Chapter 13

The next morning, Mari and Rio enjoyed a leisurely breakfast of Giselle's famous omelets out in the sun on the patio. The conversation was light and effortless as she rested her bare feet in his lap and drank her coffee. The casual contact set her at ease, and he seemed to blossom from it as much as she did. She'd never seen him so content just existing in the world.

After she slipped her feet into the heeled slides she'd chosen for the day, she turned to him and wrapped him in a hug. He seemed surprised at first, but his arms wound around her and pulled her close as he buried his face in the side of her neck.

"I just wanted to tell you that you mean the world to me," she whispered. "Your kindness. Your company. It's really kept me going."

Rio pulled back and looked into her eyes. "It's been my pleasure. You've helped me, too, more than you probably understand."

Mari had some idea just from his change in demeanor, but hearing him say so touched her. She pushed herself up to kiss his cheek, pressing her mouth and nose to his skin after. They embraced for a moment that drew out long, enjoying the closeness.

"No schedule today? No rules?" Mari asked when she finally pulled away.

"Nope. He wanted me to take you to your office if you wanted to work, but the morning in ours."

She didn't miss the way he called it her office and not her father's. When had that changed? "I'm tempted to drag you back to bed, but I should spend some time with the wards today."

Rio smiled. "Midafternoon nap sounds good to me."

Mari kissed his chin. "Is it still a nap if I'm planning to ravish you the entire time?"

"That's the best kind of nap." He winked and then took her hand, leading her to the house.

After pausing to talk to Giselle for a few minutes, they moved beyond the kitchen. Rather than stop at the door to her father's office, Rio kept walking.

"I thought we were headed to the office?" Mari asked but didn't stop their progress.

"Your office." His lips curled slyly. "It's at the front of the house, with Cisco's."

"He didn't tell me he was doing that." She followed along, feeling a bit dazed.

"He rushed the remodel because he thought you should have your own space that's just yours. There's some furniture in there now, but it can all go as soon as you decide what you want."

They entered the vaulted entryway with its swooping gold details that always reminded her of her father, and Rio paused to twirl her once before facing the door that had once been the conference room that adjoined Cisco's office. There was a piece of paper taped to the door that read: "Head Witch In Charge."

He chuckled when he saw her expression. "The sign was my idea. We can workshop it."

"Where's he going to hold meetings?"

"He redid one of the other rooms and moved the meetings over there." Rio nodded to the door to indicate she should go in.

She shook herself and then reached for the handle. When she entered, she discovered the room had truly been transformed. Where there had once been functional carpet, now gorgeous wood gleamed. Where there had once been cream paint, luxurious paper and wainscotting lined the walls. An impressive library had been built into one corner, with tall shelves that stood empty and a pair of plush chairs that looked comfortable. A thick curtain covered the French doors she knew led to Cisco's office. Light poured in from a gorgeously intricate stained-glass window in a thousand shades of blue that took up nearly the entire exterior wall and certainly hadn't been a feature of the room before. A lounge of the type she knew Rio preferred rested in the corner between the door and the window. Her mother's desk sat under the window, basking in the blue-tinted light, the carved details evoking waves. "Where did he find that?"

"Tucked into a closet somewhere," Rio said. "Everything from her altar was gone except the base. He said if you wanted to replace anything in here, you can."

"No, it's perfect." She moved to the doors and drew back the curtain. Beyond, Cisco sat in his office, deeply involved in a phone conversation, facing away from her.

Mari tapped her nails on the glass to draw his attention and was rewarded by his brilliant smile. He held up two fingers to indicate he'd be a few minutes. She nodded and anchored the curtain so that it stayed open.

Rio came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "He didn't know what you'd want from your room, so he had Giselle put some boxes in there but didn't pack any of it. We can head up there anytime you want."

She turned her head toward him, smiling when he leaned to kiss her temple. "My books and some things for my altar, but most of it can go."

"There's no rush to any of this. Take all the time you need." His thumbs pressed into the muscles of her shoulders gently. "And if you want anything from your father's office, you can move any of that in here."

She tensed, put off by the idea that she'd keep anything of his once she had another option. "I haven't mourned him at all," Mari said, her voice soft.

