Rafael's POV
Silence fell between us.
I turned away, unwilling to look at the woman who still remained comfortably on her knees on the floor.
In the reflection of the window, I could see my own face. The veins along my neck and jaw stood out sharply, strained by my stubborn refusal to cry and lose control.
But somehow, what stared back at me wasn't my reflection.
It was the image of a little boy with hollow, frightened eyes, stammering helplessly as he looked at his mother asleep in a bathtub filled with red water. The boy I almost forgot.
He had tried to wake her up.
But he kept choking on his words because blood continued flowing from the wound on her neck, and it terrified him.
Terrified him of losing his mother.
It was the same fear haunting me now.
Because once I accepted all of these painful truths, I would lose something that boy had spent his entire life protecting.
His love for his mother.
That boy would disappear.
I would lose my mother twice.
