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Chapter 22: Effortless Defense
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2026-09-17 04:01:27Rayen
The sight of my brother’s face scarred, blood-streaked, but unmistakably alive—shattered everything I thought I knew.
“Aconcagua…”
His name came out as a broken sob.
My mind couldn’t catch up.
Six months of mourning.
Six months of staring at an empty grave beneath the cold Altiplano rain.
Six months of feeding my anger until revenge was the only thing keeping me standing.
All that grief had been for a dead man who was now breathing in the doorway of my husband’s bedroom.
I pushed myself off the bed, but my legs trembled beneath me.
“You’re… you’re alive.”
“Get back, Rayén!”
Aconcagua’s voice cut through the room.
He didn’t look like a brother returning from the dead. His face was tense, desperate, almost frightened.
“Lautaro, drop the weapon! Drop it now!”
Lautaro didn’t move.
He stood between us, his broad body shielding me from the doorway. His Sig Sauer remained trained directly at Aconcagua’s chest.
“Lower your weapon, Aconcagua,” Lautaro said calmly. “You blew your entry. The outer security grid is already locking down.”
“I don’t give a damn about your security grid!”
Aconcagua took an uneven step forward.
Blood seeped through his tactical vest and dripped onto the polished floor.
“I came for my sister. Move.”
Something about Lautaro’s calmness disturbed me.
Why wasn’t he surprised?
Why did he look as though he’d been expecting this?
I looked from my brother to my husband.
Then the answer hit me.
“You knew.”
Lautaro’s jaw tightened.
I grabbed the edge of the mattress to steady myself.
“Lautaro… you knew he wasn’t dead.”
He didn’t turn around.
“Rayén, stay behind me.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
The shock of seeing Aconcagua alive twisted into fresh anger.
My eyes dropped to the stiletto lying near my feet.
Before I could think, I dropped to my knees and grabbed it.
I came up behind Lautaro, driving the blade toward his shoulder.
“Tell me the truth!”
He disarmed me before I could touch him.
He barely turned.
His hand caught my forearm with precise, effortless control. He redirected my strike, twisted my wrist, and forced my fingers open.
The stiletto flew from my hand and skidded beneath the nightstand.
Before I could react, he caught my other wrist.
One quick movement, and he pulled me against his chest, drawing both my hands behind my back.
His grip was firm but controlled.
He wasn’t hurting me.
That almost made me angrier.
I struggled against him.
“Stop,” he breathed against my hair. “Control yourself, Rayén. Look at him.”
“Let me go!”
Tears blurred my vision.
“You lied to me! You let me believe he was dead!”
“I saved his life!”
His voice hardened.
His grip tightened just enough to keep me still.
“I pulled him out of a ditch in the Andes six months ago. He had three Altiplano bullets in his chest.”
I stopped fighting.
“Ask him who put him there.”
My breath caught.
Slowly, I lifted my head and looked at my brother.
Aconcagua hadn’t moved.
He stood in the doorway, his weapon lowered slightly.
He looked nothing like the brother I remembered.
He looked exhausted.
Hunted.
Afraid.
“Aconcagua…”
My voice broke.
“Is that true?”
He swallowed.
His eyes dropped to the blood on the floor.
“He… he got me out of the valley, Rayén.”
His voice was rough.
“Lautaro’s men hid me in a safehouse near the coast while I recovered.”
My stomach twisted.
“Then why?”
I pulled uselessly against Lautaro’s hold.
“Why let me believe you were dead? Why let me marry the Don of the Errázuriz family to buy peace for a war that was built on a lie?”
“The war wasn’t built on a lie about your brother.”
Lautaro’s voice was quieter now.
His breath brushed my ear.
“The war was ordered from inside your own home.”
Aconcagua’s head snapped up.
“Lautaro, shut up.”
His voice carried sudden panic.
“Don’t do this here.”
Lautaro didn’t look away from him.
“Who gave the order, Aconcagua?”
His voice became cold and commanding.
“Tell your sister who ordered the hit on your life after you refused to execute the Errázuriz council. Tell her who signed your death warrant.”
Aconcagua said nothing.
His breathing became uneven.
He glanced into the dark corridor behind him as though he expected someone to appear.
“It was Beltrán,” I whispered.
My mind raced.
“Beltrán betrayed Father.”
“No.”
Aconcagua’s answer was barely audible.
“Beltrán didn’t give the order, Rayén.”
He took a shaky step backward and grabbed the doorframe.
Blood continued spreading across his vest.
“Beltrán takes orders.”
His eyes met mine.
“Just like the rest of us.”
My heart dropped.
“Then who?”
My voice cracked.
“Who gave the order?”
Aconcagua stared at me.
There was something in his eyes that made the room suddenly feel colder.
Grief.
Fear.
Regret.
Then he said the one word I never expected to hear.
“Mother.”
Everything went silent.
The word hung between us.
Mother.
Before I could process it, a low mechanical screech came from somewhere beneath the estate.
The emergency lights in the ceiling flickered.
Then turned red.
A silent pulse of crimson washed over the room.
“What was that?” I whispered.
The explosion answered me.
BOOM!
The eastern wing shook violently.
The walls trembled beneath us.
The floor jumped.
The enormous windows shattered at once, exploding inward in a storm of glittering glass.
I screamed.
Lautaro moved instantly.
He released my wrists and grabbed me around the waist, pulling me down against him as the shockwave tore through the room.
Glass rained across the floor.
Aconcagua dropped behind the doorway for cover.
Lautaro reached for his second weapon and drew it from his belt.
Then came the sound that froze my blood.
Heavy boots.
Running up the staircase.
