The air inside the visiting room seemed heavier than usual. The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly above, and Stacy sat across Rafael once again. The guards lingered near the door, their presence quiet but sharp like blades waiting to cut through the atmosphere if needed. Stacy adjusted her recorder and looked up at Rafael, who was leaning back on his chair, wrists chained but his demeanor unshaken.
She had grown used to his strange calmness, the way he could make even the suffocating walls of death row feel like a theater stage where he was both actor and director.
Rafael’s gaze was fixed on her as though she was the only one existing in that room.
“You are ready for my second confession?” he asked softly. His voice carried a strange mix of arrogance and tenderness, like he was about to unwrap a gift only he had the right to give.
Stacy nodded. “Yes. You said the first was about survival. The first murder you committed as a boy. What comes after survival, Rafael?”
Rafael’s lips curved into a smile that did not reach his eyes. He leaned forward, resting his chained hands on the table. “After survival comes passion. And passion… can be more dangerous than hunger.”
“Passion?” Stacy repeated, leaning slightly closer, though she kept her guard. “Do you mean love?”
“I mean Trisha Vasquez,” Rafael said, his tone dropping into something almost reverent. “She was not just love. She was fire. She was the kind of shadow that wraps around you even when the lights are gone. She could destroy a man, and I let her destroy me.”
The name rolled out like a spell. Stacy felt a chill run down her arms. She had read that name before, in fragments of Rafael’s file. Trisha Vasquez, socialite turned scandal, her life tainted by her association with him. The headlines had painted her as both temptress and victim. Stacy clicked her pen nervously and said, “Tell me about her.”
Rafael closed his eyes for a moment as though summoning her ghost. When he opened them again, there was an unmistakable glint, a dangerous warmth. “The first time I saw her was in a club in Makati. I had just pulled off a job with Andrew. We were celebrating, drunk on the adrenaline of escaping the police. And then I saw her. Not just beautiful, Stacy. There are many beautiful women in this city. Trisha was different. She looked at me as if she already knew my sins and wanted to dance with them.”
Stacy felt her throat tighten. “You fell for her at once?”
Rafael chuckled, low and dark. “I do not fall, Stacy. I conquer. But with her, it was not conquest. It was recognition. Two predators circling each other, sensing the hunger in the other’s eyes. She approached me first. Do you believe that? A woman from a family of wealth and grace walking straight up to a man like me. She said, ‘You look like trouble.’ And I said, ‘You look like someone who wants it.’ That was the beginning.”
Stacy scribbled furiously in her notebook, though her recorder was catching every word. “And what did she want from you?”
“Everything,” Rafael said, his voice sharpening. “She wanted freedom from her sister’s constant moral lectures, from her family’s expectations, from the cage of being a Vasquez. With me, she could taste chaos. With her, I could feel alive in ways hunger never taught me. We burned together. But when fire burns too hot, it devours.”
“Are you saying she pushed you deeper into crime?”
Rafael tilted his head, smiling with mock innocence. “You see, you want to know if she corrupted me. But perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps I corrupted her. Or perhaps we corrupted each other. Do you not see the beauty in that? Two people who could not be saved, dragging each other to the abyss and calling it love.”
The intensity in his eyes made Stacy’s heart quicken against her will. She forced herself to remain composed. “What did Trisha do?” she asked quietly.
Rafael’s smile faded. For the first time, there was a flicker of pain. “She followed me into jobs she should never have touched. She drove the getaway car once. She helped launder money through her connections. She became my partner, my accomplice. And when the blood came, she did not look away. She watched, Stacy. She watched with eyes that understood.”
“Blood?” Stacy pressed.
Rafael’s gaze hardened. “There was a man. A businessman who thought he could cheat us. Andrew and I cornered him in a warehouse. Trisha was there. She saw me put the knife to his throat. She saw me make the cut. And when his body collapsed, she did not scream. She only lit a cigarette and whispered, ‘You are beautiful when you are merciless.’”
Stacy’s hand trembled slightly on her pen. “And you believed that was love?”
“It was love,” Rafael insisted, his voice rising for the first time. “Not the kind you read in your books or see in the films. It was raw, feral, unholy. But it was ours. She made me believe I was invincible. And yet… she also made me vulnerable.”
“How so?”
Rafael leaned closer, lowering his voice until it was almost intimate. “Because when you love someone like Trisha, you give them the power to kill you without lifting a hand. She betrayed me once, you know. Whispered to her sister, Eleonor, about our plans. Eleonor tried to save her, to pull her out of my world. But Trisha always came back to me. That was her curse. That was my curse.”
Stacy swallowed hard, sensing the labyrinth of obsession beneath his words. “Do you regret her?”
“Regret?” Rafael laughed bitterly. “I regret nothing about Trisha. Even when she left scars on me, even when she made choices that nearly destroyed us. She is carved into my soul, Stacy. Do you understand what that means? I will rot in this cell, but her name will still be written on my bones.”
There was a silence, thick and suffocating. Stacy’s recorder kept rolling, capturing every dangerous syllable. She forced herself to break the silence. “And where is she now?”
Rafael’s expression darkened. “Alive. Somewhere. She hides in her own ways, perhaps trying to rebuild, perhaps trying to forget. But she cannot erase me. Just as I cannot erase her. That is the tragedy of passion. It never dies, even when it kills.”
Stacy leaned back, her pulse unsteady. She wondered if Trisha Vasquez would ever agree to speak to her, to share her side. She wondered what kind of woman could both love and survive a man like Rafael.
Rafael studied her carefully, as though reading her thoughts. He smiled again, that haunting smile. “You are thinking about her now, are you not? Wondering what she looks like, how she speaks, how she touched me. Be careful, Stacy. Curiosity is the first step to obsession.”
Stacy forced a small laugh though her throat was dry. “I am a journalist. Curiosity is my profession.”
Rafael’s chains rattled as he shifted. “Yes. But there is a difference between a story and a confession. And I am giving you confessions that can consume you if you are not careful. You asked for my truth, Stacy. The truth is that Trisha Vasquez was both my equal and my ruin. And every crime I committed after meeting her was marked by her shadow.”
The guard announced that their time was nearly up. Rafael leaned back again, calm once more. “Confession two,” he said softly. “Passion is the cruelest accomplice.”
Stacy turned off her recorder and closed her notebook. She tried to steady her breath, but her mind was already racing with questions, fears, and an undeniable fascination.
As she stood to leave, Rafael called out, his voice carrying across the sterile room. “Stacy.”
She paused and looked back.
He smiled with quiet menace. “When you write about her, make sure you understand. Trisha was not a victim. She was a mirror. And maybe one day, you will see yourself in that reflection.”
Stacy walked out of the room, her legs steady but her heart pounding. Outside the prison walls, the Manila sun blazed down, but she felt the cold shadow of Trisha Vasquez following her, whispering promises of a fire she was not sure she could survive.
ns216.73.216.23da2
and then Add to home screen.