by Olivia Gates
There was nothing he could do but continue to love her and hope time would prove to her what pledges never could.
* * *
Ellie rushed through Rafael’s expansive, exquisite mansion, inspecting the guest suites for readiness.
The wedding was tomorrow. And her half brothers were flying in from the States, while all of Rafael’s brothers were coming over for the wedding rehearsal. They’d all be spending the night in the mansion.
Rafael had left it up to her to distribute their guests. He continued to give her carte blanche with everything. Not that this made her feel anywhere near the lady of the mansion. While before she’d felt at least at home here, she now felt like a trespasser, and wondered if that feeling would ever go away.
For now she had to focus on making sure everything was ready for their families’ arrival. She’d assigned the poolside suites to them. Some of the suites had panoramic views of the ocean, gardens, waterfalls and the hillside plunging deeply into Ferradura Bay. Others were tucked away, opened to the lush botanical gardens, sparkling lagoons and cascading waterfalls.
But none had the stunning three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views, open-air shower, sundeck and spa of Rafael’s master suite. What used to be theirs, and would be so again starting tomorrow night.
But how could she share his personal space and bed again? Although he’d said he’d consider new evidence, how could she possibly find any? And even with him putting his revenge plans on hold, what kind of life would they have with all of this between them? His initial duplicity, his unresolved animosity toward her father, her unabated fear he’d act on it?
Unable to think any further than today, she went about the mind-emptying chores of stocking all the suites with Rafael’s legion of hired help.
Starting tomorrow night, the rest of her life as Rafael’s wife and the mother of his child would begin. And the idea struck her at once with joy...and despondence.
* * *
In the southern gardens overlooking the Atlantic, Rafael stood watching Eliana as she walked toward him down the aisle with her father, the man who’d sentenced him to hell.
It was only a rehearsal. Only the people who had a role in the ceremony were there. Others, like her half brothers and Ferreira’s PA, Isabella Da Costa, would be coming tomorrow. But everything with her always felt like the real thing. The only thing that mattered.
And as she approached him in her flowing pistachio dress, her hair swept up in that ponytail it had become one of his life’s keenest pleasures to undo, he felt his being well up with love for her.
Her eyes embraced his all the way, so much emotion filling them. He was beside himself being unable to read it all. Then she was a breath away, and that man he’d hated for so long, even before he’d known his identity, was giving him her hand.
He looked at Ferreira for a long moment...and suddenly realized.
He was no longer angry.
He no longer cared about anything. Nothing mattered to him anymore. Nothing but her.
Though this rehearsal was about going through the motions, getting the sequence flowing smoothly, and he wouldn’t be saying his actual vows until tomorrow, he couldn’t wait until then to share his epiphany with her.
So he took her hands to his lips, to his heart. “Eliana, my every answer to my every prayer...I’m letting go of everything, my heart. I cling only to your love, want nothing but your happiness and peace of mind, meu coração.”
* * *
Rafael’s pledge had been the last thing Ellie had expected from him. It had been reverberating inside her ever since, knocking down every barrier, ending every uncertainty.
Unable to wait to be alone with him, she gazed at him as the rehearsal came to an end, her heart shedding its sluggish despondence, back to the hammering of anticipation.
As he hugged another three men, the rest of his brothers—minus one all were loath to talk about—she couldn’t really see anything but him.
Dressed in all black, he’d lost weight in the past two weeks. It only made him seem taller, his shoulders and chest even wider in comparison to the sparser waist and hips. His face was hewn to sharper planes and angles, his skin a darker, silkier copper, intensifying the luminescence of his eyes. The discreet silver in his luxurious raven hair, that testament to his absolute love, added the last touch of allure.
Then she was swept up in his arms among his brothers’ hoots and hollers that he was disgracing them by anticipating the wedding night. Not in a condition to be embarrassed, she clung to him all the way to their quarters.
But the moment he placed her on the bed and came down beside her, her disquiet returned.
Twisting her ponytail around his wrist, harnessing her by it, ferocity barely leashed by gentleness, he tilted up her face. “No more distance, minha vida, ever again.”
“That’s not it...I just—just... Oh, God, please, Rafael, show me your evidence against my father.”
His face settled in adamant lines. “I have given this up. I consider anything I’ve been through the path to finding you. You remember when you said you’d compensate me? Finding you is more compensation than I’ve ever dreamed I could have.”
“But what you have against him is airtight, right?”
“This is what I was afraid of, for your faith in him to be irrevocably damaged, causing you this much pain.”
Her chest ached, her eyes burned. “Everything in me rebels against believing any such thing of my father, but it isn’t why I’m in agony. It’s for you. What you suffered was unthinkable.”
“It’s in the past.”
“But this is the present and future. How can I share my life and body and baby with you if there’s even the slightest possibility my father committed such an unforgivable crime against you? Even if he had done so under unspeakable duress? Throwing you in hell while he lavished his love on me?” She released a shuddering breath. “Even if you’ve decided to look the other way for my sake and that of our lives together, I can’t. I can’t live believing one of the two people my life has been built around did the other such unimaginable injury, for whatever reason.”
