She swung her legs over the side of the bed and pressed her palms to the mattress, grounding herself.The room smelled faintly of clean linen and pine from the open window.No disinfectant.No metal.No fear baked into the walls.
She should have slept.
Instead, the truth waited.
She had to tell him.Tell all of them.What had really been happening.Who had really been pulling the strings.The part of the story she had kept locked behind her teeth because once it was spoken, it became real.Once it was real, it would change things—for her, for Rafael, for the Covenant.
She needed protection from the people who had taken her.
That much was obvious.
But what twisted deeper in her gut was the other truth—the one she hadn’t let herself think too hard about yet.
She needed protection from her own family.
The thought still felt impossible, even now.Blood wasn’t supposed to be the danger.Home wasn’t supposed to be the place that could sell you out.But it had been.Quietly.Efficiently.With signatures and phone calls and doors that opened because someone had decided she was expendable.
Sofía dragged a hand through her hair and exhaled.
She was not weak.
She had never been.
But strength didn’t mean you could do everything alone.
Her gaze drifted to the closed bedroom door.
Rafael was out there.
Not hovering.Not crowding.Just present.A constant.The man who had carried her out of fire and blood and then given her space to decide what came next.The man who hadn’t asked for her secrets—but had made it clear he would stand between her and whatever came for her when she was ready.
An idea formed.
Not a plan.Not yet.
Just a possibility.
One that didn’t work without him.
Sofía rose quietly, bare feet silent on the floor.She paused at the door, hand hovering over the handle, nerves flickering low in her stomach.Vulnerable didn’t mean powerless—but it did mean choosing to be seen.
She opened the door.
****
Rafael kept moving.
Not pacing.Not hovering.Just enough noise to remind the woman sleeping down the hall that she wasn’t alone.
The safe house was small, tucked deep outside Portland, wrapped in trees and shadow.On paper, it was a rental he’d owned for years.In reality, it was one of his contingencies.Off books.Off maps.No cameras feeding back to Chicago.No one knew it existed except him.
He sat back in one of the chairs at the dining table, forearms resting on the scarred wood, and tried to think.
He wasn’t very good at waiting for shit to happen and not acting.
He ran scenarios instead.
Keeping her with him and what that might look like.Sending her to Luca and Mara, where there was warmth and structure and safety built into every wall.Letting her disappear entirely if she asks it of him—clean, quiet, alone.