More than one pair.
Someone was coming.
And they were coming straight for us.
Pinakabagong kabanata
Bound by blood and silk Chapter 72: Close Quarters
Rayén's POVI stepped in front of Lautaro before I knew I was moving.The pistol shifted with me. It didn't drop. My brother's eyes flicked from my face to the man behind me, and I saw the muscles in his jaw work the way they always had when he was trying not to cry."Move, Rayén.""No.""He's been lying to you since the day you married him.""Then you can explain it with the gun down." My voice shook. I let it. "You're alive, Conco. I thought I'd have to bury you twice. Put it down and let me look at you."Something wavered in his face. For one second he was nineteen again, hiding a stolen book under his shirt, and I was ten, asking to see.Behind us, far down the drain, a light swung across the bricks.Conco's head snapped up. Lautaro's hand closed on my elbow, and I felt him go still, the stillness of a man who has just done arithmetic. Footsteps. Two sets, maybe three, splashing in no hurry."Patrol," Conco breathed. He lowered the gun an inch and jerked his chin at the open gate.
Bound by blood and silk Chapter 71: The Underground Tunnel
Rayén's POVChoose the right throat.I read it three times, standing in my bedroom with a razor blade across my palm. Then I folded the note into a square so small it hurt my fingers and tucked it into my bra. I slid the blade into my boot, the same boot I'd worn through the harbor, and went to find my husband.He read it in the linen closet by the light of his phone. His face did not change, and that was how I knew it had hit him."She wants us at that table tonight," he said."She wants us above ground.""Yes.""So the trapdoor is a trap." I kept my voice level. "She knows Osvaldo's key. She knows the market. If we go down the way he told us, she's waiting at the bottom.""Or he told her himself.""He cried when he gave it to me.""People cry at their own betrayals, Rayén. Sometimes loudest of all."I wanted to argue. Instead I thought of Osvaldo's burn scar, his white mustache, his big hands pressing the key into mine, and a cold little voice in me said, you don't know. You've neve
Bound by blood and silk Chapter 70: A Daughter's Mask
RayénDon't trust the Don.I turned the phone face-down on the table before Lautaro could read it. It was too late, and we both knew it. He had been standing close enough to see the screen, and the quiet that followed had a weight to it, like a held breath in a church."Say it," I said."Say what?""Whatever you're thinking. That I should be afraid of you. That I should be afraid of whoever sent it.""I'm thinking," he said, very evenly, "that someone wants you looking at me instead of at the door she just walked out of.""Maybe that's the truth.""Maybe." His voice dipped. "Do you think it is?"I looked at him. The lamplight caught the stubble on his jaw, the dark under his eyes, the bandage showing through his open collar. Three months ago I'd have said yes without blinking. Now I opened my mouth and nothing came."I don't know," I said. It was the most honest thing I'd said all night, and it frightened me. "But I won't find out in front of her."His eyes moved past my shoulder to t
Bound by blood and silk Chapter 69: Maitén's Visit
Rayén"Answer him," I said.Lautaro didn't move. The three short tones and the one long one kept coming through the handset, steady as a pulse, and I watched his thumb hover over the transmit key without pressing it."If I answer, whoever else is listening hears it too.""And if you don't, my brother thinks we're dead.""Rayén—""Answer him."He pressed the key. He sent the same pattern back, once, then released it. The line went quiet for four seconds. Then a single short tone came back, soft, like a knock from the other side of a wall, and the signal cut out.Millaray let out a long shaky breath and killed the jammer. "He's alive," she said. "Dios. He's alive and he's inside and he's an idiot.""A family trait," Lautaro said.I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I put my palm flat over the key under my blouse instead and felt my heart beat against the brass.Then the phone in Lautaro's pocket buzzed, and the color left his face for the second time that night."The gate at Las Condes,
Bound by blood and silk Chapter 68: Millarays Tech Shield
Rayén's POVLautaro had the pistol out before I'd finished breathing.He moved without a sound, one step to the wall beside the door, the barrel angled down and his bad shoulder tucked out of the way. Millaray had her palm flat over her mouth. The lantern light kept sliding back and forth across the gap under the door, patient, almost gentle."Don't," I whispered."Rayén.""He's alone. Look at the light. There's only one shadow.""One shadow you can see.""He carried me on his shoulders." My voice wobbled, and I hated it. "He'd have shot us on the pier if he wanted to. Let me."Lautaro's eyes met mine in the dark. It took about three seconds, and it felt like a lifetime of arguments we'd never have. Then he exhaled through his nose and nodded, once, and did not lower the gun.I opened the door.Osvaldo Quiroga filled the frame the way he always had. He was older. The mustache had gone fully white, and there was a long burn mark down one forearm that hadn't been there when I was sixtee
Bound by blood and silk Chapter 67: Planning the Heist
Rayén's Nobody moved.The radio hissed twice and went dead, and the silence it left behind was worse than the whisper. Millaray was staring at her brother. I was staring at the same place, and I hated that my eyes went there on their own."Say it's a lie," Millaray said.Lautaro was standing now. I hadn't seen him get up. His bandaged shoulder was rigid, and for the first time since I'd known him, he didn't look like a man who had already decided what to say."I was at the customs house eleven days ago," he said.The floor dropped out from under me."Not below the first level," he went on, fast, before I could speak. "I went to see the decoy room. I wanted to know what Beltrán had left out for us to find. I signed the guard's book at the door because I couldn't afford not to. That's all. I never touched the elevator.""You were in the building.""Yes.""And you said nothing.""I was going to tell you in Valparaíso, and then the ship—" He stopped. He pressed two fingers to the bridge
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