Chapter 17: Blood Bound

Rayen 

The blood drained from my face so fast the cathedral seemed to tilt on its axis.

Make sure you don’t miss.

The five words hung between us, heavier than the suffocating weight of my silk train, lethal as the razor digging into my side. My breath caught in my throat, a sharp, audible gasp swallowed whole by the grand organ’s final, resounding chord.

Lautaro didn’t pull away immediately. He let his lips hover against the shell of my ear for one agonizing second longer, letting me feel the steady, deliberate beat of his pulse against my jaw.

He knew.

God help me, he knew about the steel pressed against my ribs.

When he finally stepped back, his face was an unreadable mask of cold, regal composure. Not a single muscle in his jaw twitched. If anyone in the pews had been watching, they would have seen a proud groom whispering a sweet, secretive devotion to his new bride.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.

My mind raced, clawing for answers.

How?

Who told him?

Did someone search me?

Was there an informant in my estate?

I stared at him, my knuckles turning white as I tried to stop my hands from shaking. I wanted to scream, to yank the blade out right there in front of God and two hundred armed men and force him to bleed for what he’d taken from me.

But Lautaro’s amber eyes held mine with a terrifying, calm dominance.

He was daring me.

He was giving me the stage, waiting to see if I was stupid enough to burn down the cathedral before the ink on our marriage license was even dry.

“The rings,” the archbishop’s voice broke through the deafening roar of silence in my head.

A young boy in traditional robes stepped forward, carrying a velvet cushion. On it sat two bands of polished platinum, heavy and unyielding.

Lautaro turned fully toward me, his broad shoulders blocking out the blinding light of the altar. He reached out and took the smaller band.

Then, without waiting for permission, he took my left hand in his.

His fingers were large, calloused, and surprisingly warm. The moment his skin touched mine again, a strange, electric shock traveled up my arm, making me flinch.

I tried to pull back it was an instinctive, visceral recoil from the man who had ordered my brother’s execution but his grip tightened.

It wasn’t painful.

It wasn’t the violent, crushing grip of a tyrant asserting dominance.

It was steady.

Enveloping.

Unnervingly protective.

He held my hand as if it were made of delicate glass, anchoring me to the marble floor when every instinct screamed at me to run, fight, or collapse.

“With this ring,” Lautaro said, his voice dropping into a rich, reverberating baritone that echoed through the vast stone chamber, “I bind my blood to yours. My strength to your shield. My life to your defense.”

The words weren’t standard wedding vows.

They were the ancient traditional oath of the syndicate a vow reserved for alliances forged in war.

As he spoke, he slowly slid the heavy platinum band over my knuckle.

The metal was cold, settling at the base of my ring finger like a permanent shackle.

But it was the heat of his hand beneath mine that made my chest tighten to the point of pain.

Why was he holding me like this?

Why wasn’t he dragging me to a cellar to be interrogated?

Why look at me with a fierce, quiet intensity that felt less like an enemy claiming a prize and more like a man guarding something precious?

It confused me.

It terrified me far more than his cruelty ever could.

Hatred was simple.

Hatred was a clean, sharp weapon I knew how to wield.

But this unyielding, protective warmth was a trap designed to make me soft.

He’s playing with you, I reminded myself, my jaw clenching as a tear burned behind my eyelids.

He killed Aconcagua.

He destroyed your home.

Don’t fall for the theater.

The archbishop gestured toward me.

“The bride will now present the ring.”

My fingers felt numb as I picked up the larger platinum band from the velvet cushion. My breathing was ragged and shallow.

Lautaro offered his hand to me, palm up, completely defenseless.

His wrist was exposed, the thick blue line of his vein pulsing just beneath the skin.

A fraction of an inch.

That’s all it would take.

I set the ring against the tip of his finger. My hands trembled so violently that the metal clicked against his signet ring.

Lautaro didn’t move.

He didn’t pull away.

He simply watched me with those piercing golden-brown eyes, waiting patiently while I struggled to breathe.

“With this ring…”

My voice cracked, raw and barely audible.

I swallowed past the sharp lump of grief in my throat and tried again, forcing the venom back into my tone.

“With this ring… I bind my blood to yours.”

I slid the band onto his finger.

The moment it reached the base, Lautaro closed his fingers around mine, intertwining our hands completely.

He squeezed a firm, grounding pressure that cut through the panic threatening to drown me.

“I pronounce you husband and wife,” the archbishop declared, raising his hands. “What God and blood has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

A heavy, solemn ripple passed through the cathedral.

