Chapter 10-Rico
Diablita.
The word slams into me like a punch.
Lucy Volkov.
That porcelain doll heiress Matheson paraded me in front of for a couple of photo ops.
That’s who Maya thinks I traded her for?
Of fucking course she does.
And it’s my goddamn fault for not sticking up for myself, for her, for the integrity of my music to that lowdown snake.
I’ve got to make her understand, but first, I have to address the hurt that’s threatening to rip me open.
My blood goes hot, molten, rage burning under my skin.
“You think I went from your bed,” I grind out, stepping closer, “to hers?”
Maya flinches, her arms clutching tighter around herself, but it doesn’t stop me.
Doesn’t stop the way my chest aches so goddamn hard I can barely breathe.
“You think I could fuck you, love you, write music with you that tore me open from the inside—and then turn around and put my hands on her?”
My voice cracks with the force of it, equal parts fury and heartbreak.
“Is that what you really believe about me, Songbird?”
She looks away, eyes shiny with unshed tears, and it kills me.
Kills me worse than any insult, worse than any fistfight I’ve ever lost.
Because it means she doesn’t trust me.
Not enough. Not then. Definitely not now.
And God, that hurts.
“Fuck,” I rasp, dragging a hand down my face. “You think I’m that kind of man? That I could touch you— love on you —and then just go take whatever Matheson shoved in front of me? That’s what you think of me?”
“Y-you were with her at the video drop. I heard you on the phone,” she whispers, and it is breaking my heart wide open.
“That was business?—”
“Isn’t that how it always starts? As business,” she says.
She’s not wrong. I know plenty of guys who do what I do and fuck around on their women. But not me. I thought she knew me better than that.
“Look I’m not trying to insult you, Rico. It is what it is, right?”
My throat tightens, my voice dropping lower, raw and dangerous.
“Fuck the insult, Maya. That you’d even believe it? That’s what tears me apart.”
I slam my palm against the wall beside her head, close enough to make her jump.
Not to scare her— never to scare her —but to keep myself from shaking apart.
“You were it for me,” I whisper harshly. “You still are. Don’t you dare put another woman’s name between us. Don’t you dare take what we had and make it cheap.”
Her lip trembles, and I can see it—her doubt, her pain, her own jealousy eating her alive.
But underneath it, there’s something else. The same ache burning in me.
And it’s the only thing that gives me hope.