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  Bennett stared at him with intelligent, mildly amused eyes and lowered his hand. “I’m not surprised. Sophia reports she hasn’t conversed with you in years.”

  “Do you blame me?” Sophia observed, a slight note of censure coloring her tone. She moved to Bennett’s side and glared haughtily at Rafael. “He doesn’t exactly invite a warm, newsy exchange, does he?”

  Viewing the two of them together caused Rafael’s stomach to clench in protest. Though he knew she could never belong to him, the thought of her being with another man was nearly intolerable. Forcing his muscles to relax, he donned a grim smile that felt more like a baring of his teeth. “Sophia abandoned her father when he needed her most,” he said, seeking refuge in harsh words and anger. “We haven’t had much reason to speak since then.”

  “What Raf fails to mention is that—”

  A large, somberly clad family crowded into the vestibule, reminding them all of the occasion that had precipitated this uncomfortable reunion.

  “Dolores?” Rafael interrupted as he turned to the housekeeper. He schooled his features into the inscrutable mask of calmness he always wore and offered her his arm. “Shall we find our seats?”

  Dolores, who’d watched the entire tableau with a worried expression, pursed her lips and nodded before accepting his crooked elbow. “Of course. Father Rapetti said the front left pew is reserved for us.”

  “Good,” he said as he ushered Dolores toward the doors to the sanctuary.

  “Wait,” Dolores said as she turned aside to collect Sophia and Bennett. “Come,” she said, beckoning them forward with one hand. “Join us.”

  “That’s all right,” Sophia hedged, her blue gaze flitting from the gathering mourners to Dolores and Rafael and then back again. “Alexander and I can just sit in—”

  “Nonsense,” Dolores said as she reached for Sophia’s hand. “You’re his daughter. You belong up front with us.”

  Rafael watched Dolores as she tried to convince Sophia, his chest heating with anger. “Dolores. Don’t. She shouldn’t be with us,” he said, tipping his head toward Sophia. “She knows it as well as we do.”

  “Raf!” sputtered Dolores. “Sophia didn’t—”

  “Turino wouldn’t even want her here, let alone in the front pew.”

  Sophia’s lush mouth flattened. “You know what, Dolores? You’re right.” She looped her free hand through Bennett’s arm and dragged him forward. “I am his daughter. And I think we will sit up front with you. Thank you.”

  “No,” Rafael growled. “It’s an insult to even pretend—”

  “Hold up there,” interjected Bennett, “funerals aren’t just about the person who has passed on. They’re for the survivors who are left behind. They’re intended to be a family’s last forum for healing and forgiveness.”

  Rafael turned to glare at the interfering idiot, the urge to plow his fist into the pretty boy’s pleasant, condescending face exploding inside him. It required supreme effort to keep his hands at his sides and away from the bastard’s imperious neck. “With all due respect, Alexander, no one asked for your opinion.”

  The blond bristled, straightening to his full height and squaring off in front of Rafael. “I’ll have you know, I—”

  “Stop it,” hissed Sophia as she moved to lift a hand to each of their chests. “Both of you. This is not the place or time to debate the issue. Let’s just get through this without creating a scene. Please.”

  Rafael was excruciatingly aware of the press of her small, warm palm against his sternum, and he wanted to yank her away from the interloper who stared at him with flared nostrils and arched brows.

  “Nobody has the right to talk to you that way, Sophia,” Bennett reminded her, a note of pique sharpening his voice.

  “You’re right,” she soothed as she tipped her head toward him and offered a soft smile. “But Raf is upset and grieving. We can grant him a little leeway.”

  Rafael did not like the patronizing tone of her voice, nor did he care for the way she rounded on him with a frown. “However, you are being impossibly rude to Alexander, for no reason other than because you’re angry with me. That is not acceptable.”

  Scowling, he merely glared right back.

  “I don’t care how protective you are of Papa’s wishes or how much you regret what happened last night,” she snapped as she poked him in the chest with one pointed finger. “You don’t attack my friends.”

