Chapter 16
16
T he warehouse paints a dark spash beneath the afternoon sky, all rust-stained metal and broken windows.
This was our place of business, back when Raphael was still a member of our family. When he left, it caused a bloody rift as those who refused to follow an Omega made their opinion known. Others I had considered family turned on me, and only a handful of us had made it out alive, including Jace, Lena, and Rico.
After losing so many, we abandoned the location to start fresh, so it serves as the perfect backdrop for the death of the last thing I loved.
“This place is fucking cursed,” Lena says from the passenger seat.
“Yeah.” I grip the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles white with tension.
The pain in my chest sharpens, digging deeper with every breath I’ve taken since leaving Raphael two days ago. I haven’t eaten since then. Haven’t slept much, either. My body knows what my mind has decided to do and is trying to stop me.
I pass Raphael’s sports car, a sleek, silver two-door with tinted windows parked on the street and pull into the empty lot, gravel crunching beneath the tires. The industrial district stretches around us, abandoned and quiet on a Sunday afternoon. Perfect for privacy.
Perfect for what comes next.
“Last chance to back out,” Lena says without judgment as she checks her pistol, the metal catching the sunlight that filters through the windshield.
“I’m not backing out,” I say, but the last syllable falters, betraying the uncertainty I’m trying to hide.
The pain in my chest intensifies, a physical reminder of what Raphael and I once were. Partners. Lovers. Parts of the same machine, every action seamless, every breath so in sync that I was foolish enough to think nothing could tear us apart.
I was wrong.
“Avery.” Lena’s hand lands on my arm, and she searches my face. “Are you sure about your decision? Because once you do this, there’s no going back.”
My throat burns, and my stomach is hollowed out from two days of coffee without food. I haven’t been able to keep anything solid down, and I despise how powerless this all makes me feel.
But Raphael has made his choice twice now. So I need to make mine.
“I’m sure.” I shut off the engine. “This is the only way I’ll ever be free of him.”
Cassian’s going to lose his shit when he discovers that I cut him out of this plan, but that’s a problem for later. I don’t have the headspace right now to decide what to do with my second-in-command after the stunt he pulled at the club.
He’s too sure of what’s going to happen between us after this is done, and I don’t think my words to him sank in.
I reach for the door handle. “Once Raphael is out of my life for good, maybe I can learn to breathe again.”
Lena doesn’t comment as she exits the SUV behind me.
The late afternoon sun beats down on us as we exit the car, and heat ripples off the asphalt, but I’m cold inside. The warehouse door stands propped open an inch, a sliver of darkness inviting us in.
Lena falls into step beside me, her steps silent, her brunette braid swinging between her shoulder blades with each step.
As we near the warehouse door, my heart thunders and the pain in my chest spreads, a voracious monster eating me from the inside out. I push it away, locking it behind walls I’ve spent years building.
Now is not the time for weakness. Now is the time for endings.
The warehouse interior spreads before us in a vast cathedral of concrete and steel. Sunlight streams through broken skylights, casting geometric patterns across the floor, and dust motes dance in the light beams.
The space echoes, empty except for the two figures standing in the center.
Raphael waits with his hands in his pockets, golden-brown hair catching the light from above. He looks just like the Alpha I fell in love with all those years ago, dressed in a tailored suit, with broad shoulders squared and his stance confident. His hazel eyes find mine, and the air between us crackles with electricity.
Ezra stands beside him, his posture rigid. We had agreed to only bring one person for backup, but I’m surprised he went with the young Alpha instead of bringing Caleb.
What does he expect the kid to do if we betray him? He hadn’t even fought alongside my people. He’d been there as support, helping Sebastian get into systems he couldn’t access virtually without a man on the inside.
Is Raphael so confident in his safety where I’m concerned that he didn’t think it necessary to bring real backup?
Raphael takes a single step forward, and my resolve wavers. The ghost of his touch burns on my skin, the memory of his dark whispers in my ear. The way his hands used to cradle my face, gentle despite his strength.
This is why I need to end it. Because I can’t move on when he still owns a piece of me.
“Avery,” he says, the love behind my name pouring salt into my wounds.
I force my feet to keep moving, Lena a shadow at my side. We stop ten feet from them, the distance a final barrier between what was and what must be.
“Raphael.” I pray he doesn’t catch the tremble in my hands. “Did you bring it?”
The money doesn’t matter—it never did—but I need to maintain the pretense. Need to keep my focus on anything other than the way Raphael looks at me, like I’m still his, like the years of separation never happened.
Raphael lifts a sleek aluminum suitcase, the kind used to hold anything from corporate secrets to blood money. The kind we used to transport together when we were partners in every sense of the word.
