Chapter 19 #2
“You’ve got the CEO role you always wanted,” I add, unable to leave the void between us unfilled. “And bargaining power to ensure Philip never tries to claim it back. As long as you assign someone even half as qualified as you to handle our portfolio, there won’t be any issues moving forward.”
She inhales deeply, exhales slow, as if weighing every word she doesn’t speak.
“Just say it, Isla.”
Her gaze travels farther down the yacht, as far from me as possible.
“Despite what I said in my statement this afternoon, dissolving our companies’ relationship wasn’t some PMS-driven, knee-jerk reaction to claiming power.
Your ethics have changed, Raffael. And I don’t like that I have to grin and bear watching it contaminate CrossPoint. ”
I wrench my fingers around the railing.
“Will you tell me why?” She turns to face me.
“Your reputation was pristine. Failing companies wanted to hand control to you and your brothers because they trusted you’d treat what they built with respect.
But you completely decimated Harrington Vale Holdings and then Novacore Industries, both in very public executions. ”
I should’ve brought the fucking liquor bottle with me. “Not every company can be salvaged.”
“I understand. But Novacore wasn’t failing.
They were surging. I ran those reports. You were circling them before the scandal with the managing director broke.
And the moment it hit, you sunk them with a lowball offer and then dismantled the R&D division, laid off hundreds, and sold their patents to competitors.
” Her stare bores into the side of my face, her judgment cutting through skin and bone.
“Sometimes business isn’t just business.” My nostrils flare. “Things change.”
“Yeah.” She drags in another one of those pained breaths and returns her attention to the ocean. “I guess they do.”
Her disapproval chips away at me, one sharp shard at a time.
I used to live for her unspoken praise. The subtle curve of her lips when I crushed a boardroom meeting. The glint in her gaze when I turned intimidation into art.
Her pride fucking fed me.
But this? The criticism? It twists the knife her suffering already drove between my ribs.
“A lot has happened in the last two years.” I push from the railing, my instincts demanding I walk away. Now. Before I say too much.
“Like what?” Her eyes implore. “I have to hold this secret for life, Raffael—from friends, from colleagues, and future family—I have to be able to justify my actions, if only to myself.”
Future family?
She means lovers. A potential husband. The father to her children.
Violence builds inside me, the thought of this hypothetical man enough to send me into a rage.
But that’s exactly what she needs. Someone sharing her bed that isn’t me. Someone who doesn’t have invisible ties to a threatening legacy.
“Raffael?” she whispers.
I’m a fucking slave to her. To the want. To the ghost of her skin beneath my palms.
“Tell me why?” she pleads.
“My fucking father died.”
She winces. “Of course… I wish I could’ve been there for—”
“Not Giancarlo,” I bite out.
A furrow forms between her brows.
This is a mistake. A risk. Yet everything inside me is drawn to tell her. To explain the darkness I failed to hide. The danger I’d hoped to keep at bay.
“Giancarlo took us in when we were little.” I shift away from her and stare across the deck to the darkened water on the other side. “Our biological father gave us up.”
She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t need to.
I know her well enough to picture the surprise taking over her features.
“Their deaths came within months of each other. Giancarlo and our sire.”
I tense at the gentle pad of her approaching footfalls. Brace myself against the predictable contact. But the light press of her hand against my shoulder still punches through me.
“I’m so sorry, Raffael.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I turn back to her. “Be terrified. That day in the boardroom, the reason Michelo interrupted us, was to inform me our biological father had been murdered.”
Her eyes widen. Lips part.
I can practically see her reliving the moment in her mind. The heat we’d created. The hunger that vanished the moment Miko spoke.
“I was angry,” I grate. “Not that someone had killed him—his questionable choices had ensured his brutal end long ago. But that my brother had brought his existence into your life. That anything about that man was anywhere near you, even if only through words spoken in a foreign language.”
She balks. “Why?”
“Because he was a curse. Evidently, he still is.”
She continues to stare, as if trying to find what I’m hiding.
“Despite anticipating his death for years, I was caught off guard. I took it out on you. And maybe I would’ve apologized under different—”
“It’s in the past.” She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about an apolo—”
“It’s not in the past. It was his last will and testament that brought us here. He’s the one who made the agreement with Philip.”
Bleakness blinks back at me. Startled shock. “It wasn’t Giancarlo?”
“He thought of you as a daughter. He never would’ve hurt you.”
She clasps a hand over her mouth.
“He found out about the agreement the same day I did.” I’d been the one to deliver the news.
To announce all the hard work and determination he’d put into creating the Cavallo Group had meant nothing because the man who’d abandoned his own children to Giancarlo’s care had been paying to prop up the company’s success since its launch.
“And as far as I’m concerned, Giancarlo died from the devastation three months later. ”
Her hand drops to her chest, as if to ease a breaking heart. As if understanding the news of the agreement had killed him.
God, I want to reach for her. “Blame the hostile takeovers on us needing to blow off steam due to the upheaval.”
“You were looking for someone to punish for your grief?”
In more ways than she can imagine, but those details aren’t up for discussion.
“This stays between us, Isla.”
She cringes. “Okay.”