  He stiffened while Dolores and Bennett grew suddenly alert.

  “What happened last night?” Bennett asked in a low voice as he lifted a hand to Sophia’s shoulder and pulled her around to face him. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Of course not,” she said as she tossed another caustic glance toward Rafael. “We simply had an argument about my unexpected return.”

  “An argument?” repeated Bennett. “Who could possibly argue with an angel like you?”

  Sophia’s features softened as she smiled at Bennett. “My point exactly.” But a scowl reclaimed her golden brows when she returned her focus to Rafael. “Both Alexander and I will remain here until the funeral is over, whether you agree with our presence or not. And we will sit in the front pew. Deal with it. You being rude will only make things more unpleasant for all of us.”

  As if he cared one iota about making things pleasant for any of them.

  Dolores turned to place a tentative hand upon Rafael’s rigid arm. “Raf? May I speak with you for a moment in private?”

  The moment they were out of hearing range, Dolores rounded on Rafael. “What on earth is wrong with you?”

  Angry and aroused and frustrated with his inability to reign in his emotions, Rafael snapped, “She shouldn’t be here.”

  “She’s his daughter,” she scolded, reminding him of the truth with mild exasperation. “And she has a right to be here. Why are you being so difficult?”

  “Turino wouldn’t want her here.”

  “Well, Turino was a stubborn, narrow-minded fool, God rest his soul. And I can’t believe you want to deny Sophia her final chance to say goodbye to the father who virtually abandoned her.”

  “She’s the one who left,” he argued mulishly.

  “It doesn’t matter. It happened. It can’t be changed. Nothing good can come from provoking Sophia and her nice colleague. It won’t make you any less angry and it certainly won’t bring Turino back.”

  “Bennett shouldn’t be here.”

  “Why not? He’s her friend.”

  “I don’t like the way he looks at her,” he said fiercely.

  “Sophia’s a beautiful woman, as much as you pretend not to notice,” Dolores reminded him with a cluck of her tongue. “It’s only natural that she’d have an admirer or two.”

  Rafael scowled. “He’s too old for her.” Dolores’s brow furrowed with her perplexed frown. “He’s no older than you.”

  “Exactly.”

  She cocked her graying head as she studied his face. “Surely, you don’t begrudge her a bit of happiness and support from a man who’s obviously in love with her?”

  An abrupt lurch of his lungs made Rafael feel like he’d run headlong into a low-lying branch. But he breathed through it, keeping his expression unaffected and calm. “Of course I don’t,” he forced himself to say.

  “Alexander Bennett is a good man and he’s been a good friend to Sophia.” She shot him a pointed glance. “Unlike you, apparently.”

  “I never claimed to be her friend,” he muttered.

  “You certainly like to act that way,” she concurred with a disappointed frown. “But I know better. Why would you want to make Sophia believe her friendship never meant anything to you?”

  “It didn’t,” he lied.

  “Fine. You were never friends. But now she’s back. Would it kill you to welcome her for the few hours that she is here?”

  Yes.

  “I’ll be civil. It’s the best I can offer.”

  Less than a week later, Rafael stood at Turino’s grave wit
h his fists knotted hard beside his thighs and his gut twisted up tight beneath his ribs. Staring at the polished marble stone and the fresh mounded earth, which was already dotted with grass and small white flowers, he grappled with emotions he didn’t wish to feel. Betrayal. Hurt. Anger.

  Guilt.

  And fear. Fear most of all.

  Sucking in a breath, he closed his eyes and relived the awful, unexpected shock of hearing Turino’s will.

  How could he have been so wrong about the man to whom he owed everything?

  How could he have been so wrong about her?

  Rafael thought he’d known Dante Turino better than any person on Earth. He thought he’d understood the big, gruff man’s cold rejection of his only daughter. Rafael had known Turino’s resistance to change, the finality of his decisions, his capacity to carry a grudge. He’d lived with the man’s bullish personality, his stubborn commitment to a path once he’d stepped upon it, for close to two decades. There was no negotiating with Turino. Ever. He never admitted his mistakes. Never revisited a decision once it had been made.

