Bound by blood and silk

Rayén Altiplano POV

I stood at the edge of the dirt path behind our estate in Providencia, the hem of my mourning dress weighed down by wet ash. Two days ago, this courtyard had been an oasis of white marble and magenta bougainvillea. Today, it was an open sewer of charred timber, melted iron, and black sludge.

Behind me, two remaining loyalist soldiers lowered the plain pine box into the shallow trench. No priest stood over the ditch. No flowers lined the mud. There was only the dull thud of wood striking wet dirt.

“Cover it,” I whispered. My voice was low and ragged from smoke and forty-eight hours of silent tears. “Quickly.”

“Señorita Rayén,” Mateo muttered, his hands trembling against the handle of his shovel. “We shouldn’t be standing in the open. The Errázuriz soldiers haven’t fully cleared the surrounding blocks. If Don Lautaro’s scouts spot us—”

“I said cover him,” I cut in.

Mateo swallowed hard and plunged his shovel into the dark earth. I did not blink as the first heavy clump struck the pine lid, burying Don Gonzalo Altiplano, a man who had ruled half of Chile’s criminal syndicates with an iron fist, beneath his ruined rose garden.

My right hand rested beneath my black woolen shawl, fingers locked around the grip of a hidden nine-millimeter pistol pressed against my ribs. The frozen metal reminded me of the only truth I had left: I was still breathing, and everyone I had loved was gone.

My mind dragged me back to the foyer from forty-eight hours ago. To the smell of gunpowder coating the back of my throat. I hadn’t found my father first during the raid. I had found Aconcagua.

My brother. My quiet, fierce protector.

They had left him beside the cracked marble fountain, his dark hair soaked in blood, a single execution-style wound through his temple. He was only twenty-six. He had hated the family business. He had dreamed of buying a ranch in the south to raise horses, far away from the blood money and shadows of Santiago.

But Don Lautaro Errázuriz had not cared about Aconcagua’s quiet heart. Lautaro had ordered the eradication of our bloodline to avenge his own father’s murder, leaving my brother’s body in the dirt like trash.

A knot tightened in my throat. Grief was a luxury I could not afford. So I swallowed the pain, letting it burn into pure venom.

Lautaro.

The name tasted like broken glass. The newly crowned Don of the Errázuriz syndicate. Ruthless, stoic, and terrifyingly efficient. He thought he had crushed us. He thought burning our home, taking my father’s life, and putting a bullet through my brother’s head would force the remaining Altiplano loyalists to crawl on their knees.

I pulled my shawl tighter, scanning the skyline surrounding our property. Then I saw it.

A tiny glint of sunlight catching glass atop an unfinished concrete tower three hundred meters to the east.

A sniper rifle scope.

My pulse spiked, but I did not flinch. I stared directly into the distant glint.

“Mateo,” I said, keeping my lips almost still. “Do not look up. We are being watched.”

Mateo’s shovel froze. Beside him, young Tomas turned pale, his hand twitching toward his jacket pocket.

“Do not touch your weapon, Tomas,” I commanded. “You draw steel, and the sniper will put a round through your eye before your fingers clear the fabric. Keep digging. Let my father rest.”

“Señorita, if Don Lautaro’s executioners are up there, they will slaughter us,” Tomas choked out. “We need to run for the drainage tunnels.”

“Running makes you a target,” I replied, my thumb flicking the safety off beneath my shawl. “Standing your ground makes you a threat.”

I knew how Lautaro operated. He was not a senseless butcher who wasted ammunition on terrified foot soldiers. He was a master strategist. If his snipers had not taken my head the moment I stepped into the courtyard, they had orders to observe. They were waiting for their Don to decide what to do with the daughter of his dead enemy.

The wet earth finally filled the trench. Mateo smoothed the surface with his shovel.

I stepped forward and touched the cold soil covering my father’s chest.

I will dismantle them, Papa, I promised into the freezing silence. I will tear the Errázuriz syndicate down brick by brick, and I will drive a blade through Lautaro’s heart myself.

A sharp static crackle tore through the stillness.

It was not a rifle shot. It was the metallic squawk of a tactical radio from the shattered front entrance.

Mateo and Tomas froze.

I turned slowly as the black iron gates of our estate were pushed fully open.

Three jet-black armored SUVs rolled across the crushed gravel. Their tinted glass reflected the gray sky. They positioned themselves in a tight semicircle, cutting off every escape route.

The engines shut down at once.

The side doors opened. Eight men in black tactical gear stepped out, assault rifles held low. They established an inescapable perimeter within seconds.

Then the rear passenger door of the center SUV opened.

A custom-tailored leather boot planted itself on the gravel.

My heart hammered.

He stepped out.

Don Lautaro Errázuriz.

He was massive, his broad shoulders cutting an intimidating silhouette against my destroyed life. Deep mahogany hair, closely cropped. A stern jaw carved like granite. Faint tactical scars crossed his knuckles. But it was his eyes that locked me in place, striking amber eyes that scanned the ruins before fixing on mine.

He did not yell. He simply existed, taking control of the air in the courtyard.

Lautaro walked toward the mound of fresh earth. Every step felt like a steel weight dropping onto my chest, yet I refused to look down.

He stopped five feet away.

His eyes lowered to the fresh grave, then tracked upward to my hidden hand beneath the shawl. His jaw tightened.

“Rayén Altiplano,” Lautaro said, his voice a low velvet baritone.

“Don Lautaro,” I spat. “Have you come to slaughter the rest of us? Or did you want to watch the dirt settle over your crime?”

He did not flinch.

He reached inside his coat. My thumb pressed against the trigger of my hidden gun, ready to fire through my shawl and bleed him onto my father’s grave.

Lautaro did not draw a weapon.

Instead, he pulled out a thick leather-bound document stamped with a dark red wax seal and held it between us.

“Your family’s war ended forty-eight hours ago, Rayén,” he said calmly. “You have two choices standing in this garden today. You can choose to die beside your father in this dirt…”

He stepped closer, his towering frame blocking the gray sky.

“…or you will take this pen, sign your name, and by the end of the week, you will walk down the aisle as my wife.”