Chapter 26: Rules of the Suite

RAYÉN

The safehouse suddenly smelled of lavender, bleach, and old wood, nothing like the gunpowder and blood from the vault.

We were in a secluded penthouse on the edge of the financial district, an off-the-books property Lautaro owned through a shell company. Below us, Santiago carried on as if nothing had happened.

Up here, the silence felt suffocating.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring at my reflection. My wedding gown was ruined, its hem stiff with blood that wasn’t mine. My hand still throbbed from gripping the Sig Sauer.

Behind me, I heard a leather belt being unbuckled, followed by a sharp breath.

Lautaro sat on the dark leather sofa, his tactical vest and ruined shirt gone. My eyes went straight to the angry red gash along his right ribs. The rebar hadn’t gone deep, but it had sliced him badly.

He held a needle and thick suture thread between his teeth, his amber eyes fixed on me.

“Are you just going to stand there?” His voice was low and rough. “Or are you going to help?”

My chest tightened.

For six months, survival had meant keeping my guard up, locking my heart away, and waiting for the right chance to put a blade in his neck.

Now the man I was supposed to hate was bleeding on a sofa, waiting for me to stitch him up.

“You should have let your medics handle it.”

“My medics report to my lieutenants,” he said, pulling the needle from his teeth. “And right now, I don’t know which lieutenant is taking money from Beltrán or your mother. Until I know, nobody can know we’re here.”

I stepped in front of him. Up close, his heart was overwhelming. He was huge, with broad shoulders, a thick neck, and a jaw that looked carved from stone.

His jaw was tight with pain, and sweat covered his collarbones.

“Give me that.”

I snatched the needle and thread from his hand.

“Careful, wife.” A faint smile touched his lips. “I know how much you like holding sharp things near my ribs.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

I dropped to my knees beside the sofa.

I poured rubbing alcohol over the wound. Lautaro didn’t move. He only breathed  in a deeper breath and kept his eyes on my face.

I pushed the needle through his skin and pulled the thread tight. My hands stayed steady, but my stomach twisted.

Every pull of the thread made me feel his warm skin beneath my fingers. His heartbeat was slow under his ribs. On the glass table lay the forensic dossier proving my brother’s killer wasn’t the man sitting in front of me.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked quietly. “You let me sit in that estate for weeks, planning how to kill you. You let me hate you.”

“Because hatred keeps you sharp.”

His voice was close to my ear.

“If you stopped hating me, you would have started looking for answers. Beltrán would have noticed the change. He would have buried you before you discovered the truth about your mother.”

I looked up.

His amber eyes held mine.

“You protected me,” I whispered. “By making yourself the monster.”

“I am a monster, Rayén. Don’t confuse my motives. I didn’t do it to be a hero. I did it because you’re mine now. By blood, contract, and Santiago law. Nobody touches what belongs to the Errázuriz name. Not even your mother.”

Anger burned through me. I wanted to slap him and scream at him for speaking about me like property.

But beneath the anger, something warmer took root.

He hadn’t forced himself on me or broken me. He had taken my hatred and used it to keep me alive.

I tied the final knot, cut the thread, and wiped the blood from his skin. My movements slowed without me realizing it.

My fingers lingered.

Lautaro noticed.

His large, calloused hand closed gently around my wrist. He didn’t pull me closer, but he didn’t let go.

“Rules of the suite, Rayén,” he said, his voice dropping.

“What rules?”

“We have a truce. No blades under pillows. No poison in the glasses. We stay here, track that 9mm bullet, and find out who sold your brother out. Once we have a name, we burn them together.”

I searched his face for deceit. I found only a dangerous promise.

“And us?” I asked. “What about this?”

“You sleep in the bedroom. The door locks from inside. Use it if you feel safe.”

“And where are you sleeping?”

He pointed toward the sofa.

“Here.”

I stood, wiping my hands on a towel. “You’re six-foot-three, Lautaro. You won’t fit on that couch.”

“I’ve slept in worse places with worse wounds.” He closed his eyes. “Go wash up. Tomorrow will be long.”

I watched him for a moment.

The Don who ruled Santiago’s underworld was willingly taking the couch, giving me space I hadn’t even asked for.

I walked into the bedroom and locked the door.

For the first time in six months, the lock didn’t make me feel safe.

It made me feel completely alone.

After a hot shower, I pulled on a gray T-shirt and sweatpants from the closet. Lautaro had clearly stocked them for emergencies.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my mother’s cold smile and heard her voice from the vault.

Her blood belongs to Santiago.

I unlocked the door and quietly stepped into the living room.

City lights cast long shadows across the floor. Lautaro lay on his side, his long legs hanging past the armrest. Without his usual armor, he looked almost human.

The white bandage around his ribs stood out against his skin.

I sat on the floor a few feet away and picked up the forensic dossier.

“You can’t sleep either?”

His eyes remained closed.

“I keep thinking about my brother.” I stared at the photograph of the casing from Aconcagua’s alleged crime scene. “If he didn’t die by your hand, then where is his body? Why was the casket closed?”

Lautaro opened his eyes and looked down at me.

“Because the body in that casket wasn’t Aconcagua.”

He pushed himself upright, wincing as his side stretched.

“Three months ago, I received a tip about a high-security transport leaving your family’s estate at night. Beltrán was driving. He dumped a body into the Mapocho River and burned the vehicle.”

“You saw this?”

“My scouts did. They pulled it out before the current took it. It was a decoy,a homeless man with a gunshot through his chest, dressed in your brother’s clothes.”

“Then where is Aconcagua?”

Lautaro pulled an encrypted burner phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the table.

“Twenty minutes ago, his tracker pinged from a hidden compound in the Andes.”

Before I could process his words, an explosion shook the building.

The windows shattered, sending glass across the room as red laser sights cut through the smoke.