From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride (The Billionaires of Blackcastle 1)

It felt like hours before she was finally drained of all her tears, and lay there barely managing the in-out motions of breathing. The men seemed just as depleted, sitting around the bed as if they’d been through a thirty-round fight with a gorilla.

“Please tell us you’re done crying,” Raiden groaned.

Her breath hitched. As they all tensed again, she only nodded. There was nothing more in her. For now.

Exhaling in relief, Graves said, “How is it possible a woman your size has all that water in her?”

“Speaking of water.” Raiden grimaced at the memory as he fetched a carafe. “You need to replace the rivers you lost.”

Contradictorily the one who looked most rattled by her weeping storm, Numair warned, “Sip it slowly. Otherwise, you might choke. Or throw up. Or both. Or do some other catastrophic thing. Like burst into another crying jag.”

As she did as instructed, Numair regarded her heavily. “That was for Rafael. You can’t bear imagining what he’s been through.”

Her breath hitched again. “And that I can’t do anything about it.”

Numair exchanged a look with Raiden. Then he shook his head. “You do love him.”

She looked at both men through almost swollen-shut lids. “You figured this out on your own?”

And she saw what she’d thought impossible. A semblance of a smile on Numair’s cruel lips. “It was a long-shot deduction.”

Suddenly, it all crashed into place. “Rafael thinks my father had a hand in his abduction!”

Exchanging another of those glances, and making another decision, Numair was the one who told her the details.

This time there were no tears. Just conviction. It made her sit up steady. “No way my father did that!”

Raiden shrugged. “Rafael has evidence.”

Slumping back with this new blow, she felt her world churning.

Graves, who’d been silent for a while, came forward, checking her temperature.

She clung to his hand. “I need to know more.”

Another shared glance between the men, then Graves asked, “What do you need to know?”

“These aren’t your real names.”

He shook his head. “They are our names now.”

“How did Rafael pick his name?”

“He was wounded on a mission. Bones, our medical expert, performed a desperate field surgery on him, removed his kidney and spleen to stem his internal bleeding, thinking he’d die anyway. But he recovered fully as if by an act of God.”

“Rafael. God has healed...”

At Graves’s nod, another sob tore her. That scar. She’d felt it resonate with such...pain, such...loss. She’d been right. Oh, God, Rafael...all he’d lost, all he’d survived...

“He picked Moreno Salazar,” Raiden said. “Dark old house, just as I chose Kuroshiro, which means black castle in Japanese, as a sort of twisted tribute to our being the product of this ancient, sinister place where we were imprisoned and created.”

“Before you told me all that,” she whispered, “I was thinking you did feel as if you’ve been forged in the same hell.”

“I’m beginning to see why Rafael fell for you,” Raiden said, that assessment in his eyes tinged with approval.

“He didn’t. He was just using me.”

Graves waved her words away as if they were rubbish. “He fell for you. All the way. I was there that first night he did. I can’t begin to explain how it happened, but it certainly did.” At her mournful disbelief, he growled, “Bloody hell, the man went prematurely gray with fright over you. What more proof do you need?”