My fist crashes into his face, once, twice, until I feel bone crack beneath me. Blood sprays from his nose. He tries to raise his other arm and I break that too.
“How dare you fucking touch what’s mine?!”
He screams again. Raul says something but I barely hear him over the haze of violence. My fists continue its assault.
The only sounds are Carlos's choking breaths and my own ragged breathing.
"Rafaelle, stop. No! Don’t kill him. And, he has her,” Liliana screams. “He has my baby girl.”
My arm goes stiff and I turn to her with questions in my expression. She’s sobbing now, tears falling down her cheeks and the sight is enough for my emotions to cool. I suddenly want nothing more than to hold her to me, wiping away all that causes her hurt.
But her words are so confusing I stay put.
“What are you talking about, Liliana?”
Her voice is shaky as she speaks, “Mila. He has Mila.”
I rise to my feet, stepping over Carlos’s bloodied body and moving to stand in front of her, my steps as light as I can make them, my heart thudding in my chest.
“And who is Mila?”
“My daughter. My baby girl.”
My stomach clenches and I fight to keep my voice light and steady, “You have a daughter.”
She wipes at her face, her eyes wide and terrified. She’s still crying and now I’m starting to get really worried.
“W- we have a daughter, Rafaelle,” she whispers. “I gave birth to her 9 months ago.”
Splat. That’s the sound my stomach makes as it drops. The air in the room grows chiller and I need something to center myself as the magnitude of what she’s saying hits me.
I try denial first, “That’s not possible.”
“It is, Raf. I was pregnant. That night. The night we met, I got pregnant. And I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. So I disappeared. That’s why I left. To hide my pregnancy.”
“From me,” my voice sounds unlike mine. It’s like someone else is speaking through me.
“I’m so sorry,” she says through tears. “I regret it so much. There are so many things I did wrong. I’ll explain everything, I promise and you can do whatever it is you want to do to me. I’ll accept any punishment. But please, Rafaelle. I need your help. We need to get Mila back. She’s only a baby. She did nothing wrong.”
My heart pounds in my chest. I shut my eyes trying to make sense of the tornado of emotions that begin to whirl through my chest. In the end, I settle for anger. My old, familiar friend. It grips me, running through every inch until it’s all I can see.
In the blink of an eye, I’m advancing on her. My hands grip her throat as I push her back into the wall. Her cry of pain only has me feeling worse.
“Rafaelle,” she says in that voice.
The same voice that sang me to sleep and made me feel like I mattered. The same voice that said all those beautiful, sweet things. That made me feel human. I want to rip it out from her throat.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” I growl.
“Please,” she begs, the look in her eyes like an arrow piercing at my chest.
I rip my hand away like she scalded me and she falls to the ground. Guilt and regret chip away fragments of my heart. I look away, running a hand over my face and exhaling a ragged breath.
“You’re dead to me, Liliana.”
Her breath hitches and pain slashes across her expression with those words.
“Just help me get her back. She’s your daughter,” Liliana says desperately.