“I mean it.” I etch my tone with warning. “My father was a violent man. Cut-throat and fucking conniving, and I refuse to be publicly tied to his legacy. Nobody else can find out. My sister isn’t even aware.”
Isla’s eyes widen. “Aurelia isn’t aware of what?”
“A lot of things.”
Too many things.
I can’t elaborate. I’ve already betrayed my siblings enough for today.
Isla stills, her throat working, the silence stretching. “I… I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll take this to the grave. That your public statement was humiliating, but you’ll deal with it because you understand what’s at stake.”
My words hang between us, the weight of my ask heavier than she deserves.
She draws a slow breath, squares her shoulders, and nods. “I’ll deal with it.”
For the first time tonight, the tension inside me eases—not much, but enough to make me aware of the ache it leaves behind.
I don’t deserve her compliance, yet it encourages something feral I’ve spent years hiding behind lock and key. Gratitude, desire, yearning—all tangled into one impossible urge.
Now I find it’s no longer stupidity keeping me in her presence. It’s gravity. The kind that exists between two bodies destined to collide no matter how far they drift.
I need to move before it owns me.
“Come on.” I jerk my chin toward the stairs. “I want to show you something.”
I start walking, not waiting for her to follow, but I hear her—the faint pad of her feet against the teak, her quiet breaths unsteady in the still air.
I lead her to the sun deck above, where the roofline falls away into vast open sky.
She pauses at the top step, drinking in the view as I text the bosun to kill the lights.
I guide her past the spa to the sprawling stretch of daybeds. “Lay down.”
She hesitates, everything that’s passed between us turning even a throwaway command into something charged.
“I’m not trying to sleep with you, Isla.” Although my eager dick would argue. “Just let me show you something.”
She studies me for a heartbeat, then concedes, crossing to the wide, linen-covered daybed and resting against the cushions as the yacht’s lights blink out.
Darkness swallows us, erasing everything until only the sky remains.
She sucks in a breath, her head on a pivot, her eyes darting as she takes in the endless scatter of speckled light while the moonlight dances across her face as if even its glow can’t resist her. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. I wrench my gaze from her and return to the safety of the railing, gripping it like a lifeline.
She keeps talking, marveling over the vastness, how the city has never done the night justice, every word reverent and full of wonder despite the circumstances that brought us here.
And all I feel is twisted. Gut tight. Muscles coiled. Because as awe-inspired as she is, the beauty of this moment isn’t real.
There’s no charm in having to remain here for her safety.
Nothing endearing or glamorous about a yacht once owned by a ruthless criminal.
My father gave me and my brothers up because his enemies killed our mother. Slaughtered and tortured her.
Even at a young age I understood what that meant.
Loving someone—claiming them—would paint a target on their back.
So I didn’t indulge my feelings for Isla. I ignored our potential for a fucking decade, convincing myself distance was protection, because who knew if or when my skeletons would escape their closet.
Only I fell victim to temptation within hours of my father’s downfall. Without knowing or sensing his passing. As if the moment he died, the universe sent a memo to my soul.
But even in death my father ruined what could’ve been.
The blood debt is just the beginning.
“Are you going to join me?” Isla asks.
Fuck no.
“I’ve seen it before.” I remain rooted in place, back turned, pretending I can outlast the pull. But the quiet turns dense, and every breath has to be earned.
Her moans still echo in my ears. The memory of her nails is seared into my skin.
I hang my head, grit my teeth, bite back resentment.
I’ve been denied my entire life—a mother, my birth father, the security of a future without complication.
I shouldn’t have to be denied Isla, too.
But it’s necessary. Not only due to the threat of my father’s enemies, but because of the man I would have to become to protect her. The darkness I would have to welcome, after spending a lifetime keeping it at bay.
She exhales a weary breath edged in discomfort.
I turn and find her shifting on the daybed, arms wrapped around herself, her blouse no defense against the cooling air.
I stalk toward her before I can think better of it, shrugging out of my suit jacket. “Here.”
She sits slowly, her gaze locked on mine, cautious yet so fucking alluring.
I curse myself as her arms slide into the sleeves I just vacated, a transfer of heat, of scent, of possession.
The jacket settles against her delicate frame, dwarfing her—a painfully perfect metaphor for how my attempt to protect her only magnifies her fragility.
I need to get out of here. To return the mounting calls on my phone. To place her in my rearview.
Then, so faint I question whether it’s real, she tilts her nose into the collar and inhales.
I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it, or how her eyes flutter shut for the briefest beat.
But I notice, and the quiet intimacy guts me, stripping every logical argument for leaving along with it.
Instead, my hand betrays me, rising, unbidden to find her cheek.
Her skin warms against my palm, the questioning search of her gaze uniquely captivating.
And just like that she has me. Entranced. Bound. Powerless. Without a single goddamn word.
I trace my thumb along her cheekbone, tainted hands against something achingly pure.
I don’t want to deny us. Shouldn’t have to turn my back on chemistry this thick and rich.
“Forgive me, Isla.” I drag my fingers along her jaw. Down her neck. “But if you don’t return to your cabin, I’ll be forced to do something to hurt you.”