Chapter Five

Fewer Truths

Rafe

Willow ignores me for the rest of the drive home, sunk into her head, a place where I forced her to retreat while I worked my anger into her flesh.

I fucking hate when she lies to me. Or omits a truth, especially when that truth directly influences my own flesh and blood. As much as I regret manhandling my wife, I regret the decision to send Regina away with Dom more.

"When will you start to obey me, Willow?" I ask, pushing my hair back from my face. It isn't enough, and I scrub my cheek with the palm of my hand roughly, considering slapping my own cheek to keep myself awake.

Cyprus was exhausting, and the travel compounded that. Now, with whatever trouble my sister has concocted…

I needn't have worried about my alertness. Willow's hand cracks across my face, bringing me back to the world I also lost myself from. I find myself staring into the twin blazing suns in her bright eyes, slightly puffy and raging beyond demonic status.

"You could have had a fucking conversation like a normal person, Rafe! What are you going to do with your sister? Spank the truth out of her and then find out she's—" Willow catches the slip in time.

My gaze narrows, pinpointing the searing center of my obsession. "When I find out my little sister is what, dear wife?' I ask in a deadly, low tone.

If Dom was here, he'd stop me. But like my sister I sent him away, foolishly thinking I could force the truth out of my wife.

Willow stares at me across the back seat, her arms folded defiantly over the plunging neckline of her cream top that transforms into the black skirt I just threw up to tan her perfect ass. She doesn't utter a single sound.

"Perfect," I mock her. "I could get more out of an enemy with a little threat than I can from my own kin. My wife," I whisper, my voice low. Deadly. "I had a stupid dream. That one day I might marry and that woman would be my confidant. The person I told everything to. Who I would trust to soften my wrath when it's too harsh, or harden me when I feel weak." I'd never say those words to anyone else, not even Dom. The weakness displayed would break us, shatter the family I cling to into shards so broken I'd never put us back together. "The woman who would be mine in every way, and give me the solace and comfort I need. A place to put my rage when no one else can handle me."

I stare at Willow, and she stares right back. An impasse. How did we get to this place?

For the first time, a single tear trails along her cheek. "I'm not the woman you want, Rafe," she whispers, shocking us both with her words.

I can read that tarnished truth in her eyes, the way they widen and shutter, blocking the hurt she feels from me.

"I can't heal you if you don't let me," I say gently, reaching for her. "Willow, I'm—"

"Sorry. Yes, the great excuse of every abuser in history. But I'm not that woman, Rafe. Not for you now, maybe not ever. Because you can't fucking trust me. Why should I return that courtesy?"

She pushes the door open before the car stops, striding up the steps where Regina waits for her beside the doorway, both in plain sight as I've instructed them against too many times to count since that day when I thought I lost Willow, and so nearly did.

"Take us around the back," I say tersely to the driver once the door is shut. "And don't bring the fucking women around the front again, unless you'd like to observe your head separate from your body before your brain fails you."

I slam my fist against the window at my side, watching a fracture form in the perfect tint, the lines spreading like a tree to encompass a fading fission of my family as the car turns and my wife and sister disappear before Dom closes the door. The break forms in a perfect crack that, against all odds, explodes over me as I sit there, swearing and picking out shards of what should be bulletproof glass from my pants.

Isn't that just fucking perfect?

****

By the time I walk into my bedroom still wearing the rumpled suit I wore to fly in from Cyprus, and holding the dinner tray Luca sent up for Willow claiming she hadn't eaten all day, I've been betrayed, slapped again—by my sister, this time, before she ran off like Willow—and my best friend deserted me in the pursuit of his own preferred pussy who left him sleeping alone.

I knew, because he slammed the door in my face and stamped around like a wildebeest behind its shuttered comfort.

Thalia darted in the opposite direction when I called out to her, needing my healer to look at my wife.

I wish I stayed in fucking Cyprus.

Bloodshed and backstabbing I could do. House politics? That was the taxing variety of bullshit I avoided at all costs.

Working on the accounts only built my need to tear the world apart. And an old enemy decided to make an appearance, though at least this time the Irish weren't shooting up my home. Ignoring the lesser Hennie brother who insisted on visiting my doorstep no less than three times only to be turned away, left my heart churning with the need to avenge fucking something.

