Chapter 35
ROMERO
A me problem indeed.
Fuck, I really shouldn’t have done that.
My head is still spinning, my breaths sawing hotly through my chest while my limbs shake uncontrollably. That thick, honey-sweet tenderness from our honeymoon just crashed back into me with the force of a tsunami, bringing every overwhelming emotion I’ve been trying to bury.
I’m so fucking fucked—with a capital letter F. Fucked.
I manage to peel myself free from her warmth, wincing as the cool air hits my semi-erect cock. That’s the problem right there: I just came so fucking hard I saw galaxies, stars, the whole damn universe exploding behind my lids, yet I’m not fully sated.
I’m never sated when it comes to her. Never.
“Are you okay?” My voice sounds wrecked, raw and husky from what we just did. She nods weakly, eyes squeezed shut, and I curse under my breath as I step further away so I’m no longer crushing her body to the wall.
I still can’t believe that happened. Fucked her against the wall like some animal.
I’ve never lost control like that before. Not once in my entire goddamn life.
Her absolute trust in me was a wrecking ball to whatever remaining walls I thought I had. Now my nerves are shot to hell and I feel raw. Exposed. I hate it.
Cursing again—because apparently that’s all my vocabulary consists of right now—I stumble to the kitchen on unsteady legs and grab two bottles of water from the fridge.
For a moment, I just stand there in front of the open door, letting the sharp bite of cold air bring me back to some semblance of sanity.
When I return to the living room, she’s still against the wall with her eyes closed. My stomach drops as I take in her ruffled hair, the finger marks I left on her skin, the way she’s barely holding herself upright.
Christ. What did I do to her?
I walk faster, tucking one cold bottle under my arm while I unscrew the other. “Here.” I lift it to her lips and her eyes flutter open, those slate-gray eyes hitting me like a punch to the solar plexus.
Fuck me.
She parts her lips and I carefully tip the bottle, helping her drink until she lazily pushes it away. “Thank you,” she murmurs, watching me with unmistakable tenderness as I finish her bottle.
I think back to earlier when I was convinced she was about to say something she wouldn’t be able to take back and how I kissed her to stop those words from coming. Now I suddenly want to hear them. It’s testament to how fucked I truly am.
I was right that night at the station when I called her trouble. She’s been upending my world, turning my emotions inside out since she came into my life. I clear my throat, looking away from her as I toss the empty water bottle aside. Only after I finish the second one do I meet her eyes again.
“Come on, let’s go upstairs.”
“You go without me. I’ll meet you up there,” she replies, waving a hand at me.
I frown down at her. “What?”
She chuckles weakly. “Husband, the only thing keeping me standing right now is this wall. I’m pretty sure I’ll fall flat on my face if I move away from it.”
My chest does something weird when she calls me husband. I like it way too much.
Hoping it doesn’t show, I approach her briskly. “Come on.” My arms wrap around her, fire lashing through me when I make contact with her naked flesh. My cock stirs—of course it does, the bastard—but I force myself to ignore it as I lift her up bridal style.
She lets out a little squeal, her arms flying around my neck. Our gazes lock and hold, and my throat tightens when she relaxes in my arms, her head coming to rest hesitantly on my shoulder.
She isn’t scared of me at all. And that scares the shit out of me.
I carry her up the stairs, feeling like I’m carrying my whole fucking world in my arms. Because I am. Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, this slip of a woman became everything.
I head straight for my bedroom—a room I haven’t slept in since she moved in. Even back then, I knew I needed distance if I wanted to keep the walls around my heart intact.
Fat lot of good that did me.
The room smells like her now. I inhale deeply, letting her scent fill my lungs as I make my way towards the ensuite where I gently set her on the closed toilet lid so I can run a bath for her.
Steam curls through the air as hot water fills the oversized tub, and I watch it rise while hyper-aware of her eyes on me.
When the water reaches the brim, I turn off the tap and turn back to her, faltering when I find her watching me with that intense gaze that feels like heat under my skin.
“Come in with me,” she murmurs, her voice low and husky.
I nod. I was already planning to bathe with her.