"I noticed." He kneaded the muscles that had gone suddenly tight for a few seconds. "It's okay to let yourself be sad about what happened. He was your father. Neither of us would think less of you for mourning him."

"He was so cruel to all of you, but you and Cisco in particular." Her throat ached. "It feels wrong to miss him."

"He was cruel to you too." Rio wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her to him. He felt warm and solid against her back. "Even so, missing him isn't wrong, if that's the way you feel."

Mari sighed. "I don't think I miss him exactly. I miss what we should have been, I guess."

"That's valid." He rested his chin on her head.

Cisco wrapped up his call and crossed his office to the French doors, his expression concerned. He glanced over both of them after opening the doors. "What's wrong?"

"We were talking about my father," Mari said, trying her best to keep the tears that threatened from her voice.

He made a disgruntled sound in his throat. "I wondered if you were going to want to talk about it."

"Rio asked if I wanted anything from his office, and it made me realize that I did. Then I felt guilty for wanting anything of his."

"Oh, Mariana. No. Don't feel guilty." Cisco reached for her, and she fell into his arms, tears finally overtaking her. He murmured soothing noises into the top of her head.

Rio rested a hand on her back. "Should I step out?"

Cisco growled. "No. Fuck. How did I mangle this so badly?" He hefted her up into his arms and walked to the library. Once he was settled in a chair with her in his lap and his wings draped over the back, he nodded to the other one. "Sit, Rio."

He waited until she looked up at him to continue in a gruff voice, "I did what needed doing. I took no joy in it, and he didn't suffer, much as many people in this city would have said he deserved it."

Mari didn't say anything as tears continued to roll down her cheeks. Rio sat silent across from them.

Cisco took a deeper breath and straightened his back. "All of us, I think, would have said that, at one time, we thought of him as a father. While Basilio would never have been called a kind man, the cruelty for its sake was more recent." He shook his head. "I don't know what started it, but as time went on, it only got worse, until I judged that it had become untenable."

He met Mari's eyes. "I made that choice for all of us. I'm still not sure it was the right one, but I couldn't stand by and watch him do those things anymore, not to strangers and not to people I love. His death is on me, and I'm comfortable with that. The both of you are entitled to feel whatever complicated way you need to about his death and the fact that it rests in my hands."

Cisco rested one hand on the back of her neck. The warmth and contact eased her more than she could articulate. "If you want to talk about it, or mourn however you feel is appropriate, with or without me present, you should." He lifted his eyes toward Rio. "You too."

"I don't need to-" Rio began, but Cisco cut him off with a growl.

"Bullshit," Cisco said through clenched teeth. "Don't lie. Not about this. I know how much it hurt you when he punished you to get at me. I know how hard you tried to get him to love you because I got to watch how profoundly the withdrawal of affection broke you, up close." His voice shook with wrath. "Every time."

"That's what he did to everyone," Mari said, her voice soft and uncertain at first but gaining strength as she went on. "He made you love him, and then he mistreated you until you had to retreat from him. Then he did it again, and again, until you couldn't take it anymore. You were sure it was something wrong with you and not him." She drew in an unsteady breath. "Some people could leave when they'd had too much. But some of us couldn't." Tears overflowed again.

Rio crossed the distance between them to kneel in front of the chair where Cisco sat with her. He reached out to soothe her, his hands gentle. "I almost left once," he said softly, his lips pressed to her hair. "I think he knew, because that night, he beat you so badly you didn't come out of your room for a week. Everyone heard you screaming."

Her father hadn't turned his anger on her often, but when he did, it was always memorable. She vividly remembered the evening he had opened the windows so that everyone could hear the sounds of her torment. Her stomach heaved at the recollection. It was even more revolting now that she understood why he'd done it. She wrapped an arm around Rio's back and pulled him closer. "You stayed to protect me."

He nodded against her, his voice going rough. "I knew if I left, you'd be the only way he could get to Cisco."

Pain, no matter how devastating, had never been able to compel Cisco. Mari remembered the horror of watching her father break Cisco's bones, only to let them heal over agonizing minutes to do it again and again. Cisco had roared and bellowed until his voice broke but never relented, never submitted—until her father had found out that he could get Cisco to do anything if he hurt the people Cisco cared about.

"That was the first time I almost killed him." Cisco reached around her and clutched the back of Rio's neck. "It was fucking awful."

