Until Forever Ends: A Dark Mafia Romance

by Adelaide Forrest

  But so was Rafael.

  The lines of right and wrong were so blurred for him that all I could do was imagine him being the one hanging from the rafters while an enemy tortured him. "I can't do this," I whispered, drawing Rafe's eyes to me.

  He closed the distance between us, reaching up a hand to cup the back of my neck gently. He traced soothing circles against the skin there, working to calm me as his forehead touched mine and those glowing eyes danced right before my face. "You can," he said, reassuring me. "Do you want to be a pawn in the games of men?" He paused, his hand moving to wrap around the front of my throat. "Or do you want to be mi reina?"

  Staring up at him, I swallowed as I bit my lip. Indecision warred within me. For all his pushing, this was the moment where Rafael gave me the choice. He let me decide this one thing about my future, and I was so tired of being a pawn in the games other people played.

  I wanted to be a fucking Queen.

  I shoved down the impulse to run, nodding against his face slightly. When he was certain I was stable enough, he tossed the bat to the table at the edge of the shed and grabbed a loop of barbed wire off the wall. My heart stuttered as he unwound it, wrapping the length around Maxim's stomach three times. "Grab the wire cutters," he ordered, drawing me into his game. I nodded, moving to the wall and grabbing them off the hook where they hung. I paused just before I reached him, hesitating for only a moment and then cutting the wire in the place Rafe indicated. He grabbed the tail of the wire in his hands, ignoring the way the barbs tore the skin of his palms open and pulled it tight until they dug into the skin of Maxim's stomach.

  My hand involuntarily drifted down to the scar on my thigh, feeling more vulnerable with the reminder of the pain that had torn my leg open as a girl. Broken ribs and dislocated shoulder were a pain I didn't know. They were a pain I would hopefully never understand. The barbed wire was something I understood.

  Rafael picked up the bat again, slamming it into the wire wrapped around Maxim’s stomach until the barbs sunk deep and his skin turned an angry red as blood trickled out from the wounds. His eyes met mine as I forced back my horror and then he disappeared around the back of Maxim's body. "Usually I don't like my victims to be this subdued. It's much more entertaining when they fight," he grunted, the sound of the bat striking against bone resonated through the shed. "But I don't think my Isa is quite ready for that."

  "Fuck you," Maxim groaned, jerking against the restraints with his good arm when Rafael dropped the bat onto the table. He pulled a long hunting knife off the table slowly, gripping it so the blade itself faced out. He walked around Maxim's body, dragging the edge of the knife through his flesh and leaving a bloody trail in a line around his stomach. As he stepped around to the front of Maxim, he glared up at the man who slumped forward.

  "Should I tell my wife how you like to sell children into sexual slavery?" Rafael asked, tearing down the doubt I had regarding my involvement in his crime. "How you like to have your men impregnate women so you can tear the babies from their arms while they scream?" I reached down to touch my stomach, my fingers curling into the soft flesh. To the child that would be inevitable given Rafe's determination to get me pregnant. To think of someone taking that away from me was unimaginable, even if I hadn't thought I wanted children.

  I'd kill anyone who tried.

  Rafael turned back to me, something dancing behind his eyes that I was certain I wouldn't come to enjoy. "Show me your darkness, mi reina," he murmured, echoing the words he'd given me when he gave me the chance to take my freedom back. The chance to stab him in the heart and walk away from the life of death and destruction he offered me. He came to stand behind me. His blood-soaked hands stretched around me, wrapping me in his embrace as he lifted my hand to wrap around the hilt of the knife.

  With my breath caught in my lungs, Rafael's blood from the barbed wire covered my skin. He lifted my other hand, wrapping it around the hilt and covering me with his massive grip. The man hanging in front of me eyed the knife, dragging his eyes up to look at me as he barked out a sharp laugh. "You let your cunt of a wife do your wet work now, El Diablo?" he asked, wheezing as he tried to breathe through the pain of near dismemberment. His stomach sagged as if the skin was only one cut away from splitting in two.

  I shook my head as Rafe took the first step forward, bringing me closer and closer to the man he wanted me to kill. "I'm not you," I whispered.

  "You're right," Rafael murmured in my ear as we came to a stop. One of his men who had been lurking at the door to the shed positioned a metal chair beneath Maxim's body as Rafe nodded, another working to lower the restraints until he dropped into the chair with a thud. With him sitting in the chair in front of me, Rafael shuffled me forward a few more steps as Joaquin stepped up behind Maxim's chair and drew his arms up over his head. Restraining him while Rafe guided my hands to line the blade up to the left of Maxim's chest and parallel to the ground. "You're my Queen."