The silence dissolved into the low, rumbling applause of two hundred men who hated each other, bound together now by a fragile piece of paper and a bloody truce.

Lautaro didn’t look at the crowd.

He didn’t turn to soak in the applause or display me like a trophy to his capos.

His focus remained entirely locked on me.

He stepped closer, his body shielding me from the gazes of the crowd, his thumb stroking the back of my gloved hand in a slow, rhythmic motion that felt unnervingly intimate.

“Walk with me, Rayén,” he murmured, his voice smooth and dangerously low. “The performance is over. Now the real work begins.”

He tucked my hand securely into the crook of his arm.

The fabric of his jacket was thick, hiding the hard muscle beneath, but I could feel the intense heat radiating from him.

Together, we turned and began the long walk back down the center aisle.

Flashbulbs didn’t pop. This wasn’t a high-society wedding for the papers but the silence of the syndicate bosses was louder than any applause.

I kept my chin high, my eyes fixed on the heavy oak doors at the end of the cathedral, refusing to look at Beltrán or my family’s men in the pews.

I refused to let them see me break.

Every step was agony.

The razor pressed against my ribs, a sharp reminder of my failed leverage.

He knew.

He had known before I even set foot in the church.

Which meant every step I took out of this sanctuary was taking me deeper into his domain, completely stripped of the element of surprise.

We stepped out of the cathedral doors and into the biting, crisp mountain air of Santiago.

Waiting at the bottom of the grand stone steps was a fleet of black, armored SUVs surrounded by Lautaro’s heavily armed guards.

The sky above us was bruised purple and gray, heavy with the promise of a sudden rainstorm over the Andes.

Lautaro escorted me down the stairs, his grip on my arm steady, never allowing me to stumble on the heavy silk of my dress.

A guard stepped forward and opened the door to the central armored vehicle.

I stopped at the edge of the door and turned to look up at Lautaro.

“Where are you taking me?”

Lautaro stared down at me, his face unreadable, his eyes dark beneath the shadow of the cathedral roof.

“Home,” he said simply.

He didn’t wait for me to move.

He placed a hand at the small of my back his palm spanning the space right above where the blade was concealed and guided me gently but firmly into the back seat of the car.

He slid in right beside me, the heavy armored door slamming shut with a dense, absolute thud that cut off the sounds of the outside world.

The interior was quiet, smelling of expensive leather and vintage liquor. The glass was heavily tinted, dark as midnight.

The SUV pulled away from the curb, leading the convoy through the winding streets of Santiago toward his private estate in Las Condes.

For ten minutes, neither of us spoke.

The silence inside the vehicle grew so thick it was suffocating.

I sat pressed against the door, my hands folded tightly in my lap, every muscle in my body coiled tight like a spring.

Lautaro sat relaxed beside me, his long legs stretched out, his eyes fixed on the city passing by outside the window.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.

The tension was clawing at my throat.

“How long?” I whispered, the words slicing through the dark quiet of the car.

Lautaro didn’t turn his head immediately.

“How long what, mi rosa?”

“How long have you known about the blade?”

Slowly, deliberately, Lautaro turned to face me.

He leaned back against the leather seat, resting his arm on the door. His gaze dropped to the waistline of my wedding gown before rising back to my eyes.

A ghost of a cold, dangerous smile touched his lips.

“Since the moment your mentor bought it for you three days ago,” Lautaro said quietly.

My breath locked in my lungs.

My blood turned to ice.

Beltrán?

Before I could process the sudden, sickening twist in my stomach, the SUV violently swerved.

A deafening BANG shattered the silence.

The heavy armored vehicle lurched sideways, tires screaming against the asphalt as the driver slammed on the brakes.

Glass shattered somewhere in the convoy behind us, followed immediately by the rapid, terrifying thrum of automatic gunfire tearing through the Santiago afternoon.

I was thrown forward, but before my body could slam into the front seat, Lautaro’s arm shot out, catching me hard against his chest and pulling me down onto the floorboards beneath him.

He covered my body with his own, his broad frame shielding me completely as a hail of bullets ripped into the armored plating of the car door right above our heads.

“Stay down!” Lautaro roared over the gunfire, reaching inside his tuxedo jacket and pulling a heavy black handgun from his shoulder holster.

My heart was in my throat, my cheek pressed against the carpet, the scent of his cologne and gun oil filling my lungs.

Through the tinted, cracked window above us, I caught a glimpse of the attackers advancing on our convoy.

They weren’t wearing Errázuriz colors.

They were wearing the crest of the Altiplano.

My family.