Then she was swept up in his arms among his brothers’ hoots and hollers that he was disgracing them by anticipating the wedding night. Not in a condition to be embarrassed, she clung to him all the way to their quarters.
But the moment he placed her on the bed and came down beside her, her disquiet returned.
Twisting her ponytail around his wrist, harnessing her by it, ferocity barely leashed by gentleness, he tilted up her face. “No more distance, minha vida, ever again.”
“That’s not it...I just—just... Oh, God, please, Rafael, show me your evidence against my father.”
His face settled in adamant lines. “I have given this up. I consider anything I’ve been through the path to finding you. You remember when you said you’d compensate me? Finding you is more compensation than I’ve ever dreamed I could have.”
“But what you have against him is airtight, right?”
“This is what I was afraid of, for your faith in him to be irrevocably damaged, causing you this much pain.”
Her chest ached, her eyes burned. “Everything in me rebels against believing any such thing of my father, but it isn’t why I’m in agony. It’s for you. What you suffered was unthinkable.”
“It’s in the past.”
“But this is the present and future. How can I share my life and body and baby with you if there’s even the slightest possibility my father committed such an unforgivable crime against you? Even if he had done so under unspeakable duress? Throwing you in hell while he lavished his love on me?” She released a shuddering breath. “Even if you’ve decided to look the other way for my sake and that of our lives together, I can’t. I can’t live believing one of the two people my life has been built around did the other such unimaginable injury, for whatever reason.”
After a long moment, he said, “Do you believe in your heart your father didn’t do it—or at least was forced to do it somehow?”
She nodded. “But I can’t even begin to think how this could have happened.”
“Then that’s it. I’m now ready to disbelieve anything but the verdict of your heart. It’s never wrong. That heart saw through the hatred cloaking mine, blew away my bitterness and anger, made me experience what I never thought I was capable of—a love without bounds. I trust your heart, and only your heart.”
She gaped at him, unable to take that much love.
He had more to give. “I’ll do anything to find new evidence in your father’s favor. To that end, if you permit, I want to face him. He’s the only one who might provide missing information needed to paint a truer picture.”
It terrified her that a confrontation might provide definitive proof that her father’s reasons hadn’t been overwhelming enough. But knowing this must be resolved, she consented. But on one condition.
“If it turns out my father did what you think he did and had no acceptable reason for his actions, I want you to deal with him as you see fit, to make no more allowances for his being my father. You have to have justice...and closure.”
Not intending to ever fulfill that condition, Rafael escorted Eliana to her father’s suite.
The man, who’d already gone to bed, seemed to think he wasn’t quite awake when Rafael told him who he really was.
His expression changed from blank, to flabbergasted—then he shot up and pounced on Rafael.
He pulled back, tears in his eyes. “Deus, could it really be you? Oh, meu caro...your disappearance hit me almost as hard as it hit your
parents. The indescribable loss brought me back to your father’s side after we had our stupid falling out and I was idiotically sulking. He clung to my support during the search for you, but then your case was closed. We turned the world upside down looking for you on our own, but once your father became certain you were lost to him, he pulled away from everyone.” Deep sorrow creased his face. “It was why he and your mother divorced. They dealt with their grief in different ways and couldn’t find their way back to one another. I tried to keep in touch with him, but he couldn’t bear knowing anyone from the life that had you in it.”
From Ferreira’s reaction, Rafael no longer doubted he’d had anything to do with his abduction. Which left only one explanation. The real culprit had left the threads of evidence that would lead to Ferreira, clues that had been so ingenious, the police had missed all of them, and only he with his abilities and reach had found them twenty-four years later.
Eliana told her father Rafael had thought he was the one who’d orchestrated his abduction, and Ferreira’s dumbfounded reaction solidified his belief in the man’s innocence.
Looking relieved beyond measure, she sought his confirmation, and he rushed to give it to her. “It wasn’t him, meu amor. As always, your heart is my compass.”
After a clinging, tearful kiss, she turned to her father. “Do you have any idea who could have framed you, Daddy?”
Ferreira looked dazedly from his daughter to Rafael, obviously struggling to readjust to everything he thought he knew of the past months since Rafael had entered their lives.
Then Ferreira burst out in belated affront, “You’re telling me all this time you thought it was me? You came here to punish me? That’s why you went after Ellie?”
“I wasn’t part of his plan, Daddy.”
Relief and pride spread though Rafael. Her faith in him had been healed, and was back to the purity he now depended on.