Mari let herself draw strength from both of them as they huddled around her. "I think he started to get worse after my mother was gone." It had been about half a year shy of her sixteenth birthday when her mother had suddenly ceased to be. Nobody asked why, not even Mari herself. They were all too terrified of what the answer might be. Those were dark days in the compound, when her father's wrath balanced on a razor-sharp edge; anything could set him off, or nothing at all.

Cisco rested his forehead against her. "I tried to find her. Quietly, so that he never knew I was looking. There was no trail. No sign."

Mari didn't know whether she hoped her mother had gotten away or not. Part of her was angry at the idea that her mother might have left her behind to suffer while moving on to a better life herself. "I don't think she's dead. Or at least I don't think he killed her. He was so angry afterwards. I don't think he would have been if he'd killed her."

"That's what I thought," Cisco said. "I always wondered if she left because she found out about the ritual."

A part of Mari recoiled at what he was proposing. She had always thought that her mother's departure was what started her father down the path to the ritual, but maybe it was the other way around. "That's when I needed her most. You think she left willingly when she found out what he had planned?"

Cisco rubbed her back to soothe her. "I think it's possible."

Tears started to fall again, and Mari couldn't have stopped them if she'd wanted to. "You stayed. You helped me through it. As much as it gutted you."

Cisco pressed a kiss against her temple. "Maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I should have killed him then."

It was her turn to soothe him. "You were only a little older than me."

"None of us could have done anything then," Rio said softly, reaching to touch Cisco's hand. "He was so deep in all of our heads, and it took us years to work him out."

Cisco paused, interweaving his fingers with Rio's. "You're right. He hurt all of us, Serena included. All that matters is that we're here on the other side. We survived it."

"Except for her," Mari said quietly.

Cisco nodded. "I'm not sure there's any way we'll know what happened to her."

"Unless she comes back now that he's dead," Mari suggested. She couldn't decide which of the two options was the more painful.

Cisco held them both for several minutes before pulling away reluctantly. "I have another call in a few minutes. I checked the background of the sex witch Esmé recommended, Pricilla Fortineaux. She's clean and doesn't seem connected with anyone who would call us enemies. She lives in New York, so it will take her a few days to arrange a trip out here."

Mari nodded, wiping the tears from her face. "And Esmé?"

"Spoke to her as well. We're set to meet the day after tomorrow with a law witch we both agreed on. Which means we'd do the club that night, if you're still amenable to that."

"I am, unless you think it's a terrible idea."

"Oh, I think it's fucking awful idea, but you're calling the shots on this."

Part of her wanted to back away, to insist she didn't want that responsibility, but Cisco waited patiently for her crisis of confidence to come to its inevitable conclusion. She had insisted she was ready for this step. She had pushed, and Cisco was respecting her decisions and giving her the opportunity to figure things out. "I want to do it. We need to get the club taken care of." She straightened her back. "I can't stand the thought of them suffering any longer to shelter me."

Cisco tangled his fingers in her hair briefly. "Mi tesoro." He kissed the side of her face. "Rio, can you give us a minute?"

Rio stood fluidly, pausing to give each of them a kiss before heading for the door. "I'll be just outside."

Cisco repositioned her on his lap, running his talons along her thigh. "Take Rio up to your room to collect what you want from there." He leaned to nip her shoulder. "Then take him for a ride. Enjoy each other."

Mari ran her hand over his horn and smiled. "You want me to cherish him."

"I do. You both deserve it after all this, and I'm busy for the rest of the day." He bit her jaw. "I also want you hungry and brimming with magic when I finally have time to enjoy you later."

She chuckled. "Any requests?"

"You know exactly what he likes by now." He kissed her tenderly but with just a bit of an edge of his fangs. "And he trusts you. He looks to you for approval as often as he does me now."

She searched Cisco's face to see if that made him angry or jealous, but the only expression there was affection, boundless as his untamed heart. "I'll give him what he needs."

"I have the utmost faith in that," he whispered in her ear. "I also trust that you'll tell me all the filthy details later."

She leaned against him, letting her hand trail over his shoulder. "In as much excruciating detail as you want."

He claimed her mouth in a searing kiss that promised as much pleasure as she could possibly stand later that evening.