I help her in first, lowering her gently into the warm water. Her soft sigh wiggles its way into my chest and takes up permanent residence there. I climb in behind her, careful not to splash water everywhere as I settle into the warmth and pull her back against my chest.
Another sigh, deeper this time, as she melts into me.
Her head comes to rest in the crook of my neck, her hair tickling my chin and sending shivers down my spine. A harsh breath bursts out when her hands cover mine beneath the water and lift them, guiding them over her skin in a slow, sensual drag.
The only sounds in the air are our heavy breathing and the gentle lap of water as I explore her body—lush and warm and pliant under my touch. But the silence isn’t awkward. It’s comfortable, intimate. Like we’re both lost in our thoughts, trying to process what the hell just happened between us.
Because fuck, it’s still hard to believe I put my gun against her temple and pulled the trigger.
It really was loaded—one bullet left in the chamber.
And because I’d spun it earlier, the bullets were randomized, meaning there was a one-in-six chance of blowing her skull apart.
Those are incredibly high odds. And still, I did it.
What the hell was I thinking? And how could she trust me so blindly? Does she have no sense of self-preservation?
She shifts in my arms, breaking into my spiraling thoughts. “Will you tell me what that guy did? The one you killed?”
“Leni…”
“Please?” She glances back at me through wet lashes, her eyes pools of liquid metal. She doesn’t look afraid or worried at all. Just curious.
And I find myself wanting to tell her. My tongue is heavy with how much I want to tell her. This and anything else she wants to know. I want to tell her everything. Give her everything she asks for and more.
Definitely fucked.
“He stole from me,” I sigh in resignation, leaning down to press a soft kiss to her temple. “But I’m not sure you’ll understand the significance if I tell you what he stole.”
“Then start from the beginning.”
She’s gotten good at this. My lips curl as I indulge her.
“My brothers and I run a variety of businesses that bring in profit for us. Both legal and illegal. However, a few years ago, I took on a client who’d murdered someone.
A thief.” My smile fades as the memory surfaces, and I don’t even notice Leni going still in my arms.
“This client owned a chain of pharmacies all over the city, but he started noticing expensive medications going missing from his Brooklyn branch. Mounjaro—a tirzepatide used for type two diabetes,” I continue.
Even newer than Ozempic, Mounjaro costs a fortune, which is why Nolan noticed whenever it vanished. The financial impact was impossible to ignore.
“So he investigated and discovered one of his employees was the thief. The man had a diabetic mother who couldn’t gain access to the medications she needed.
They had little to no insurance, no money to cover the expenses, and not nearly enough credits to qualify for a loan while already drowning in medical bills. ”
“So he stole from his employer,” Leni comments softly.
“Exactly. My client wasn’t pleased when he confronted his employee, who only cried and pleaded for mercy.
Mercy he wasn’t granted. He lost his life for the theft.
” My jaw tightens. I defended Nolan and won.
Hated myself for days after. Because that could have easily been me two decades ago—if I had access to a pharmacy while Mom was fighting her battle with diabetes.
“Poor guy. He was just a victim of circumstances.”
“Yeah.” I run a hand over the curve of her breast—not for lust, but to soothe myself as I move to the harder part of my memory. A lump forms in my throat, the words choking me as I let them out. “He reminded me of myself.”
“How so?” she prompts gently when I go quiet.
“Because years ago, I was in his shoes. A diabetic mother who needed expensive medications to survive. A criminal father whose record was longer than a city block. A selfish fucker who didn’t think it was worth spending money on his sick wife.”
The memory of his voice echoes in my head, clear as the day he said them:
She’s going to die anyway, Romero.
What’s the point in spending so much money on drugs she’ll always need?
It’s better she die peacefully now rather than down the line when I can’t afford to buy her drugs anymore.
Being dependent on medications to survive is no different from being a junkie, you know?
Leni’s sharp inhale drags me back to the present, and I realize I’m gripping her tit too hard. Fuck.
I release her quickly. “Sorry.”
“No.” Her hand slips into the water and finds mine, squeezing. “Keep going. Please.”
