The Taste Of Revenge (War of Sins Book 1)

Rafaelo

'You'll get out of here. I promise you.'

The voice is so soft, so melodic it's tugging at my heartstrings.

Long ago memories start to surface, and like a movie playing before my eyes, I find myself unable to do anything but watch.

I don't know what she looks like, but I know her heart. I know her voice, and the words that come from her very soul.

I know her.

Lucero. Mi luz.

'Have you ever been in love?' I find myself asking her.

Looking around, I note I'm in a small cell. Three concrete walls, a metal grid and desolate coldness surround me. There's only gray—different shades of gray that only enhance the loneliness and desperation I feel clawing at my soul.

'Love?' she scoffs. 'Love is for those who have a choice,' she continues, a sadness underlying her tone. 'It's not for people like us.'

'What if it could be?' I ask. I barely recognize my own voice. It must be because it's been too long since I've spoken out loud.

It's only with her that I get to remember that I used to be a person—that I am a person. It's only with her that I remember I'm still alive.

But even that comes at a price, and the knowledge that we are to be forever separated by a wall, by circumstances and by fucking life doesn't help. If anything, it makes me even more desperate for more of her—more of anything I can get of her.

Even the sound of her rhythmic breath can soothe me, giving me a purpose to wake up in the morning and not succumb to this wretched state I find myself in.

'What are you asking, Raf?' Her breath hitches, a small sound but one that doesn't go unnoticed. Not when I'm attuned to every little vibration that comes from her direction.

And as I drag myself to the wall, leaning against the cold surface and placing my ear against that one barrier that keeps me away from her, I wait.

Inhale. Exhale.

Hidden by the howling of the wind as it makes rounds along the cell blocks, her breath is barely audible. Still, there's something inside of me that refuses to let anything interfere with the evidence of her presence.

Closing my eyes, I force myself to bottle my feelings, not wanting to alienate her with my strange desires. After all, who but a madman would have fallen in love in these grim circumstances?

Yet she is it for me. My one respite from perpetual pain. The only one who can calm my clamoring soul and stop my invisible wounds from bleeding.

'Before. Before you came here,' I revise my question, holding my breath as I await her answer.

'No.' The answer is curt and straight to the point, and a million feelings attack me at once. Relief, sadness, but more than anything a deep pleasure at knowing she's never given her heart to anyone before.

'Have you?' The question comes after a pause, as if she tried to fight with herself whether to ask it or not.

'No,' I whisper.

Not until you. Not like this.

But I don't say that. I no longer say anything. I just rest my back against the wall, my eyes closed as I try to imagine her before me. Just a few meters away from each other, yet we're worlds apart.

Both prisoners, both subjugated and condemned to a life that no longer belongs to us.

Yet that doesn't stop me from taking comfort in her presence—the mere fact that she exists. She's the only thing that still keeps me going.