Page 79 of Raziel

A long pause.

“Serena wasn’t an affair. She was my first love. Before Bella. We’d lost touch. Married other people. Then… one day in Naples, during Bella’s final diagnosis, we found each other again. She was there with a boy I didn’t know was mine.”

His eyes flickered to Caine.

“It was a reckoning. I loved my wife—God, I did—but I was lonely. And terrified of the silence coming.”

His gaze shifted back to me.

“Bella forgave me. In her infinite grace, she understood what it means to break in two directions. But Raziel—”

His voice cracked.

“Raziel knows everything except the truth. He built a fortress of anger around it. To him, I betrayed her. For years. Until her last breath. And that’s a sin he won’t absolve.”

The air thickened with it. Caine looked at his plate, jaw rigid.

“She forgave me,” Raffaele whispered again. “Before she passed. She understood. Raziel… doesn’t.”

On the drive home, Raffaele was silent until we reached my house.

“I didn’t tell you any of what I told you for my own sake,” he said. “Raziel has every right to his anger. I failed him. I failed the memory of his mother. I just hope, one day, he sees that I’m just a man. A flawed man. Who misses his son.”

I nodded. “I understand,” I said quietly, then stepped out.

Raziel was on the couch, a half-empty glass of bourbon in his hand, staring at the blank TV screen. He looked up as I came in. His eyes softened immediately.

“Hey. Where’d you go? Looking like that?” His gaze dragged over the dress.

I crossed the room, climbed into his lap, wrapped my arms around his neck. He didn’t resist—just slid his hand around my waist like it was instinct.

“Don’t be mad,” I whispered into his neck.

He stilled. “That’s never a good start, Maya.”

I told him. Everything. The coffee. The dinner. Caine.

And then his father’s confession—the regret, the weariness, the truth he’d carried like rot in his bones.

Raziel turned to stone beneath me. I felt the fury wake up in him, twitching under his skin. I kissed the pulse hammering in his throat.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I murmured. “Not tonight. Not ever, if you don’t want to.”

He took a ragged breath.

“I just thought… if you could spend years honoring your mother’s wish by staying with someone you didn’t love… maybe you could find space to forgive the man she actually forgave.”

He didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.

He was silent for so long I thought he might just push me off and walk out. Then, his arm tightened around me, his hand splaying wide across my back, holding me to him like I was the only thinganchoring him to the earth. He buried his face in my hair and let out a long, shuddering sigh.

I curled into his chest, my head on his shoulder. His heart was loud beneath my ear, a slow, angry drum. But it softened. It slowed.

I stayed awake long enough to feel him relax, the tension ebb from his spine.

When his grip loosened and his head tilted back, I closed my eyes.

And let the warmth of him carry me into sleep.