Page 1 of Gabriel (Legacy of Heathens #4)

M om hadn’t been the same since Raphael rescued her from Santiago Tijuana.

The evil man—whoever he was—had broken something inside of her, but I couldn’t understand exactly what. No one would tell me, but I still heard the whispers. I heard her screams at night.

I wanted to fix it, make her feel better, but I didn’t know how. There wasn’t a Band-Aid for her kind of pain that she battled in numb silence.

The moon was high up in the sky, shining on me with Bruno, my French bulldog, on my lap. We kept guard outside Mom’s door, keeping her safe.

“We’ll keep her nightmares away, Bruno,” I murmured, my fingers raking through his short hair. “Raphael keeps Mom safe too, but he isn’t here. So it’s our job to do that. Right?”

Bruno didn’t answer, but he looked at the bedroom door behind which Mom slept. He understood me.

I let out a heavy sigh, wishing Raphael were here. Mom didn’t say why we couldn’t all be together, but he’d tried to explain. He promised we’d be a family again, but for now, she needed time to heal, so I had to split my time between the Miami penthouse and Raphael’s island.

Raphael was trying so hard to be okay, but I didn’t think he was. He looked sad, almost as if someone had ripped his heart out of his chest. Almost as if he was unraveling too.

I wanted to be strong for them. I wanted to protect them. But I was also scared. What if Mom never recovered? Maybe she’d never be the way she was: carefree and happy. It hurt to think that we might never see her again, that our family would never be together again.

A single tear slipped down my cheek as a sharp ache clenched in my chest. I didn’t know how to fix this, and what scared me even more was the sinking feeling that no one else did either.

But I vowed that I would learn, and one day, when I was older, I’d do whatever it took to protect my family.