114: You Got Lucky

Sapphira

I spent the entire day with Aunt Isolde and felt reluctant when they had to leave. Once they were gone, the house seemed empty, and I realized how late it was.

Was Rafael not coming home tonight? I had dinner, bathed Mateo, and put him to sleep, yet he still hadn’t returned. I hadn’t seen any of his brothers or anyone I could ask.

So I lay in bed that night, feeling a mix of frustration and loneliness. Mateo cried softly in his sleep, and I realized I had been holding him a bit too tightly. The bed felt empty without Rafael, so instead of letting Mateo sleep in his nursery, I decided to keep him with me.

"Where could he have gone?" I asked no one in particular and what I received was silence.

I groaned lowly and made a mental note of how I was going to make him pay for this when he returned. How could he just leave without saying a word? A little note would have been ideal.

Now I'm laying in bed, unable to sleep so I call out to Saskia, 'Saskia... Are you there?'

'Yes,' her v