Until Forever Ends: A Dark Mafia Romance by Adelaide Forrest (black books to read .txt) 📗

Hugo closed the distance between us slowly, swallowing and licking his lips as he and his brothers watched me for a reaction. "What's going on?" I whispered, tears burning my eyes.

I tried to connect the dots. I tried to put the pieces together, but where there should have been connections, there was only blinding betrayal and pain.

"What are you doing here?" I asked when he didn't answer. His silent stare met my words as he swallowed, then clenched his eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to look at me. "What are you doing here?!" I screamed, backing away a step as my brain tried desperately to find an excuse that didn't mean it had all been a lie. That I'd been set up from the very beginning.

"Gabriel, go get Rafael. Now," Regina ordered. The middle Cortes brother nodded and gave me one last sad look, sprinting up toward the house above us.

"This is my home," Hugo said, swallowing around the words. He gave me nothing else, didn't take a step toward me or move to comfort me as Regina tried to pull me into her arms. I shrugged her off, filled with the determination to stand on my own two feet as my world crashed down around me. I’d known I would lose Hugo when I came to Ibiza.

I just didn’t know it would be like this.

"Did you—" I paused, wincing when my lip felt wet with tears. "Did you tell Rafael about me? Did you set me up for this?" I asked. He shook his head, his face pinching as if it pained him to stay silent. "I don't understand," I cried, shaking my head.

"I didn't choose this for you. Please know that," he said, his voice catching on the words.

"You didn't choose this?!" I screamed, stepping into his space. My hand collided with his cheek, the stinging of my wounds bursting to life as the slap echoed through the clearing. The pain grounded me against the tumult of emotions swirling inside me.

Rage like I'd never known felt like it would consume me. Like it would pull me to the depths of hatred and never let me go.

My body trembled as I raised my hand again. He stood there, just waiting for the second blow as if he knew he deserved it.

It only made it worse.

"Settle, mi reina," Joaquin said, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me away from his brother. "That's enough," he murmured softly. The soothing sound of his voice felt like a betrayal against everything I'd thought I knew about the brothers. Like the fact that it had all been a lie would split me in two and I'd never be the same.

"Take your hands off her." Rafael's deep voice barked the order. There was no hesitation as Joaquin obeyed, stepping away from me with his hands raised innocently. Regina stared at Rafael in horror, shaking her head in a silent plea. "I gave you one rule," he said to her. "She was not to leave the house for exactly this reason. Are you happy?!" He spoke in that calm, deadly measured voice of his that was more intimidating than most people yelling, swinging a hand out to me where I stared at Hugo with a tear-stained face.

"Rafael," she pleaded.

"Go," he ordered, turning his back on her as he stepped up to me. He put himself between Hugo and me, demanding my attention in a way that might have felt jealous if it hadn't been illogical.

"I don't understand," I said, staring up at him as he moved closer into my space. His huge hand cupped the side of my neck, his thumb moving gently over the surface as if he could feel me shattering beneath his touch.

"I sent the Cortes brothers to you in Chicago," he said. I froze, blinking up at him blankly and biting my bottom lip as I thought back to how long Hugo had been a staple in my life.

"That's not possible. It's been over a year," I whispered, trying to back away from his touch.

"Sixteen months," Rafael said, watching my face as I tried to do the math. "It's been sixteen months since the first time I saw you, standing on the sidewalk across from Fists of Fury."

All the air expelled from my lungs as my body sagged. The day came crashing back over me, the way I'd stared at the mysterious man across the street and thought about the darkness that surrounded him.

I'd wanted him even then, but known that he would never be anything other than disaster for a girl like me.

"That was you," I whispered, backing away from him and stumbling over my steps. I fell to the ground on my ass, staring up at the devil in front of me in horror. Joaquin looked like he might try to intervene, his body jerking as if he meant to protect me. But even he stilled with a glare from Rafael as he reached down and plucked me off the ground. "Why?" I couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend that choice. To wrap my head around the months of planning and manipulating that must have happened for us to end up right where we were.

He ignored the question, continuing on with his story as he wanted. "A few days later, your sister and her friend drugged you," he said. My body went still, remembering the vague recollections I'd had of the phantom in the night. The fact that Joaquin had never made me feel the way he supposedly did when I'd been drugged. "Two weeks later, I killed him for what he tried to do to you. To what was already mine,” he rumbled.

His grip tightened around my upper arm as I cried, shaking my head from side to side as I tried to deny the truth that stared me in the face. I tried to find another explanation, but instead of reassurance there was just nothing.

"I watched you. I studied you. And when the time came for you