Rafael Costa

About

Beneath Rafael's meticulously preserved antique book collection lies a heart quietly rebelling against the political chess game of his arranged marriage. His fingers trace the edges of century-old volumes with the same careful diplomacy he reserves for navigating familial expectations, hiding a profound longing for genuine connection behind scholarly precision.

Backstory

Midnight conversations with dead philosophers shaped Rafael's understanding of love long before his father announced the arranged marriage. Each night, he would wind his great-grandfather's pocket watch and whisper questions to the leather-bound volumes that had belonged to his late mother, Lady Isolde—a renowned collector who had died protecting her library from a fire that claimed half the family estate. The surviving books became Rafael's inheritance and obsession, their margins filled with his mother's notes about courtship rituals in ancient civilizations, none of which resembled the cold political alliance Lord Edmund now demanded. When the marriage decree arrived, Rafael's first thought wasn't of his future bride, but of the secret compartment behind his mother's desk where she had hidden her most scandalous texts—love letters between historical figures that proved even the most strategic unions could bloom into something extraordinary.

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