Todos los capítulos de Bound by blood and silk: Capítulo 41 - Capítulo 50

RayénI knew that voice the way I knew my own handwriting.Beltrán had taught me to ride. He had slipped me sugared almonds under the table during my father's long dinners, and he had held my hand at my brother's empty funeral and told me grief was just love with nowhere to go. And now he stood outside a broken wall in the dark, calling my husband my son."Millaray," Lautaro said. It came out of him like a breath he'd been holding for years. He tried to straighten, and his face went white."Not yet," Conco said, already hauling the rusted grate off the floor behind a stack of pallets. "He wants you to run out there. Tunnel. Now.""My sister.""Your sister is a problem for the next hour," Conco said. "Bleeding to death in this building is a problem for the next five minutes."I put my shoulder under Lautaro's arm. He was heavier than he looked, all hard muscle gone slack with pain, and he let me take his weight. That scared me more than the blood. A man like him did not let anyone carr

RayénMy mother has never raised her voice in her life. She never needed to."Rayén," she said again through the wood, so gently that my body answered before my mind could stop it. My shoulders loosened. My hand started toward the latch. Thirty years of being her daughter does that teaches your hands to obey before you've decided anything.Lautaro caught my wrist."Don't," he breathed."I know.""Then take your hand off the door."I looked down. I was an inch from the handle. I pulled back like it was burning and pressed my fist against my mouth. The room tilted. Has he told you what your father whispered? She knew. Of course she knew. She had probably been standing beside the bed when he died, holding his hand, saying something kind."I know you're in there, mija," she said. "You always did hold your breath when you were afraid. Do you remember? At the lake house. You'd go quiet and turn red and Beltrán would laugh and say, there she goes, our little statue."Lautaro's grip tightened

RayénFor a moment, nobody in that basement breathed.My brother was alive or he wasn't, and the man in the chair had just told me so with the face of someone ordering coffee. I heard a ringing in my ears. I heard Millaray say my name from very far away.Then Lautaro moved.He didn't rush. He crossed the floor the way he did everything, like there was nowhere he'd rather be, and he stopped in front of the chair and looked down. He wasn't wearing his jacket. His bandage showed white under the open collar of his shirt, and I thought, absurdly, he shouldn't be standing."Carlos," he said. "The table."One of the big men wheeled over a steel tray covered in a cloth. Lautaro peeled the cloth back himself. I didn't look. I had grown up in houses where you learned not to look."You work for a woman who talks about her children like pets," Lautaro said. "So I assume you've seen what happens to men who disappoint her. I want you to understand that I am not her. She is patient. She has all th

MillarayMy brother always says I talk too much when I'm scared. So I kept my mouth shut and watched the shoes come down the stairs one at a time.Black leather, polished. Then dark trousers. Then a hand sliding along the rail.Lautaro stepped in front of Rayén without looking at her. Carlos and Mateo both had their guns out before the man reached the bottom. My heart was going so hard I thought everyone could hear it."Easy, easy," said Elías Barrios, raising both palms. He was our head of security. He'd taught me to ride a bike when I was seven. "It's me. I saw the door open and came to check.""That door was locked," Carlos said."Then someone unlocked it." Elías looked at the guns, then at Lautaro. "Don Lautaro, I've been at the east gate since midnight. Ask the cameras.""The cameras can be looped," Lautaro said, flat as a table. "Give your weapon to Mateo."Elías went very still. I saw his jaw work. He had been with this family for twenty-six years, and my brother was asking him

RayénNobody in that basement said a word.Lautaro stood with his gun hanging at his side, and I watched the Don of Santiago understand that someone had walked through his life like it was a hallway. He looked ten years older than he had a minute ago."I said it at the cottage," he finally said. "Out loud. I thought I was talking to the dark.""Beltrán was outside," I told him. "I heard his voice through the door. He called you son, remember? He was close enough to put his ear on the wall.""Close enough to hear.""He's an old man, Lautaro. Old men are patient. He would have stood in that rain all night."Elías shook his head. "But the seal wasn't at the cottage at 4:10. It was here. In the estate.""I moved it," Lautaro said. "Put it under my pillow when we got back. Then I went to wash and change my bandage. Maybe ten minutes."My stomach turned over. I had heard that shower. I'd been on the sofa in the next room with my eyes shut, listening to the water and telling myself I wasn't