Chapter 25 JULIAN #3
“Breathe.” His voice is low, lethal, absolute. “Or I’ll blow the panic out of your skull myself.”
And for the first time since the moans started—since Ezio played my past like a weapon, since the world cracked open under my feet—I go completely, terrifyingly still.
I’m not breathing. I’m not moving. I’m nothing except held in place by the one man I can’t run from, can’t hide from, can’t lie to.
My lungs seize; my pulse strobes frantically under my skin; my nails dig into Rafe’s sleeve so hard the fabric bites back—but none of it matters.
Not when his eyes are locked on mine like he’s willing me back into my own body.
“In…” Rafe growls.
He inhales deep and loud, chest expanding slow enough that my wrecked, shaking frame instinctively wants—needs—to mirror him. The command vibrates down the barrel, through my teeth, straight into the center of my spine. I suck in a breath—shaky, uneven, a broken imitation of his.
“Out.”
His voice drops lower, steady and brutal as a fist. My exhale stutters out in pieces, a trembling whimper of air that makes my teeth clatter against the metal. I feel the vibration of steel on enamel, taste the copper burn of panic still scorching my tongue—but I breathe. I fucking breathe.
Rafe leans in so close our noses almost touch. His breath hits my cheek—warm, furious, grounding. His voice is a snarl dragged out of hell and shaped just for me.
“I love you.”
My entire body jerks. My fingers flex around his sleeve, clutching so hard the tendons in my wrist scream. My eyes go impossibly wider; a fresh wave of tears blurs everything except him.
“I don’t care what you did.” Rafe’s jaw clenches around every syllable. “I don’t give a shit who you fucked, who you killed, who you begged.” His grip on my hoodie tightens, dragging me closer. “You’re mine now. And mine doesn’t fucking stop breathing. You hear me?”
I stare at him like he just reached inside my chest and grabbed the frantic, dying thing inside me by its throat. His words hit harder than panic, harder than the tape, harder than anything Ezio could weaponize.
I’m still perfectly still. Perfectly silent.
Because Rafe’s voice rewires the noise in my head, wipes out the moans, wipes out Nathan, wipes out everything except the burn of this moment.
My fingers clutch his sleeve with a desperation so sharp it hurts—my knuckles white, my nails digging through fabric.
I don’t even realize I’m shaking until his thumb brushes my cheekbone, smearing a tear that never had the chance to fall.
Rafe presses the barrel just a fraction deeper against my tongue—enough to keep me anchored, enough to remind me where I am. His eyes soften—not in kindness, but in possession, in something darker that sees every broken part of me and claims it anyway. “You said you’d live for me, little halo.”
The name hits like a gut-punch—halo—something holy twisted into a threat, and my breath catches in my throat, a pathetic, fractured gasp around the steel.
Rafe leans in closer, forearm braced beside my head, voice dropping so low it steals every shred of panic straight out of my lungs. “I need you to breathe to do that.”
My chest convulses. My ribs shudder. Air drags in—sharp, violent, real—and for the first time since the tape started playing, I feel something break. The panic loosens its jaws and falls away like glass shattering on concrete.
I’m still crying, still shaking, still clinging to him like he’s the last tether holding me to existence—but I’m breathing. Because he said so. Because he demanded it. Because he loves me. Because I’m his.
He keeps me caged against the cold metal wall, my body pinned between his chest and the muzzle filling my mouth. My breathing stays ragged, shaking, uneven—but it’s happening. Because he told me to. Because he forced the world quiet. Because his voice cut deeper than the panic ever could.
Then he looks up—just one fraction of a second—to Kai. One heartbeat. One glance. Enough to kill. “Who did this?” Rafe growls, the words vibrating through the barrel resting on my tongue.
“Ezio,” Kai answers, voice clipped and edged in contempt.