  He helped me slide the knife forward slowly, the tip popping through the resistance of his skin as Maxim groaned. A vision of Rafael's eyes stared back at me, framed in a little girl's round face as I thought about all the children he'd torn from their mothers. My hands slid forward slowly, sinking through flesh as Maxim gaped up at me in shock and held my gaze. I hit bone, his rib blocking the way as Rafael shifted me lower and helped me glide between his ribs.

  Maxim's eyes went slack as I drove forward, slowly puncturing his heart with the knife. I watched as the life bled from his eyes, his head dropping forward as his final breath wheezed out of his lungs.

  I dropped my grip on the handle, stumbling back into Rafe's body as he drew me into his arms and held my head against his chest. "There's mi reina," he murmured softly, swaying back and forth with me in his grip as I gripped his shirt in my blood-soaked hands and wept.

  For the girl I'd been. For the girl who would never exist again.

  El Diablo had been reborn in flames. Mi Reina had been reborn in water.

  But our love was born in blood.

  37

  Rafael

  Isa was silent as I guided her into the Mercedes, taking the driveway down to the docks. I gave her the little bit of time I knew she needed to process, knowing full well that I would push her and pull her out of the shell of her mind the moment we were on board. I guided her out of the Mercedes, taking her into the yacht wordlessly. The bedroom cabin called my name, and I hurried her inside it.

  She didn't so much as glance around the sleek white lines of the master cabin as I guided her through it and into the luxury bathroom. The black and white marble of the bathroom was stunning as I turned on the shower, helping a quiet Isa out of her blood-stained dress. "I killed him," she whispered as I untied the knot on the wrap. It fell away from her torso, revealing the smooth contours of her body in the white lace I'd set out for her before leaving El Infierno. I pushed the straps off her shoulders, letting the fabric pool at her feet. With the most intimate parts of her concealed in the innocence of white and the black heeled sandals on her feet, she'd have been stunning with those things alone.

  But the blood drying on her hands called to the devil inside me, wanting to see her bathed in it. I touched a hand to the white of her bra, leaving a red mark on the fabric. "You did," I agreed. While it might have started with me taking her along for the journey, pressing the knife against Maxim's heart, the end had been all Isa.

  She alone had dealt the killing strike.

  She shivered as I wrapped a hand around her back, unclasping her bra and drawing it off of her. She stood as I knelt at her feet and pulled the heels off her one by one, gliding my hands up her thighs and leaving a trail of red until I grasped her underwear in my grip and tugged them down her thighs. She stared down at me blankly, lost to the reality of what she'd done.

  Retreating further into her shell with every moment that passed.

  I stood and made quick work of stripping off my suit and shoes until I was as naked as Isa. Guiding her into t
he shower, I let the water work to pull her back to the moment. I stood in front of her, taking her hands in mine and working to wash the blood from her skin even though I liked it there.

  She watched the water run red as it flowed toward the drain, and it was only after my hands were free of blood that I grasped her chin and tilted her face up to mine. I leaned forward, teasing her lips with mine as I compelled her to come back to me. To accept who she was, because I sure as fuck did.

  If she could love the devil, then she could love the queen who completed him.

  She opened for me, letting me sweep inside and consume her with my kiss. I washed her body and her hair when I took breaks from kissing her, and then I pulled her out of the shower and dried her body. After I dried myself off, I lifted her into my arms and took her back to the bedroom, laying her out beneath me as I leaned into her space and rested my weight on my elbows.

  She stared into my eyes, her unique stare feeling heavy. "You turned me into a monster," she whispered. "I should be begging you to let me go. I should want to get away from you, even if only to save myself."

  I slid a hand into the side of her wet hair, running my thumb over her cheekbone as I smiled down at her. "You let me inside you," I murmured. "I took your innocence, and I corrupted you. I complicated you and made you mine. You think you can ever be free of me after all of that?" I asked, leaning forward to kiss her softly as the last pieces of the girl she'd been shattered beneath me while I watched. "I own your soul, mi reina, and you gave it to me willingly."

  I positioned my hips between her legs to get her to spread wider for me, gliding inside her slowly and watching her face ignite with pleasure as I filled her. She moaned lightly, biting her lip and drawing my attention to it. When my cock hit her cervix, she wrapped her legs around me and pulled me closer. Wrapping me up in her arms, she accepted the truth of my possession.

  She was mine fully in that moment, in a way she hadn't been before. She danced with the devil in the moonlight, lifting her hips to meet mine as I made love to her with slow, hard thrusts inside her. "I love you, mi reina," I murmured, watching as her eyes lit with the confession the moment she felt it.