“There’s not much else to tell.” I try to say it casually, but the crack in my voice betrays me. “I couldn’t afford her meds, even though I had started working in the same syndicate as my father.” The Moretti syndicate. Rafael’s father only gave me scraps—low-risk jobs that paid pennies. Worthless.
“She died,” I say flatly. And my father followed a few weeks later. Not from grief or by my hands like I’d so fantasized. No, he got offed on the job.
“I’m so sorry.” The pain in her voice sounds genuine. Water splashes everywhere as she turns in my arms, straddling my hips, her arms wrapping around my waist as she leans her head against my chest.
It’s a strange feeling being comforted by her. My heart becomes tender, my cock hardening beneath her ass, my pulse racing wildly. But it makes it easier for me to continue.
I anchor one hand on her small waist and thread the other through her pretty hair, letting the wet strands fall through my fingers.
“Anyways, that case took me back in time. And I thought it was a fucking injustice that there are probably hundreds—no, thousands—of people like that in the city. Desperate for meds they can’t afford.
So I pitched another business idea to my brothers: drugs.
Not the hard street type, but the medicinal type that people need to survive. ”
Rafael didn’t question me when I brought up the idea. None of my brothers did. They all understood immediately. And even though we knew right from the start we wouldn’t make a profit from it, we invested in it anyway.
“It took weeks, but I found suppliers, secured shipping routes, and figured out the logistics. We started bringing medications into the city. Made them affordable and easy to access for people who desperately needed them.”
“He stole the meds?” she breathes, getting where I’m going.
I curl a strand of her hair around my finger, watching the strand gleam red-gold in the bathroom light. “He was a worker in one of my warehouses. It would have been a different ball game if he’d stolen them because he needed them.”
“He didn’t need them?” She glances up at me in surprise, a little frown crossing her pretty face. “Then what did he do with them?”
“He resold them—jacked the price back up to match the big pharma leeches. The opioids he crushed and mixed with cocaine to create a new strain of crack he distributed to drug dealers.”
“That motherfucker.”
The sharp bite of anger in her voice makes me smile, and without thinking, I lean down to kiss the scattered freckles on her nose, then her eyelids, before tucking her face back against my chest.
“He had to die,” she says into my chest with absolute conviction. “And I’m glad you made him suffer first. He deserved every second of pain you gave him,” she adds savagely.
The words hit me harder than any bullet, and I stare down at her in surprise, rattled to my core.
Not because of her approval—though that affects me more than it should. But because maybe a part of me wanted her to run. Wanted her to finally see the devil lurking beneath my carefully constructed mask and give me a reason to justify keeping her at arm’s length.
Instead, she praises me. She praises my actions and cuddles into me in the water, sighing contentedly. What the hell am I supposed to do with her when she says and does things exactly opposite of what any sane person would do?
My lungs ache with pressure as my heart expands, stretches, and reshapes itself to make room for her. It should be impossible, but I can almost feel the change happening as she forces her way in, carving out space I never knew existed.
I was scared before, but now—I’m terrified.
She tilts her head and presses a lingering kiss on my left arm, over my tattoo. “Thank you for telling me. About your mom and everything else. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you, secretive as you are.” Her voice turns playful on the last words.
But I’m having a full-blown existential crisis, and I’m not in the mood to be amused. I gently move her head off my chest, lift her off my lap, and climb out of the tub like it’s suddenly filled with acid, splashing water everywhere in my haste.
I wrap a towel around my hips with hands that are definitely not steady and grab another one, offering it to her as she stands.
“I guess now would be a bad time to ask about your tattoo.” She eyes me while opening her arms, quietly asking me to wrap the towel around her.
My lungs tighten as I do, and she continues speaking, her breath ruffling my cheek.
“I noticed a similar design on Maximo, you know? And I’ve been curious about what it means. ”
Despite the pressure crushing my chest, I find myself amused after all, and a deep laugh huffs out of me. “You don’t know when to stop, do you?”
“Not really.” She shrugs sheepishly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I can wait, though.” She leans into me, and I chuckle again.
Drawn towards her by forces I can’t control or understand, I wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her close as I press a kiss to the top of her head.
She just might be my undoing.