  So why now?

  Why had he done it?

  Rafael remembered his mentor as he’d last seen him. Turino, silent and pale within his network of tubes and needles, had been reduced to a weak invalid who was nothing like the big American who’d saved Rafael’s life so many years before. Having their roles reversed and watching his mentor struggle for breath had made Rafael feel off-kilter, disoriented and infuriatingly incapable of making things right again.

  “Turino?” he’d whispered as he’d leaned to touch the man’s rawboned shoulder.

  Turino had shifted on his adjustable bed and slowly dragged his eyes open. “Raf,” he’d said through cracked lips. “You’re here.”

  “Where else would I be?” Rafael had forced an encouraging smile. “Dolores said you were asking for me.”

  Turino’s eyelids had slid closed again while his hand groped blindly for Rafael’s wrist.

  Rafael had moved to accommodate him, pressing his palm over the back of Turino’s hand and bending low over his cracked, moving lips. “What is it?” he’d asked.

  “Promise me …” Turino’s voice drifted to silence while he struggled for breath.

  “Anything.”

  Distress had pulled at the corners of Turino’s mouth and his closed eyelids had trembled as he’d soundlessly repeated the words.

  “I promise,” Rafael had urged, his heart contracting with worry. “Just tell me.”

  “Good boy … So glad …” He’d hauled in a shallow breath and his grip had tightened like talons upon Rafael’s arm. “Dying. I need to …”

  A prickling sense of fear had rippled beneath the surface of Rafael’s skin. “You’re not dying.”

  “Yes …” Turino’s low voice had been terrifyingly earnest. A rattle of breath, too thin to possibly keep anyone alive for long, had fueled his next words with feeble, thready strength. “Too late. I want …”

  “It’s not too late.” Panic had built within Rafael’s chest, making his ribs feel too small to contain the rising alarm as Turino’s head lolled listlessly to the side. Rafael had shaken Turino’s shoulder, his voice sharp. “You can fight this, damn it. Stay with me.”

  His demand had been met with the horrible, inescapable whine of a machine, its single, high-pitched tone proclaiming Turino’s exit from the world with more finality than a death knell. For several long seconds, Turino’s hand had retained its grip upon Rafael’s wrist, until, all at once, it had relaxed and fallen to the white mattress.

  “Nurse!” Rafael had screamed, a keening denial crowding close on the heels of his call for help.

  In the frenzy of activity and funeral preparations that had followed, Raf had spent little time trying to make sense of Turino’s disjointed last words. It wasn’t until the reading of Turino’s will that everything had clicked into place. Promise me.

  And he’d promised.

  Never knowing what he’d promised to do, he’d promised.

  Plowing his hand through his hair, Rafael stared down at the damp ground and swallowed back the lump of guilt clotting his throat.

  He couldn’t do it.

  No matter that Turino had wanted it, no matter that the stubborn man had finally forgiven Sophia her betrayal. No matter the promise he’d made to the only man who’d ever given a damn about him. He couldn’t.

  Just thinking of it, Rafael was catapulted back to the day he’d awoken on Turino lands, to the day his harsh life of pain and degradation had been replaced by one of purpose and acceptance.

  Before that day, hunger and fear had been Rafael and his little brother Paolo’s constant companions. Raised in one casabre after another, trying to sleep in grimy closets while the muffled grunts of Mamãe and her clients kept them awake, eating food they scavenged from restaurant garbage, and never, ever complaining when a customer kicked at them with his pointed boots, Paolo and Rafael had learned to survive without any expectation of softness or kindness. They learned to act like the ratos de esgoto they were, to lie, fight and steal from the privileged and wealthy who occasionally deigned to skirt the edges of their decaying neighborhood.

  They’d have continued to adulthood on the same path had their mother not sold them to o homem rico with yellow hair, cold hands and even colder eyes. Mamãe had promised that things would be better, that the rich man would feed them and dress them in fine clothes.