  The moment she felt the truth to the words and understood that I meant more, because words would never be enough for what connected us.

  Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, her face softening as she considered the words. "I love you too, my devil," she whispered, stretching her head up to capture my mouth with hers. I leaned into her, giving her more of my weight as my thrusts turned harsher. Taking her hard and deep as she moaned into my mouth. Her nails raked down my back, scratching my skin as I bit her lip in return.

  She came, crying out her orgasm against my mouth as I rode her through it, watching as she came down from the high. As she settled and stared up at me while I moved inside her, I rolled to my back and kept us connected. She rose up on me, riding me slowly as my own orgasm loomed on the horizon.

  Watching my wife, my queen, roll her hips on my cock while her breasts bounced with the motion, I determined there'd never been a sexier sight. That when I died, that would be the image that stuck in my head. Her face looking down at me from beneath the curtain of wet hair, her hands pressed to my chest and knowing that only moments before they'd been soaked in the blood of my enemy.

  She was everything.

  I came inside her with a muffled groan as she leaned forward and took my mouth with hers, working me through my climax as her pussy contracted around me with her second orgasm and milked the cum from my balls.

  She collapsed against my chest, her body heaving with exertion. She'd sleep the entire way home, but first we'd need to get out of bed and say goodbye to my family.

  Then we'd go home, with Isa my willing wife for the first time, and not my captive.

  Isa chatted with my aunt in the kitchen while my cousins, uncle, and I discussed what she'd done with Maxim. They strongly disagreed with my insistence on involving her in the violence, but there was no denying that it had been exactly what she'd needed to understand me better.

  To connect the two halves of the man she'd married.

  I had no regrets, not even watching my uncle's frustrated face when he couldn't force me to see reason. Would I bring Isa along every time I needed to kill someone?

  Of course not. But now I knew she was capable of protecting herself. Of protecting our children when they came. She would do whatever it took to save them.

  "I've got to get Isa home," I said, glancing at the clock to see the late hour. She needed sleep, and it was already well past midnight. I looked over at the kitchen island where she'd been sitting and talking to Martina to find her gone. With a furrow to my brow, I stood and made my way over to my aunt. "Where's Isa?" I asked.

  "She went to the bathroom a few minutes ago," she said, pointing her finger down the hall. I followed her gaze, moving around the corner. I saw Isa immediately.

  She stood in the hallway, a picture frame in her hand that she'd pulled off the wall. I furrowed my brow, stepping up behind her as she blinked at it with something like shock on her face.

  "Do you know this man?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper as she pointed to the only man in the photo. He stood with my mother and I, one of the only portraits of us as a family before her death.

  After his death, I'd gotten rid of all the evidence of him from my home. I wanted nothing to do with Miguel Ibarra. I never wanted to look at his face again.

  So why did Isa look as if she'd seen a ghost?

  "That's my father," I admitted, taking the photo from her hands. I stared down at my mother's hesitant smile, at the signs of the abuse she'd already begun to suffer at my father's hands as his sanity faded away and he was lost to the intense paranoia that consumed him. He'd never been a good man or husband, but there was bad and then there was worse.

  "Your father?" she whimpered.

  I hung it back on the wall, turning back to Isa when I realized she hadn't moved except to stare up at the picture as her cheeks grew wet with sudden tears.

  "Princesa?" I asked, catching her chin with a delicate finger and forcing her to look at me. "What's wrong?"

  There was a pause as she stared at me, blinking back the tears that consumed her. Her breathing turned ragged, as if she was caught in a waking nightmare.

  "That's him," she whispered. "That's the man who threw me in the river."

  * * *

  Rafael & Isa’s story continues in Until Retribution Burns. Coming April 30th!

  >>Pre-Order Now.

  * * *

  Fall in love with a Bellandi? You can find Matteo, Ryker, and Enzo’s stories in Adelaide’s Bellandi Crime Syndicate series.

  >>Start with Bloodied Hands.

  Also by Adelaide Forrest

  Bellandi World Syndicate Universe

  Bellandi Crime Syndicate Series

  Bloodied Hands

  Forgivable Sins

  Grieved Loss

  Shielded Wrongs

  * * *

  Beauty in Lies Series

  Until Tomorrow Comes

  Until Forever Ends

  Until Retribution Burns - Coming soon

  Until Death Do Us Part - Coming soon

  * * *

  Insta-Love Novellas

  * * *

  The Men of Mount Awe Series

  Deliver Me from Evil

  * * *

  Kings of Conquest - Cowritten with Lyric Cox

  Claiming His Princess

  Stealing His Princess

 

 

 
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