Chapter 111 111. I Fucked Rafael
"So I fucked Rafael."
I choked on my sandwich. Maya sat across from me at the kitchen table, scrolling through her phone as though she'd just announced the weather forecast.
"You-what?"
She didn't look up. "You heard me. We had sex in Unit 4D while you and Lucien were out with Mama Cortez."
My brain scrambled to catch up. I'd known, obviously. Hard not to when you literally hear your best friend moaning through a door. But her saying it so casually felt wrong.
"Maya, is there-"
"It was a mistake." Her thumb swiped faster across her screen now. "One-time thing. Won't happen again."
Underneath her dismissive, clipped words, I heard something else. It was raw and bruised that my chest ached.
I set down my sandwich. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened. We worked late, things got heated, we had sex." She shrugged, still not meeting my eyes. "Then he said it was a mistake and we should forget it ever happened."
There it was. The reason behind her hurt tone.
"He said that?"
"Pretty much verbatim." Her laugh was bitter. "He got caught up in the moment, it shouldn't have happened, we should just pretend it didn't, blah blah blah..."
My hands clenched into fists under the table. Rafael, with his quiet composure and his careful words, had crushed my best friend and then asked her to act as though it meant nothing.
"Maya, I'm so sorry-"
"Don't." She finally looked up, and her eyes were dry but hard. "I'm not some heartbroken teenager. I knew what it was. We were just two adults that had stress relief sex." Her voice turned condescending now, lecturing herself. "It's fine. I'm fine. We're both adults and we'll continue with our lives."
But she wasn't fine. I could see it in the way she couldn't look at me for long. In the tight set of her shoulders. In the way her fingers trembled slightly as she picked up her coffee mug.
"You don't have to pretend with me," I said softly.
"There's nothing to pretend about. It was intense, yeah. Really intense. But that doesn't mean it was anything more than what it was-stress relief sex, but a mistake."
The word landed between us with weight. A mistake. That's what Rafael had called it, and what Maya was now calling it, but I knew my best friend. I knew the way she looked when something mattered to her, and this, this mattered.
"I'm going to kill him," I muttered.
"Don't." She stood abruptly, carrying her mug to the sink. "It's really not a big deal, Cam."
But as she walked back to her room, shoulders hunched as though trying to make herself smaller, fury burned hot in my chest.
That evening, we were together when Lucien's phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and his whole body went rigid.
"It's him again," he sighed exasperatedly. He answered on speaker, setting the phone down carefully.
"Brother." Ronan's voice slithered through the line, tight with barely controlled rage. "Let's talk about Nadia."
Lucien leaned back in his chair, utterly relaxed. "Who?"
"Don't play games with me. Where is she?"
"How should I know? I already told you, maybe she finally got tired of being your glorified secretary and ran off with someone who actually appreciates her." Lucien examined his nails. "Or she realized you're a piece of shit and decided literally anywhere else was better than standing next to you."
I winced. Even though I no longer feared Ronan, we should be careful before getting on his nerves. I shot Lucien a look that said, "don't test him," but he only grinned in response. Ronan's breathing got heavier.
"What's gotten you confident these days? You think you're clever?" Ronan's voice dropped lower. "You think you've won something?"
"Take a guess." Lucien's smile was all teeth. He even swiveled his chair, feeling all too good.
"Here's one for you. Guess who will release the last piece of evidence against Camila right now?"
My heart thumped. I sat upright immediately but Lucien placed a hand on my chest, settling me back down. His expression didn't change.
"Didn't you say that two weeks ago? And the week before that? I'm starting to think you're bluffing, brother."
Silence. Long, dangerous silence.
When Ronan spoke again, his voice was ice.
"You want to test me? Fine. Here's how this goes. You have one week to marry Jessica Bloom. Seven days. I don't care if it's a courthouse wedding or a circus in Central Park. You get married, you get the inheritance, and on day nine you sign over Elysium to me."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I stop being generous. The grace period I've given you? The one you've been mocking? Gone. Camila goes to prison and you get to live with the fact that you chose your pride over the woman you love." The call disconnected.
Lucien stared at the phone for a long moment. His golden eyes were glinting with pride-or satisfaction-and a faint smirk grew on his lips.
"Lucien, it's not amusing-"
"He doesn't have anything." He sounded so certain. "If he had real evidence, he would've used it by now. Nadia cleaned him out. He's scrambling, trying to bluff his way back into control."
I wanted to believe him, but fear twisted in my gut anyway. "What if you're wrong? What if he does have something we missed?"
He leaned closer, eyes gone dark and intense.
"Then we work faster. We finish scrubbing the files, we hand everything over to the FBI, and we watch Ronan burn before he can touch you."
His certainty should have calmed me. Instead, it made my hands shake as I went back to the spreadsheet in front of me.
Barely hours later, my phone rang while Lucien was in the bathroom. An unknown number, and my first thought was Ronan.
A string of pain crossed in my chest. I answered anyway, my breath suddenly heavy. "Hello?"
"Camila?" came a warm, feminine voice. "It's Seraphina. Damon gave me your number-I hope that's all right."
Oh my. The knot in me loosened instantly and I exhaled a breath of relief.
"Seraphina. Hi." I sat down on the edge of the bed. "Of course it's all right."
"I just wanted to call and see how you're doing. Damon told us you've been under a lot of stress lately, and I..." She trailed off, laughed softly. "I suppose I wanted you to know I'm thinking about you."
We talked for maybe ten minutes about nothing important. She gifted Iris a new puppy, Natasha managed to rent her dream apartment and had moved, while she, Sera, just became the director of one foundation. They were small things, but they felt enormous-because she was sharing them with me.
Lucien joined me again later, and he said hi before we ended the call. We settled in for the night, his hand tracing patterns on my stomach under my shirt. His fingers were delicate, possessive, mapping skin he'd claimed a hundred times before.
"You're quiet," he murmured against my neck.
"Thinking about Maya."
His hand paused. "What about her?"
I told him everything Maya had told me.
Was I oversharing? I don't know, but he knows Rafael better, and he heard them having sex as well. Perhaps he could give me something I could use to better understand the situation. Maya hasn't been looking too good these days.
Lucien was silent for a long moment, his thumb moving to rub circles just below my navel.
"Rafael doesn't do casual. If he slept with Maya, it meant something to him."
"Then why would he call it a mistake?"
"Because he's terrified." Lucien shifted, propping himself up on one elbow. "Rafael's been managing his condition for months. It's not deadly, but we know it could get worse at any time. He won't let people in because he's convinced he's going to hurt them."
My anger softened slightly. "That's not fair to Maya."
"No, it's not." His hand resumed its path across my skin, slipping higher to my breasts. "But Rafael's good at being unfair to himself. He'll push her away because he thinks he's protecting her. Let's allow them figure it out, okay?"
His soft lips found mine and I stopped thinking altogether.
The next afternoon, I sat in Unit 4D alone, waiting for Rafael's arrival. He was in charge of afternoons. The clock ticked past his usual arrival time. Fifteen minutes. Thirty. An hour.
By hour two, I placed a call to him, but the voice that answered was that husky voice that called me Fiera everyday. Except it was rushed now.
"Rafael collapsed at Hayes Corp. We rushed him to the hospital. His hepatitis is flaring badly."