  Like so many other times in her depraved life, Mamãe had been wrong.

  Rafael had thought he’d known fear before, but when his new owner tied them down and then proceeded to brand them with his mark of ownership, the stench of burning flesh and the sound of his brother’s screams were forever imprinted in his mind.

  A year later, after finding little Paolo’s lifeless body broken and abused, Rafael had known a rage so fierce it had turned his soul black. He had no goodness inside him anymore. It had died the day he’d failed to save his brother. And he’d become a monster, blind to conscience, when he’d attacked the man who’d sacrificed both their souls.

  It wasn’t until the monster had fallen, his head hitting the marble floor with a sickening crack, that Rafael realized what he’d done. Panicked, he’d run. He’d run until his lungs burned and his bare feet were cut and bleeding. He didn’t remember falling, didn’t remember much of anything until he awoke several days later in a richly appointed room he didn’t recognize.

  He’d never lain in a bed before, never felt anything softer than hard concrete beneath his back. He’d tried to rise, but failed, the edges of his vision turning black as pain assailed him. Collapsing back against the white mattress, he hissed a furious, impotent breath through his teeth.

  “Lie still,” a strange man with a gruff voice said, pressing a wide, cool hand against his shoulder. “You’ll rip open your stitches.”

  Much later, Rafael learned the large man—he called himself Turino—had found him collapsed at the side of the road, unconscious and covered in his own blood. The stranger was tall and broad, and possessed a manner so suspiciously pragmatic that Rafael stiffened defensively whenever he came in the room. He didn’t trust the stranger’s big hands, the medicines he tried to coax him to take. He wanted nothing from the man who insisted on saving him. He didn’t want to be saved. He didn’t deserve to live, and so he refused every overture the man made, trading snarling hostility and fury for bandages and broths and medicine.

  Rafael spoke only one time, when the man had asked about the brand upon his right flank, the overlapping letters of ridged flesh spelling out escrivo in Portuguese.

  “Who did this to you?”

  “A demon,” he’d answered through clenched teeth. “When he made me one of his minions.”

  “Of course,” the man had said in a calm voice. “I believe I might have a cure for that.”

  Stupid tolo, Rafael had thought. As if there were any cure besides death for one with a soul as dark as his.

  As soon as he cou
ld move without losing consciousness, he started making plans to leave. There was nothing for him here, no reason to stay in the home of this random stranger who’d saved him. And despite the kindness Turino had shown him, Rafael knew he didn’t deserve softness or safety. Not after the way he’d failed to protect Paolo.

  The day after his fever had broken, Rafael waited until Turino had headed out to the fields and the fat housekeeper had departed for her daily trip to the market, before he slowly sat up. The pain of movement made him wince, but he dressed in the cleaned and mended clothing that had been left for him on the nightstand beside a glass of water. The worn denims and thin, gray shirt smelled like this place, like sun and earth and safety and acceptance.

  He hated it.

  But the clothes were his only possessions, the only things he could claim as his own.

  He moved with painstaking slowness, his healing body protesting every arduous motion. Ignoring the pounding headache that tightened his scalp and the stabbing pain in his feet, he forced himself to continue his preparations to leave. He shoved the containers of medicine into the white pillowcase he’d taken from the bed, rationalizing that Turino would have no need of them after he was gone. He hated that he needed the crutch of drugs, but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe he could finish healing without them.

  After the eternity it took for him to dress, he took a moment to rest, grappling with the dual desires to escape and simply give up the fight altogether. Cocking his head, he listened for sounds of movement, a small, unacknowledged part of himself hoping for interference.

  None came.

  When he was sure no one was around to stop him, he placed his battered feet on the floor and forced himself to stand. Spikes of pain arrowed up his legs and blackness claimed the edges of his vision. Gasping, he sank back down to the mattress, gripping its edge while his head sank low between his bowed shoulders.

  Cristo, he hurt.

  “What are you doing?” a small voice asked from the opened doorway.

  He turned to face the door with a snarl, unprepared for both the question and the company. “Go away.”