“Cash, as agreed.” He extends the case toward me. “Come and get your payment, Avery.”
My stomach clenches at the way he says my name, the two syllables a caress when they fall from his lips.
His lips curve into a knowing half-smile that reaches those hazel eyes that shift between amber and green depending on his mood.
Right now, they’re molten gold in the dusty sunlight.
Every step I take toward him feels like walking through quicksand. My body remembers the pull of his, the way we’ve always been drawn together like gravity. The ache in my chest spreads, turning sharper, more insistent.
My Omega instinct is fighting the plan to hurt my Alpha, nothing more. Can’t be more.
As I reach for the case, Raphael’s free hand wraps around my wrist, his touch electric, the tingles from his fingers fending off the creeping cold. “You promised we’d talk.”
The warehouse falls away, the concrete floor, the steel rafters, even Lena and Ezra watching from their respective positions all vanish. There’s only Raphael’s eyes, Raphael’s scent, Raphael’s heat radiating through his tailored suit.
“I’ve missed you.” His thumb traces small circles on the inside of my wrist. “Every day, I’ve missed you, and now that I’ve had you back in my arms, I refuse to let you go again.”
My heart hammers to escape, to leap from my chest into his waiting hands. I want to tell him I haven’t missed him at all, but I can’t bring myself to lie. Not today. “You’ve known where to find me. You never bothered.”
“I was waiting for you to come to me.” Raphael tugs on my wrist, drawing me closer until less than a foot separates us.
He sets the suitcase on the ground, as unimportant to him as it is to me. A prop we use to give us a final excuse to exist in each other’s presence.
“I underestimated your stubbornness.” His pheromones envelop me, and my body recognizes them on a molecular level, my instincts responding to his proximity, my Omega nature stirring despite my attempts to suppress it.
The bond we share flares to life, dormant but never severed.
“Raphael,” I whisper, a warning and a plea.
“Five years without you has been hell.” Emotion roughens his voice. “Coming home to an empty bed. Waking up reaching for you. Seeing something incredible and turning to share it with someone who isn’t there.”
His words pierce me, each one finding its mark. We’ve lived the same hell of his choosing.
“You left me,” I remind him, but without any heat to my accusation. Just the dull ache of an old wound.
“I made a mistake.” His hand travels up my arm, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “The biggest mistake of my life.”
His fingers brush my cheek, and my breath catches. I should pull away. I should remember why I’m here. Instead, I lean into his palm like a flower seeking sunlight.
“What are you saying?” I ask, my pulse throbbing in my throat, in my wrists, in my hips.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I don’t have to go through with this.
“I’m saying I want you back.” Raphael leans closer until his breath warms my lips. “By my side. Where you belong.”
He tugs me forward, closing the final distance between us, and presses his mouth to mine.
The kiss shatters the wall around my heart, flooding me with longing and regret before the sweep of his tongue turns all my thoughts to smoke.
My arms rise of their own accord, wrapping around his neck, and my fingers tangle in his golden-brown hair. His body presses forward, solid and warm, and the contact draws a small sound from my throat that I can’t suppress.
Raphael deepens the kiss, one hand cradling the back of my head while the other slides down to the small of my back, pulling me flush to him. I open for him, surrendering to his tongue stroking mine, the faint scratch of stubble on my skin, and the hardness of his desire nudging my lower stomach.
My mind fractures into contradictions. I hate him. I love him. I want to hurt him. I want to heal him. I need to leave him. I need to stay.
When we break apart, my breathing comes hard, my lips tingling. Raphael’s pupils dilate with desire, and he keeps me close, our foreheads touching, sharing breath in the space between us.
“You feel it, too. It’s why you chose this location, right? To remind me of us together?” he whispers, not knowing how right and yet how wrong his assumption is. “This thing between us will never die.”
I close my eyes, unable to look at him and maintain my resolve. “It’s not enough.”
“It can be.” His lips brush my temple, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. “Let me show you.”
He cups my jaw, thumbs stroking my cheekbones. “We’re better together. We always have been. We balance each other. Your fire and my calculation. Your instincts and my connections.”
I let his words wash over me, trying to separate the truth from the seduction. Trying to remember that this is the same man who chose his family’s respectable facade over our partnership. The same man who left me to handle our rivals alone.
“The manor is empty without you.” Raphael’s forehead presses harder against mine. “I’ve kept our suite the same as you left it. Your books. Your clothes. The paintings you chose. It’s all waiting for you.”
A wave of nostalgia hits me, a longing for our cozy suite with the garden view from our bedroom, and the privacy of the east wing where we could be ourselves.
“Let’s start fresh,” he murmurs into my ear. “No more separate lives. I’ve convinced Aaiden and the others that we need your expertise. They’re prepared to welcome you into the family business.”