After a long moment, he said, “Do you believe in your heart your father didn’t do it—or at least was forced to do it somehow?”
She nodded. “But I can’t even begin to think how this could have happened.”
“Then that’s it. I’m now ready to disbelieve anything but the verdict of your heart. It’s never wrong. That heart saw through the hatred cloaking mine, blew away my bitterness and anger, made me experience what I never thought I was capable of—a love without bounds. I trust your heart, and only your heart.”
She gaped at him, unable to take that much love.
He had more to give. “I’ll do anything to find new evidence in your father’s favor. To that end, if you permit, I want to face him. He’s the only one who might provide missing information needed to paint a truer picture.”
It terrified her that a confrontation might provide definitive proof that her father’s reasons hadn’t been overwhelming enough. But knowing this must be resolved, she consented. But on one condition.
“If it turns out my father did what you think he did and had no acceptable reason for his actions, I want you to deal with him as you see fit, to make no more allowances for his being my father. You have to have justice...and closure.”
Not intending to ever fulfill that condition, Rafael escorted Eliana to her father’s suite.
The man, who’d already gone to bed, seemed to think he wasn’t quite awake when Rafael told him who he really was.
His expression changed from blank, to flabbergasted—then he shot up and pounced on Rafael.
He pulled back, tears in his eyes. “Deus, could it really be you? Oh, meu caro...your disappearance hit me almost as hard as it hit your
parents. The indescribable loss brought me back to your father’s side after we had our stupid falling out and I was idiotically sulking. He clung to my support during the search for you, but then your case was closed. We turned the world upside down looking for you on our own, but once your father became certain you were lost to him, he pulled away from everyone.” Deep sorrow creased his face. “It was why he and your mother divorced. They dealt with their grief in different ways and couldn’t find their way back to one another. I tried to keep in touch with him, but he couldn’t bear knowing anyone from the life that had you in it.”
From Ferreira’s reaction, Rafael no longer doubted he’d had anything to do with his abduction. Which left only one explanation. The real culprit had left the threads of evidence that would lead to Ferreira, clues that had been so ingenious, the police had missed all of them, and only he with his abilities and reach had found them twenty-four years later.
Eliana told her father Rafael had thought he was the one who’d orchestrated his abduction, and Ferreira’s dumbfounded reaction solidified his belief in the man’s innocence.
Looking relieved beyond measure, she sought his confirmation, and he rushed to give it to her. “It wasn’t him, meu amor. As always, your heart is my compass.”
After a clinging, tearful kiss, she turned to her father. “Do you have any idea who could have framed you, Daddy?”
Ferreira looked dazedly from his daughter to Rafael, obviously struggling to readjust to everything he thought he knew of the past months since Rafael had entered their lives.
Then Ferreira burst out in belated affront, “You’re telling me all this time you thought it was me? You came here to punish me? That’s why you went after Ellie?”
“I wasn’t part of his plan, Daddy.”
Relief and pride spread though Rafael. Her faith in him had been healed, and was back to the purity he now depended on.
“Eliana is why everything was put right,” he said gruffly. “Her love pulled me back from the path of destruction and into a life I never thought I’d have. But I need you to think. Anything you can remember around that time would help. It had to be someone who was close to you. Think, Ferreira.”
The man blinked numbly. Then he said, “You used to call me Tio Teo.”
“I used to love you almost as much as I loved my father.” He tried to smile through the pain stabbing in his chest. “But I don’t think I can call you that now.”
Eliana kissed his shoulder. “How about only Teo?”
Looking down at her, his heart in his eyes, he pledged, “Whatever you wish, minha alma.”
Suddenly, Teo grabbed his arm. “There’s something. When I first met Ellie’s mother, she had a stalker. I hired a security specialist to deal with the situation until that stalker was caught. I can’t think of anyone else in my whole life who had the kind of skills and underground connections needed to do something like...like...”
Ferreira fell silent, eyes feverish as he chased new realizations, connected seemingly unconnected events.
Then he focused back on Rafael. “He must have realized through me that you were just what that organization was looking for, and he’d had all the access to me he needed to doctor evidence to incriminate me.”
“Give me his name.”
After Ferreira did so, Rafael rose to his feet and bent to kiss Eliana. “I’ll initiate a targeted investigation at once.”
“Thank you, meu amor,” she whispered against his lips.
“Anything and everything for you, minha vida. Always.”
* * *
In an hour, Rafael walked back into his father-in-law’s suite. He stopped at the door, savoring the sight of the love of his life curled into her father, with his arm around her and their heads nestled against each other.
Overpowering emotions swept him. And not only for Eliana. But for her father, too. He was again the uncle he’d loved, but now far more, the man whose adoration for his wife had given him Eliana, a being made of total love.
Blinking back the burn behind his eyes, he walked in. And, oh...the welcome, the warmth, he saw on both their faces! He felt any lingering pain and bitterness and rage just drain away.
