that mattered to Rafael was that he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t protect her. His men and Richard’s were combing the streets and had already looked in all the places she could be. She wasn’t at her apartment or at her father’s villa in Copacabana or his offices. Neither was her father, who Rafael belatedly remembered was back in San Francisco. And the damn man’s phone was out of service, too.
Long past his wits’ end, he charged over to the last place he could think of. His mansion.
Of her usual haunts, it was the farthest away from the hospital, more than a two-hour drive in this traffic. And there was no reason she should go there with him out of town and with her own apartment only twenty minutes away. But he had nowhere else to try.
Feeling the world crumbling around him, he arrived at his mansion just after dusk. The guards said no cars had come near the gates. And the mansion was empty since he’d given everyone time off while he was away.
He still tore through the mansion roaring for her. Then he exploded into his bedroom...and almost keeled over.
She was on his bed.
Curled on her side with her back to the door, her hair was a wild mass of loose curls rioting across his pillow. Her pastel green skirt suit was ripped in places and smudged in soot and blood.
And she wasn’t moving.
Feeling like he had when he’d had too many brutal punches to the head, he staggered toward her, heartbeats shredding his arteries.
He crashed to his knees beside the bed, terror razing through him.
He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t discover that she...she...
No. She was all right. She’d come all the way here. She must just be exhausted from the ordeal....
But she was so still. As if she wasn’t breathing.
Throat sealing shut with panic, his tongue swelled, twisted on butchered pleas. “Eu imploro, por favor, meu amor...Eliana, I beg you please...wake up.”
Nothing happened. No response. And he knew.
If she didn’t wake up, he didn’t want to live.
With the new certainty, knowing he wouldn’t suffer long without her if she weren’t with him anymore, he finally had the strength to reach out and touch her.
His shaking hand closed over her neck. And before a heartbeat could reanimate him, her heat devastated him.
Warm, hot, and she...she...
She opened her eyes.
“Rafael...”
That tremolo was a thousand volts to his heart, reanimating it after it had shriveled. And he was all over her, his hands everywhere, exposing her flesh, gliding over every inch, making sure all of her was intact, was functioning...was there.
A maddened beast rumbled in his gut at every bruise and graze he found. It dismantled his mind all over again that he’d been unable to prevent her injuries and was now unable to erase them. His lips documented each and every one, tried to soothe and seal them, pouring litanies of regret all over her for failing to do so.
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