Dishonorable

by Natasha Knight

  When I looked up, I saw how disheveled he looked, his tie askew, his shirt and suit splattered with what I assumed to be my blood. I laughed as one of his men kicked me again and again until I couldn’t see straight.

  “Get him out of here,” Moriarty finally said. I heard his chair creak under his weight.

  “I have a buyer,” I said as I was hauled upright. “You’re not getting her house, you disgusting prick.” I spat blood as I spoke, and I wasn’t sure he could even understand my words. “You will never have any part of her. I’ll kill you before that happens.”

  Damon drove me home, and Eric followed in Damon’s car. My head was spinning, my body hurt. I think I passed out once or twice. I glanced at Damon, remembering that look in his eyes, that resignation. Remembering his insistence that we leave.

  “Are you okay?” Damon asked.

  “Is it true?” I ignored his question.

  “Does it matter?”

  Fuck.

  My mother? With him? To pay off my father’s debt?

  “Did you know?” I asked.

  He ignored my question. “She’s dead,” he said. “He can say whatever he wants, and she can’t defend herself.”

  I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

  “He was trying to get a reaction out of you,” Damon continued.

  No. No fucking way.

  “Is it fucking true? Tell me. Say it.”

  But he didn’t have to say anything. All he had to do was look at me.

  “God. Fuck.” I pounded my fist against the dash, and pain shot up my arm. “You knew?”

  Damon returned his gaze to the road. “I found a diary she kept. In the chapel. I shouldn’t have read it. I wish I hadn’t.”

  “Why? Why did she—” I choked on the words, swallowing blood.

  “She felt like she had no choice. She knew he always resented her for choosing our father. Used that to get him out of debt. Dad didn’t deserve her.”

  “Is that why he beat her? He didn’t start with her until later.”

  “I think so. The timing fits. He must have found out.”

  “I thought it was because I fought back.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, Raphael. They’re both gone.”

  “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill the bastard.”

  “Maybe we have to think about the buyer. We may have no choice. I don’t want him to have the property even if it means we have to give it up to someone else.”

  I couldn’t respond. Instead, I opened the visor and flinched at my reflection. “Sofia’s going to freak.”

  “That’s why I’m taking you to the seminary first to get you cleaned up. We can’t cover up the bruises, but I can at least clean up the blood and get you a change of clothes.”

  We rode in silence, each of us lost in our thoughts, me trying to make sense of this. Him, well, I didn’t know.

  “Where’s the diary?” I asked him when we reached the seminary.

  He studied me.

  “Give it some time. If you want to see it after, I’ll give it to you. Not yet. Let’s deal with this first.” He opened the car door. “We’ll get you cleaned up and home. Sofia’s probably anxious.”

  Damon didn’t quite look at me after that. I suffered through a shower, wondering if they’d broken ribs when they’d kicked me, feeling bruised inside and out. He was right. I was anxious to get back to Sofia. It took all I had to sit still as he treated cuts and bruises before handing me a mirror.

  “Fuck. I look good.”

  “Yeah.”

  He helped me out to the car. “Don’t they wonder what the hell you’re up to?” I asked, gesturing to the brothers who stood watching from a distance. “You come home beat up. Then you bring me here beat up.”

  “Oh yeah. I keep things interesting around here.”

  Damon drove us home. I knew he’d called Sofia to warn her. When we pulled up to the house later that evening, she was waiting for me at the door. The minute she saw me, she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand, her eyes filling with tears.

  “I know, I’ve looked better.” I said, flinching as she tentatively touched me. “I wish I could say you should see the other guy.”

  “Take him upstairs,” Sofia said.

  “Bring me some whiskey,” I said as I headed to the stairs, offering Maria, who stood with her hands on her cheeks, tears streaking her face, a weak smile.

  I let them take care of me for one full week. Damon stayed at the house, and Sofia never left my side. And all the while, all that kept going through my head was my mother, my mother with that man.

  I wanted to kill him. I would fucking kill him.

  He called her a whore, but if what he said was true, he was a rapist. He extorted those humiliations from her. She was no whore. Her only sin was loving her family.

  But just alongside those thoughts, the image of Sofia kept appearing.

  Because ultimately, wasn’t I doing the same thing to her that Moriarty had done to my mother?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sofia

  Three weeks went by, and in that time, Raphael healed. I gave Damon my sister’s note and watched him when he took it. I don’t know if I made up the fact that his eyes seemed to sadden a little when he looked down at her neat little script.

  Damon returned to the seminary but came for dinner each night. Neither of them would tell me what happened that day, and Raphael grew more and more distant than ever. We hadn’t made love once, not even as he’d healed. And he’d even told me it was more comfortable for him to sleep on his own and sent me to my room.

  It was the end of the second week when I overheard Maria sending Eric to fetch Raphael from the chapel for dinner.

  “I can go,” I said. “I’ve been sitting around all day anyway.” I knew for sure now that he was avoiding me, so I headed toward the chapel. It was early evening, but the moon was bright. By now, I had a pretty good sense of the lay of the land. I saw a light on in the chapel, and although I wasn’t trying to approach it quietly, Raphael seemed so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear me when I came inside.

