"Who are they?" I asked, grasping him around the elbow and leaning into his side more. Aside from the people he couldn't avoid introducing me to, Rafe seemed content to keep me entirely isolated.
"My cousins," he said, turning a soft look down to me as I stumbled.
"Your cousins?" I hissed. "And you didn't think to tell me you were taking me to meet your family?"
"I knew you'd stress out. Now you have approximately ten seconds of freaking out before it's over and done with." The casual tone to his voice set my nerves even more on edge as we closed the distance between us. "Isa, these are my cousins, Sebastian and Thiago," he said. "This is Isa. My wife." They widened their eyes briefly, before nodding with bright smiles that seemed so different than the darkness that always clung to Rafe like a cloak.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Sebastian said, stepping in and kissing my cheek. Rafe growled at my side, deterring Thiago from doing the same.
"You too," I said, feeling awkward under the tension of Rafe warning off his own cousins from touching me. But given what he'd done when I defied him with Joaquin, I wasn't willing to push the boundaries and call him out on his bullshit publicly.
"Father is inside," Thiago said, turning on his heel. Sebastian followed as Rafe guided me up the path to the house a little ways up the hill.
"Where are we?" I whispered as we walked.
"Just outside of Barcelona," Rafe returned, patting my arm gently.
"Maybe I should stay on the boat," I said as we approached the grand villa. "I don't want to be in the way." Rafael only chuckled as he led me in the back doors of the house, guiding me to a man who sat in the open living room. He stood from the couch, unfolding himself to stand tall and formidable.
None of Rafe's family looked like him, his appearance clearly taken entirely from his mother’s side. "Rafael," his uncle greeted, moving forward to clap him on the shoulder before his eyes fell to me. They were filled with curious suspicion as he studied me, only turning his attention away when Rafe cleared his throat. “Uncle.”
"Maxim came to tell me that you need to be put down like the rabid dog you are before you ruin the family's reputation. He said a woman has turned you into a lunatic." He raised his brows as his gaze fell to mine. He sat in the chair, motioning for Rafe to follow as he guided me to a loveseat. "So, some of what he said was true. There is a woman."
"That woman is my wife, Uncle," Rafael warned, his voice dropping low and his glare menacing as his hand tightened on my thigh. I swallowed past the lump in my throat, feeling the tension rising in the room as his cousins hovered at the edges with tight faces.
35
Rafael
My uncle's gaze fell to the rings on Isa's finger as I unbuttoned the jacket of my suit and stripped it off. I hung it over the arm of the couch, rolling my sleeves up as his eyes followed the motion. Revealing the ink on my arm and mi reina's brand on my skin, he raised a brow at me before a smile tipped his lips up hesitantly.
"Should I be insulted that we were not invited to the wedding?" he asked, and my cousins heaved a breath of relief before they took their respective seats in the comfortable chairs next to his.
"He never bothered to invite me, so I would think not," Isa said, smiling sardonically in her attempt to ease what remained of the tension. I huffed a quiet laugh at her side as my Uncle's face twisted in confusion. When she met his stare with a blank one of her own, he barked out a loud laugh and shook his head.
"I think I like her," Sebastian said, grinning at me. Given the way he'd kissed her cheek in greeting, it was brave to make such a statement. Cousin or not, I would cut his tongue out before I ever let him near Isa.
"I think perhaps you should refrain from such comments," Thiago warned, grinning at me knowingly as he chuckled. "Else Rafael might feed you to the pigs."
"Tell me," my uncle said, leaning forward onto his knees as his eyes held Isa's. She didn't blink or balk in the face of all that attention, even though she must have suspected that my family would be in a similar career path as I. "If he did not invite you to your own wedding, how did you come to be my new niece?"
"He put a gun to my head," Isa said, shrugging as if it was inconsequential even though we both knew it was not. Of all the things I'd done to her, I suspected my threat to kill her if she refused to be my wife was among the worst for mi princesa. Her inability to kill me to gain her freedom meant she had expected me to love her enough to let her live. To let her be free.
A good man would have, but I wasn't a man at all.
My uncle Andrés laughed, assuming she was kidding. When Isa met him with a deadpan stare, he tilted his head to the side and nodded as his gaze landed on me. "You always were an asshole, but this takes it to new levels, sobrino."
"She could have avoided it if she'd just said 'I do' on her own, but mi reina is as stubborn as a bull," I laughed, flinching back when Isa slapped my bare arm with a gasp.
"You're one to talk, El Diablo," she said, her tone mocking. "You are the most stubborn man I have ever met."
My cousins watched the smile consume my face with shock, their eyes landing on the pinkening skin of my bare
