Rafael: The Mafia's Substitute Wife

•ANEIRA•

“I don’t want to marry Rafael Sterling, Mother. Chris has already asked me to marry him, and I agreed. I’ve been with him for two years, and I won’t throw that away!” I fumed as I took my jacket from the closet and dressed up.

“You will marry him in honor of your late sister, Aneira. Or do I need to remind you that her death was your fault?” My mother leaned forward, snarling.

I looked at her and wondered why she had always preferred my sister over me. Even in her death, she preferred Narra to me.

Though Narra and I were the split image of each other, she always said she was the prettier twin and more elegant and delightful while I was the opposite.

“The accident wasn’t my fault. Narra missed the stop sign because—”

“Because of you!” She snapped. “Narra wouldn’t have had the accident if you hadn’t distracted her with your cell phone that fell on the floor. She died because of your negligence and stupidity. If you weren’t my daughter, I would’ve gotten you arrested for taking away my only daughter!”

The room suddenly felt big, and there was tension in the air after she said Narra was her only daughter.

“I think you’ve made that clear all my life. You never paid attention to me but your precious only daughter. I guess you will raise her from the dead to marry her fiancé, because I won’t do it.” I took my cell phone from the bed, but before I walked out, my mother stopped me.

“If you don’t marry Rafael Sterling in the place of your sister, I will open a case against you and tell them you killed Narra. You’ve always been jealous of her, and when the opportunity came to get rid of her, you killed her. You killed your twin sister because she was better at everything than you.”

“Mom—” I turned to her, tears stinging my eyes. “You know I would do nothing harmful to Narra. She was my sister and best friend. I can’t believe you said that to me.”

“You caused a fault in her brakes, and when you reached the stop sign, you distracted her so she wouldn’t know the brakes were failing. I will tell the police that you confessed everything after the accident because you were feeling terrible.”

I shook my head and scoffed. “You will get me arrested because I don’t want to marry my sister’s fiancé? How is that fair? I don’t even love Rafael. He’s a monster, and I don’t want to marry him!”

“You will marry him, Aneira. Your father’s dying in the hospital, and he can save him. If Narra were alive, she would’ve married him to save your father and this family from ruin.”

“I won’t marry him, even if that means I must rot in jail for something I didn’t do!” I retorted, turning to the door and twisting the doorknob.

“Your father has liver cancer. He won’t survive the entire week without surgery and a donor. Only Rafael has the money to save him. The operation is worth five hundred thousand dollars.”

It took everything in me to open the door and walk out without saying a word about what my mother had said about my father’s condition.

When I got to the driveway, I wiped the tears on my face and got into the car. I drove straight to Chris’s bar in town.

Just like me, he was the least loved of his brothers, so he opened his own place and made a living from it.

Our plan was to get married and leave California. He said we could start our lives afresh in Washington, DC, and have our own bar there.

I was happy because it meant I would be free from my mother’s comparisons every time her precious daughter did something that made her proud.

Even when I enrolled in business school, my mother never cared, and she told me it was a waste of time and said I should have done what Narra did.

Narra studied engineering but stopped when our father could no longer pay her college fees and was shortly engaged to Rafael.

She was engaged to Rafael because our father owed him and was paying him before he got hospitalized after he fainted at work a week before Narra’s death.

After our father’s hospitalization, our mother made a deal with Rafael because she couldn’t pay him. Rafael agreed to cancel my father’s debt and pay for his surgery if Narra married him.

Narra was happy with the arrangement, and I was happy with Chris. He was mine, though he barely had anything to show for his life, but he was getting started.

I wanted to be there through it all. I didn’t want to leave and choose something better when he had been an amazing man for the past five years we’ve been together.

So, I wanted to tell him about my conversation with my mother because our plans to move to another state had to be made soon.

“Hey, Cobra. Is Chris in today?” I asked the bartender when I arrived at the bar.

“Yeah, he’s in his office. I see you’re looking good for your papa, mamacita.” He teased, and I laughed as I walked past him and went upstairs to Chris’s office.

I stopped outside the door and furrowed my brow when I heard funny noises from his office. I shook my head in disbelief and lost it when I heard a woman giggling.

I barged inside the office and found him fucking a girl from behind. He looked at me and smirked before he pulled out of her and fixed his pants.

“What’s going on here? Who is she?” I asked, walking toward them.

The girl fixed her dress, took the money from the counter, and sat at the table with her legs crossed.

Chris leaned toward me, sighing. “You should’ve joined us instead of spoiling the fun, Aneira. Anyway, what do you want?”

“Chris, I’m your fiancé. You can’t be doing this to me with someone from the club who you’re obviously paying to have sex with you.” I pointed to the money she had taken from the counter.

“She’s worth every penny. You could barely satisfy me, so what do you want me to do? If you’re here to cause a fight, I’m not in the mood. Go home.”

“I left home because of you. I thought we had plans to leave together and start our lives afresh away from our families,” I reminded him, my voice choking.

I loved him and couldn’t imagine my life with anyone else. I didn’t know what I would do without him. My mother wanted to get me arrested, and I thought he would be the one to take me away from her.

“I said anything to make you open those legs for me, sweetie!” He chuckled. “That was a load of crap, and you believed it. Do you think I’d leave my bar and her to be with you?” He looked at the girl on the table. “Come on, that’s stupid. I’d never be with a woman who’d be a liability.”

The girl chuckled behind him, and I felt like someone was crushing my heart.

My chest tightened, and before embarrassing myself and crying before them, I took off the engagement ring and threw it at him before I walked out of his office and left.

“I’m sorry, Aneira!” Cobra apologized when he saw me leaving. “He told me to let you in!”

***

When I got home, I found my mother on a call, and I knew who she was speaking to. When she was done, I wiped my tears and leaned forward.

“I’ll marry Rafael Sterling. On one condition.”

My mother’s brow furrowed as she closed the gap between us. “What’s the condition?” She asked.

“It will be a contract, and in five years, I’ll be free from him.”