I need to shoot someone.

No, that isn't enough.

I need to maim.

The knife Willow and I made bloodied art with sits beneath her plate on the tray Luca left me, the blade freshly honed. Beside it is a small tube of arnica, perfect for the trail of bruises I left on her perfect body.

That man always knows.

Luca has a history of his own. I never delved into his past any more than what Dom agreed I should know. I wonder if the time hasn't come to have a more in-depth conversation with the man who gave my woman the confidence to learn a new form of art alongside me.

Pushing open the door to my bedroom all the way and closing it softly with my foot, I stare at the figure of my wife, still in the dress she traveled in, sleeping with her back to me. Swearing in my head so I don't wake her, remorse hits me in a day's worth of dosage hours too late.

I place the tray carefully on my bedside table, shedding my shoes and my shirt, leaving me in my charcoal slacks. The bed dips under my weight but Willow doesn't stir, even as I turn her gently and place my hand to the pulse at her throat.

For a heart-stopping moment, I can't find the fucking thing. Then her regular rhythm meets my fingertips and I gather her into my arms, my fear of losing her overwhelming my need not to wake her. Her body is so light, and I know she's lost weight. Between my obsession to fulfill her fantasies, my father's funeral, and the trips, I have neglected to ensure she eats.

Another failing to mark against my name for those I protect.

I can't help but wonder who the next casualty will be.

"Rafe," she whispers, nuzzling my chest in her dozy way as she wakes. She grasps for my shirt, but my skin is hot under her palms still warm from her slumber. Her tongue flickers out, licking at my throat as I bury my face in her hair.

"Are you all right?" Her soft question tears at my heart.

"I failed you."

I kiss the top of her head, working my way along her throat. I could fuck us both into oblivion, but it's time to face what I've avoided these long days since my father breathed his last.

"It's okay," she breathes, though we both recognize the lie, even if neither of us acknowledges it.

It's time to heal, and I know it's going to fucking well hurt.

Despite everything, Willow winds her arms around me acceptingly. Her hands stroke along my back in long, soothing motions.

"I don't deserve you," I whisper hoarsely.

"Maybe we deserve each other," she whispers back. "Two broken fucked-up souls intertwining and tearing each other apart."

My arms close fiercely around her too-slim frame. Luca is right, she needs to eat. Hell, I spanked her, and I probably bruised her with my wrath. My sister lied to me, and Willow protected her. Didn't I need that on some front? That my wife has my back, makes the best decisions for us when I'm not there to forge my own path? I trust her, despite everything, I do, to have my back. To do what is right for us, for our family.

For the Gallos. But I need to remember that she is more than just a Gallo, she is and will always be a Hernandez as well. I need to meet those needs as well.

And somewhere along the line, I lost my father, avoided feeling anything for the man who raised me. The man, the father figure I hated and fought against for over half my life, who taught me the life we live now. How to rule, be a brother, be a king.

A husband.

Armand would be horrified with the way I treat Willow. He loved her, worshipped the ground she walked on. I have done nothing but strip her of who she is, forcing her into a mold of my own making she's rebelled against at every chance.

I'm sorry.

You're right.

I love you.

And with my face buried in Willow's hair, my arms wrapped around her body and pulling her into my chest, I give into the pain that consumed me the entire flight. That I tried to hide from, pretending everything is normal. Because now there is no fallback. No father to correct any fuckups I make. Every single decision of this family relies on my strength to hold us together.

I have to trust them all—Dom, Willow, Luca, Regina—all of them. To believe that what we do together is right. Strong. To protect each other.

Lest everything my father worked to build, that I have built, will cease to be.

Willow wears my ragged breaths as they devolve into sobs, the weakness I'll never allow anyone else to see.

Only her.

Because I love her, trust her. It's time to show her that trust, how deep it runs, rather than throwing my anger over the top like a fix-it-all blanket full of holes.

My father is dead. And so, like the son I forgot I was, who I tried never to be in case I failed him, I grieve.

And pray she'll forgive me, too.