Chapter Seven
Rafael didn’t sleep that night.
He sat in his study until three in the morning, the same four words circling on repeat. Is he mine? He had asked and gotten silence back instead of an answer, and the silence had told him more than any words could have. He knew, the same way he always knew when a deal was about to fall apart before anyone else in the room caught the signs. He just needed her to actually say it.
He called her twice before nine the next morning. No answer either time. Third try, she picked up.
“I need to see you,” Rafael said, skipping the greeting entirely.
“Rafael, it’s early”
“I don’t care what time it is. You know why I am calling.”
A long pause. He could hear, faintly, a kid’s voice in the background — Kael, asking his mother something Rafael couldn’t