And there it is. The reason this will never work. I refuse to change who I am and abandon my chosen family to live a fake life where I watch Raphael wither away doing a job he hates. The hope that had sparked back to life dies, leaving me cold again.
He brushes a strand of hair from my forehead. “We’ll be so good. Just like we always were.”
His words paint a seductive picture, but it’s a lie. It won’t be like we always were. It will be a half-life, watered down year after year until I forget who I am and turn into nothing but pretty arm candy. The perfect little Omega warming Raphael’s bed.
My heart squeezes hard, trying to collapse in on itself. In another life, in another version of this story, I might have said yes. Might have taken his hand and walked out of this warehouse toward a future where we healed our wounds together.
But that future doesn’t exist.
“Raphael.” I raise a hand to memorize the warmth of his skin beneath my fingertips one last time.
His eyes shine with victory, with love. He thinks he’s won. That he will get everything he wants and give up nothing in return.
A surprised grunt breaks the silence, followed by the dull thud of a body hitting concrete. The sound echoes through the warehouse, shattering the moment between us.
Raphael tenses, his head whipping toward the sound, to where Ezra was standing guard.
The single second of distraction I’ve been waiting for.
My fingers slide to my sleeve, finding the hidden syringe. In a practiced, fluid motion, I drive the needle into the side of Raphael’s neck and depress the plunger, sending the transparent liquid into his veins.
The entire process takes less than two seconds.
Raphael’s body jerks away from mine, one hand flying to his neck where the needle has already retracted, leaving only a tiny red dot behind. He stares at me, confusion bleeding into comprehension, then horror.
“What did you—” He staggers backward a step, hand still pressed to his neck. “What did you do?”
The syringe drops from my fingers, clattering to the concrete. “I’m freeing myself. From you. From us. From everything we were.”
Raphael’s expression contort with disbelief, betrayal etching itself into features I once traced with loving fingertips. He tries to step toward me, but his legs buckle. The drug works quickly. In another thirty seconds, his diaphragm will begin to paralyze. Sixty seconds after that, his heart will stop.
“Avery.” My name sounds wrong on his lips now, strangled and desperate. “Why?”
“Because you forgot who I was when you abandoned me,” I tell him, my lips numb. “I was never going to thrive in your pretend world, and I deserve more than the half-hearted love you offered.”
He reaches for me as he crashes to his side, hands grasping at the air. His hazel eyes lock onto mine with a desperation that tightens my chest.
The drug continues to take effect, Raphael’s breathing growing labored, each inhalation a struggle as his muscles refuse to obey his commands. His hand splays on the floor, still trying to reach me, to keep his focus on mine.
Inside me, something screams, clawing at the walls I’ve built, demanding I rush to him, to hold him, to stop this from happening. It wants me to cradle his head in my lap, to apologize, to accept his offer and return to Rockford Manor as if the last five years never happened.
But I lock the urge away, bury it beneath layers of remembered pain. The nights I spent curled around his pillow after he left. The whispers that an Omega couldn’t run our operation alone. The threats, the challenges, the blood I spilled to prove myself. The betrayal that hollowed me out and left me sleepwalking through my own life.
“You left me.” I dig my fingers into my thighs to hang on. “Now I’m leaving you.”
Raphael falls onto his back, his body trembling with involuntary spasms, but his gaze never leaves me. His lips move, forming words without sound, and I force myself not to read them. I don’t want to know his final thoughts. Don’t want them haunting me more than they already will.
Lena steps forward with a mask of professional detachment. She kneels beside Raphael’s shuddering form, pressing two fingers to the pulse point in his neck.
She doesn’t need to. I can see the drug working and chart its progress through his system. This moment will live in my nightmares for the rest of my life.
Raphael’s breathing slows to almost nothing, each exhale a ghost of the last. The tremors subside as his muscles succumb to the drug, and his skin takes on a bluish pallor, his lips parted in a silent plea.
I kneel beside him, close enough to touch but maintaining a final inch of separation. His eyes find mine, and instead of accusation, hatred, or even fear, understanding shines in their depths.
My throat constricts, hot tears burning at the edges of my vision, but I blink them back, refusing to let them fall. Refusing to show weakness now, in this final moment.
“I would have loved you forever,” I whisper, the words a confession. “In a different world. A different life where you chose me.”
Raphael’s lips curve, not quite a smile, and his hand twitches toward mine, fingers curling upward in an invitation I can’t accept.
As the light begins to fade, those hazel depths growing distant, I catalog each change. The slowing rise and fall of his chest. The relaxing of tension from his shoulders. And the final, soft exhale that carries my name.
Then stillness.