The second I hear that name I snap like a fucking live wire. My whole body tenses, jerks, panic ricocheting back into my bloodstream so fast it steals my breath. I try to thrash again, try to scream again, try to claw myself out of my own skin—
But Rafe presses the gun, just a little. The barrel nudges deeper into my mouth, not cruelly, not violently—strategic, grounding, a silent command: stay. And I freeze instantly, breath seizing, eyes going wide and glassy.
“Deal with him,” Rafe says without looking away from me. It’s not a suggestion. It’s an execution order disguised as a sentence.
Kai snorts, a sharp exhale of dark amusement. “Julian already did,” he says. “He’s toothless now.”
Rafe’s lips curl, the faintest hint of pride darkening his eyes as he shifts his focus fully back to me. “Good boy.” The words hit like heat under my skin. Then, lower—“I’ll take care of it.”
Something in my chest cracks at that—Rafe promising violence like reassurance, murder like comfort.
He presses his forehead to my temple, his breath warm against the side of my face, grounding me in a way nothing else can.
His free hand comes up to cradle the back of my skull, fingers threading into my hair, holding me steady against him.
His voice drops into something quiet, something low and scalding and intimate enough to melt the panic at its roots. “I’m going to take this out now, little halo,” he murmurs. “But I need you to keep breathing. Understand?”
A tremor rolls through me, violent but contained under his hold. My nails dig into his sleeve again, weaker now, shaking. My eyes flutter shut for a second before I force them open—because he’s watching me, because I can’t look away from him when he speaks like that.
I nod—small, barely there, just the tiniest, most pathetic movements of my head. Anything bigger would break me in half.
Rafe’s stare holds mine—those storm-gray eyes locked on me like he’s the only solid thing in a world that’s collapsing.
His hand stays firm behind my head, fingers threaded through my hair, thumb anchoring the back of my skull.
And then—slowly, deliberately—he begins to pull the gun from my mouth.
The metal slides against my tongue, my teeth, my lips, and every inch of its retreat makes my breath hitch until I’m trembling all over again.
The second the barrel leaves my mouth, my jaw collapses forward and a broken, stuttering exhale falls out of me.
My body sags—completely, utterly—like the gun was the only thing holding me upright.
I fall into him—hard—like gravity snapped its fingers and decided I belonged there.
Rafe catches me instantly, one arm banding around my back, the other gripping under my thighs as he lifts me clean off the ground.
My legs instinctively wrap around his waist and my arms loop around his shoulders with a strength I don’t remember having.
My face presses into the side of his neck, tears soaking into his skin, my breath shaking so violently my ribs ache.
“That’s it,” Rafe murmurs, voice low and rough, vibrating through his chest into mine. “I’ve got you, Jules. I’m right here.”
The words unravel something deep in me—something that’s been knotted so tight I forgot it had edges.
My fingers curl into his shirt as he starts walking, long strides carrying us across the compound like he’d walk through fire without blinking.
The cold hits my back, then his door slams open, then warm air swallows us as he steps into his container.
Rafe’s place is darker, quieter, heavier than anywhere else in this compound.
And the second we’re inside, he strides straight to the bed and sits down with me still in his lap, my legs locked around his waist, my forehead tucked under his jaw.
He holds me tight, arms wrapped around me like he’s caging in the pieces that were spilling out.
I cling back tighter. So tight my fists shake as they twist into the fabric at his shoulders. My body curls in on itself against him, trembling uncontrollably. The sobs come silent now—no more screams, no more words—just raw, shaking cries that hollow my chest out from the inside.
Rafe presses his mouth to the side of my head, breathing me in like he’s memorizing the shape of my panic.
One of his hands slides up my back, slow, steady, grounding.
The other stays around my thighs, holding me wrapped around him like he’s not letting me go for anything.
“I’ve got you,” he says again, quieter now, a growl softened into something lethal and tender all at once. “You’re safe. You hear me?”
I can’t answer. I just cling. Crying silently against his throat as if the sound might shatter me again.