  I watched him for a few minutes. He knelt in the confessional, staining the wood. He had taken off his shirt, and sweat glistened on his tanned skin as he worked. The bruises had mostly healed, only dark spots remaining. I wondered if they were still tender and realized I hadn’t touched him in more than a week.

  “It’s late,” I said after clearing my throat to get his attention. “Maria has dinner ready.”

  Raphael looked up. He checked his watch and capped the can of the wood stain, then stood.

  We stared at each other for a few minutes.

  “I’m going to have to sell the house,” he said. “The land.”

  “But I thought—”

  “I gave the attorney the go-ahead today.”

  “Oh...” I hadn’t even realized he’d been thinking about it this seriously. “Are you okay?”

  He scratched his head and went to the front of the church to sit in the pew. I followed and sat by his side, sliding my hand into his.

  He bit the inside of his cheek, his eyes on the altar. “My mom loved this place. It was sacred to her.”

  I watched him.

  “I never understood it. She came here a lot, especially the last year. I thought—after finding out my father was beating her—I thought that was why.” He scratched his head. “But I don’t think it was anymore.”

  “What happened that day with Moriarty?”

  He looked at me, his eyes intense on my face as if he’d draw everything from me.

  “I think my father was punishing her for her betrayal.”

  “Betrayal?”

  “His perceived betrayal. She tried to get Moriarty to forgive his debt. Succeeded once.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He turned back to the altar, his face resembling stone. “She fucked him. That’s how she paid it off.”

  “Wha
t?” Raphael just kept staring straight ahead.

  “It makes sense, you know? He had never raised a hand to her before the end. He must have found out.”

  “Is that what Moriarty told you? Because men like him, they lie, Raphael. They’re hateful monsters.”

  He shook his head. “Damon confirmed it. He’d found a diary of hers.”

  “Then she had no choice. She couldn’t have.”

  He turned to me again. “I know that. That’s not… Don’t you get it, Sofia?”

  I looked at him, confused, the pain in his eyes making my heart hurt.

  “How is what I’m doing to you different?” he asked.

  “Raphael.” It took me a few minutes to process his words.

  He pushed my hand away, stood, and went to the altar, where he set his hand on it, touching the crucifix. Almost caressing it.

  “I’ve made a whore out of you, haven’t I?”

  He didn’t look at me.

  “I just keep repeating history, act for act.”

  That caress suddenly changed, and in one quick, violent tug, he pulled the crucifix from the wall.

  “Act for fucking act.”

  He threw it across the chapel, slamming it into the far wall, where it fell and broke in two, the plaque of inscription, INRI, sliding to the far corner.

  “Raphael.” I stood and took hold of his arm as he gripped the broken tabernacle door and tore it off its hinges. “Stop.”

  I couldn’t stop him. He pulled the other door off, exposing the empty interior where communion would once have been stored.

  I pulled harder on his arm. “Look at me.”

  He wouldn’t.

  “Look at me, damn it!”

  He did, but only when I managed to squeeze myself between him and the altar.

  “What that man did to your mother is different. It’s not us.” I shook him, forcing him to face me. “After all, how can you make a whore out of someone who is willing?”

  He studied me, his eyes more defeated than angry. He stepped backward, his shoulders slumping. I shook my head and cupped his face.

  “No. You can’t do this. The memory of your mother is sacred, Raphael. Don’t let that man taint it with his lies.”

  “They’re not lies, though, Sofia. Don’t you get it? And you? I’ve made you my whore.”

  “Then fuck me.”

  “Go back to the house, Sofia,” he said, shoving me away.

  “No. Fuck me. Fuck your whore.” I said, growing more and more angry myself.

  “I said go.”

  He took my arm roughly and physically moved me away.

  “No. You can’t do this! I won’t let you!” I yelled, getting back into his space, my hands on either side of his face. I just needed to get him back, to draw him back to this moment, here and now, from whatever hell he’d bound himself to. “You think you’re the only one with demons?”

  “Go!”

  “You think you’re the only one who suffers?”

  “I said—”

  “Fuck what you said. And fuck you! You brought me here. You married me. And I think you care about me more than you’re willing to admit, but you won’t let yourself have that, will you? You can’t do it. And you don’t want me to have it either. Well, fuck you, Raphael Amado. I’m taking it!”

  I pulled his belt apart and undid the top button of his jeans.

  His hands covered mine, but he didn’t stop me.

  “That’s what you want?”

  He leaned down, his face an inch from mine.

  “You want a good, hard fuck? You miss my cock inside you?”

  He spun me around, bending me forward and slapping my hands hard on the altar.

  “Keep them there. Don’t fucking move.”

  I gasped as he undid my shorts and tore them and my panties down and off, then shoved my tank top up and pushed my bra beneath my breast, so that when he bent me all the way over, the cold stone of the altar made me shudder.

  “Ra—”

  But before I could even speak his name, he was inside me. He leaned over me and thrust in hard.