He came down on his haunches before them, delighting in how Eliana surged forward and took him in her arms, pressing his head to her heart.
“Thank you for believing Daddy, meu amor. Even if you can’t find proof, it’s enough you want to.”
“Found anything?” Teo asked anxiously.
Rafael pulled back from her embrace to look at him. “Once I had a name and a connection to you, everything fell...or rather crashed into place. I traced the man’s every move and contact and bank account transaction since the day I was abducted. And there’s no doubt. It was him.”
Eliana’s choking cry shook his heartstrings as she pulled them both to her, buried her face in their chests in turn and soaked them in her tears of relief.
His own relief was even fiercer, and all for her, that she didn’t have to live with something this horrible standing between the two people she loved most, that she wouldn’t feel guilty about his ordeals anymore.
After they both kissed and soothed her, he reached for Teo’s hand, squeezed it. “I beg your forgiveness, Teo, for believing in your guilt once my investigations led to you. I didn’t want it to be you, but when I dug again and again to make sure, I kept finding the same trails.”
Teo squeezed his hand back. “It was impossible for you to realize that man’s involvement. Anita was so scared of the whole thing, I couldn’t tell anyone, even your father.” He sighed in regret. “Ironically, it was the massive expenses of hiring that man, and which I couldn’t account for, that led to your father dissolving our partnership. And then I lost her, then your father...and that man disappeared from my memory.”
His viciousness now targeted the man who’d cost him so much, and who’d almost made him destroy innocent lives. “You don’t need to ever think of him again. He’s already...being taken care of.”
Teo’s eyes widened. “You mean you...?”
Eliana clutched her father’s arm, cold fire arcing from her eyes. “Rafael will make sure he never hurts anyone else. And that he gets what he deserves.”
Teo’s surprise at the blade in Eliana’s tone was nothing compared to Rafael’s. Delight soared as he pulled her closer.
“So my made-for-and-from-love flower can be deadly when defending and avenging the innocent.”
The flames in her eyes licked his every nerve. “You bet.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, wanting to see how far she’d go. “So you condone anything I choose to do to that man?”
Her lush lips hardened. “He’s no man. He’s a monster. And you and your brothers are monster slayers. I know whatever you choose to do to him will be the right thing to do.”
Joy swelled inside him as he pulled her closer again. “Have you told Teo our news?”
Her eyes drained of righteous wrath, flooded with shyness. “I didn’t ask if you wanted to let anyone know.”
Throwing his head back, he guffawed. “‘Anyone’ didn’t include those six huge pains who’ve been teasing the hell out of me all day with parenting jokes, huh?”
A fiery flush spread across her exquisite cheekbones. “I sort of let it slip to your trio of terror while I was milking them for info.” She mumbled something about poking his blabbing brothers with sharp objects when next she saw them. “And they ran with the news to the rest of the roster!”
“You’re pregnant?”
Teo’s explosive exclamation snapped their eyes to him, and he threw an arm around each of them, exalting, “I’m going to be a grandfather!”
Eliana kissed him soundly. “I know you’ve given up on the others and think I’m your only chance at grandbabies. But you’re not going to have o
nly one grandchild, but two.”
Surprise was now Teo’s only expression. “You’re having twins? Is it even possible to know that early?”
Eliana got Rafael’s silent consent before turning to her father. “We’re going to adopt Diego.”
Teo slumped back. “Any more monumental, life-changing surprises? Just pour them down on me all at once.”
Rafael chuckled again. “That’s enough for now.”
“More than enough for a lifetime.” Teo’s eyes filled. “If I die right this moment, I’ll be the happiest man on earth.”
Rafael gave him a mock-stern look. “Now, Teo, let’s not restart our relationship on the wrong foot. The happiest man on earth is me. Got that?”
“If you say so.” Teo gave the acquiescing sigh of a man who was letting a younger man think he had his way.
Laughing outright this time, Rafael swept his hugely grinning, teary-eyed bride up in his arms. “I do. Oh, how I do.”
* * *
“I certainly don’t!”
Ellie laughed as her eldest half brother, Leonardo, vehemently denied that he liked having those seminaked photos of him leaked online. They’d gone viral with half the globe’s females drooling over him and captioning them no end.
“All those straining muscles and the pouring sweat and provocative poses?” Santiago winked at them. Her middle half brother relished how his looks affected anything that moved, not like Leonardo, the scientist who wanted his brains to be his prominent feature. “No way those masterpieces were without your consent.”
“I was exercising,” Leonardo growled. “And since when are chest flies, squats and one-armed push-ups provocative poses?”
“Have you seen the photos, Leo?” Ellie giggled.
Leonardo harrumphed. “Phones with cameras and the internet will bring civilization to an end.”
“Just enjoy the notoriety, Leonardo. It’s harmless.” Rafael’s lips twisted. “I hope.”
Leonardo looked at him gratefully. “Thank you for recognizing the world is full of nuts.”
Suddenly worried, Ellie caught Leonardo’s forearm. “Did anyone do anything nutty?”