  “You want to be fucked?”

  His breath was hot against the side of my face.

  “You want my cock in your pussy? You want me to make you come?”

  I let out a groan as he thrust.

  “Like a whore? Here? Before your God? Here, bent over his holy altar?”

  It should have felt wrong. I thought it would. This sacred place, us doing this in this holy place.

  But Raphael’s hands closed over the backs of mine, and he dragged my arms out to the sides and pinned me to the altar, and nothing had ever felt more right. He needed this. And I needed him close to me. I needed him inside me. It was the only way to reach him, to drag him out of his hell.

  “You don’t even know the half of it, Sofia.”

  His voice was hoarse against my ear, and my breath caught when his fingers pinched my clit.

  “I don’t care,” I managed, closing my eyes. Taking him. Letting him take me. Own me. “I don’t care. I love you.”

  He suddenly stilled, his cock buried deep inside me.

  I didn’t turn around. I didn’t need to, because I could imagine his face. I could imagine his shock.

  “I love you,” I said again, not caring.

  Finally, I craned my neck to look back.

  “You don’t know what I planned to do,” he said, pulling out. He stepped away from me. I turned. He pulled his jeans back up over his erection.

  “Raphael?” But he’d gone back into his hell, and there wasn’t room for me there.

  “Would you still say that if you knew? If you knew the amount of damage I intended to do to you?”

  “Stop. Look at me. Just look at me. I’m here. Right here. You don’t need to do this.”

  He stumbled backward. “When I made the deal with your grandfather to let your sister stay, he wanted five percent of what I’d take. I agreed, but maybe he thought it was too easy. That I didn’t suffer enough.”

  He sat down again in the same pew, almost falling into it. I went to him and knelt before him, my hands on his lap, holding his hands. His eyes—even though he was physically here, he was so far away. Too far for me to reach.

  “I already know that story,” I said quietly, my vision blurred from unshed tears.

  “That’s when he asked for the sheets to prove we’d consummated. He knew already. He knew you’d become a weakness. My weakness.”

  Watching him, watching his eyes, I knew there was more. And it wasn’t good.

  “I didn’t do it, though. I burned them. He never saw the sheets.”

  “You did?”

  “I still wonder why he did that. Why he asked for that one thing. And all I could think of was that he didn’t believe I’d go through with it. Maybe he hoped you’d say no. Stop me. End this. I don’t know.” He paused. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll say the marriage wasn’t consummated. We can have it annulled.”

  “What?” I asked, stunned.

  “What matters is what I decided after that day.”

  Could he even hear me? I shuddered, suddenly chilled, and hugged my arms around myself.

  “My thirst for revenge, my hatred for him, it overrode all else.”

  “What did you decide?” I asked, my voice small. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t.

  He finally looked down at me, and with his thumb, he wiped away a tear. I closed my eyes and leaned into his palm, at least for a moment, missing this. Missing how tender he could be, so opposite his violence. His burning rage.

  I opened my eyes when he next spoke.

  “I wonder if after I tell you, you’ll still think you love me.”

  “Tell me.”

  He caressed my cheek for a moment more, then drew his hand away. He wouldn’t let me hold it again.

  “I was going to burn down the Guardia estate. Turn it to ash.”

  I froze, staring up at him, at this stranger who, day after day,
while he made love to me, plotted this destruction? This betrayal? This wouldn’t just impact me. It meant my sister’s inheritance too. Her birthright. Her future.

  “You have no right.”

  “I considered driving the company into the ground, at least with my half of it. But then he made that deal, and he thought he had me. But I’d rather have destroyed you than allow him to win. His losing was more important to me than you.”

  I shook my head. “You keep saying was. You’re talking like it’s past.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see?”

  “Raphael, what you thought then, what you wanted to do then, it doesn’t matter. It’s all changed. Everything has. What that man did to your mother…” I shook my head. “That’s nothing like us. You’re not a monster. And I love you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Raphael

  She thought she loved me.

  Moriarty’s rage was real. His hatred for me, it was because I was my father’s son. He didn’t care about the money he felt he was owed. That didn’t matter. What he wanted was the decimation of my family. Because that was the only way he could have his revenge. Revenge against my mother for not having chosen him. Revenge against my father for being the one she had loved. The one she had chosen.

  He wanted the house, the land, to destroy it.

  I knew now he would stop at nothing. My life, it was forfeit. But hers? I couldn’t let him destroy her because of me.

  I watched Sofia’s sweet face, her trusting, innocent, hopeful eyes. She believed she loved me. The thing was, the moment she’d said it, I’d known it too. I’d loved her for a long time now.

  And that was exactly why I had to let her go.

  I hardened my face and stood.

  She remained kneeling at my feet.

  “There’s just one problem, Sofia. I don’t love you.” How my voice carried the power it did, I had no idea. And when I saw her face as she processed my words, I had to steel my heart not to reach down and wrap my arms around her, hold her to me, tell her I was lying. That I did love her. Give her that truth I’d promised her she’d always have with me.