Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
RAFFAEL
I stand at the aft railing, watching my father’s men board the speedboat, my fury refusing to ease even after the motor roars to life and Langston drives off in a swirl of churning water.
This is the catastrophe I’d feared.
Their involvement. Their intimidation. Bishop’s parting promise to further investigate.
I knew dissolving the debt wouldn’t be an option. I anticipated them pushing to honor my father’s agreement. But I hadn’t expected them to kick the consequences of her father’s failures down my family tree.
There’s no chance I’ll let that happen.
Nobody will touch Isla. Not my brothers. Not my cousins. And sure as hell not my father’s thugs.
As soon as Isla’s safely returned to New York, I’ll figure out how to handle Langston and Bishop. If necessary, I’ll follow them to their D.C. lair and return the favor of unwanted intrusion. I’ll make their loved ones fear my name. I’ll tear them limb from—
Fuck.
I shove a hand through my hair.
I’m not my father.
I’ve spent a lifetime trying to dilute the violence his genetics placed in my blood.
When Eliseo was bullied as a child, I stood guard for a month instead of succumbing to the desire to break the limbs of those who taunted him.
When Miko fell in with the wrong crowd during his teens, I made financial threats, not ones that felt more natural and involved sharp objects.
And when we found out there was a list of men still living in New York who had ties to our mother’s murder, I used every professional trick I’d learned to start stripping them of their assets, destroying their legacies, and ruining their lives from the inside out, instead of slitting their throats like I’d dreamed of since I was little.
I’ve always chosen the harder, cleaner path, denying the barbaric instincts that feel as innate as breathing. I’ve stifled those hereditary urges all my fucking life. I don’t get distracted by revenge. I don’t have a thirst for blood.
So why do both roar in my veins with the force of a building storm?
This is why I kept my distance from Isla.
This is why I never should’ve indulged in the possibility of a future together.
She shifts in my periphery, the timid movement enough to announce her frailty.
I want to go to her. To fix this. But it’s too late.
Our fathers have caused irreparable damage.
I turn to her, finding devastation personified in her anguished expression. She doesn’t deserve any of this. It’s a cruelty. A desecration of the quiet strength she carries like a torch I was never meant to touch.
I’m drawn to her, my steps deliberate, my need absolute. I pull her to my chest in a futile effort to slow a wound that refuses to stop bleeding.
She remains quiet. Soft and warm and too fucking brittle.
She doesn’t need to tell me what she’s thinking. I can feel her uncertainty. The instability that’s shaken her foundations.
“You should pack your things,” I murmur into her hair. “I’ll arrange for the yacht to return to New York so you can go home.”
She pulls back abruptly. “Is that safe?”
“I’ll make sure it is.” If I have to station security at her building I will.
She hesitates, the concern in her eyes feeding the part of me that doesn’t want to let her go.
“Okay… I guess I’ll take a shower then.” She retreats and it takes every ounce of my will not to follow. But there are plans to make and betrayals to address.
I watch her walk away, barefoot, and draped in my oversized shirt.
She’s the epitome of mine, branded in every way that matters—except the ones that count.
I turn back to the water, the speedboat becoming a shrinking speck headed toward the coastline. Yet the distance doesn’t lessen the vehemence clawing inside me. The anger doesn’t let up.
I grab my cell from my pocket and find Langston’s number saved from when he contacted me after my father’s funeral.
Me
Stay away from her. This is your only warning. Any further communication comes through me.
The message goes from sent to read. No reply is instigated.
Being ignored only inflames my hostility.
Me
If any of your people so much as look in her direction, I will protect her accordingly, and retaliate in ways that will reach all those you care about.
Sent.
Read.
No reply.
A white-hot rage settles in my veins.
Me
Ignoring me never ends well. Don’t make the mistake of thinking my restraint means I’m harmless. I’m not my father—but I was still born a Cappelletti.
The three dots of impending reply pop up on screen, followed with the text.
Langston
My apologies. I was giving you time to beat your chest. Consider us thoroughly warned.
My brain threatens to explode.
“What’s wrong?” Elena asks behind me.
The detonation speeds closer, not only at the interruption but the reminder of her deference to my father’s men.
“Nothing.” I shove my cell back into my pocket. “Go help Isla pack, and once you’re finished you can pack your own belongings.”
Surprise blankets her expression. “Is this about your guests? I didn’t want to—”
“They weren’t guests.”
“I know, but… I thought placating them would be—”
“Your judgment is no longer required. Once we dock, you need to find another yacht to work on.”
Her face falls. “Sir—”
“That’ll be all, Elena.”
I stalk inside in search of the captain, finding him on the bridge.
I arrange for our return to New York, informing him he’ll have to dock minus the two confined deckhands, and that he’ll need to begin the process of hiring an entirely new crew—both deck and interior—while ensuring the assholes who laid hands on Isla are blacklisted from yachting indefinitely.
I eat breakfast in the study and have Isla’s delivered to my cabin.
I distance myself from her, eyeballing the clock. Every second drills into my patience, a reminder that keeping away from her is the right thing to do. Yet I can’t stop imagining her upstairs, alone, vulnerable, and wearing my fucking shirt.
I last two hours, maybe less, before I cave and return to my open cabin door. She sits on the edge of the bed, brows drawn as she types into her phone.
“Everything alright?” I tell myself I’m asking to make sure she’s okay, but it’s an excuse to be in her orbit again. To replay the vicious loop.
She lets out a slow breath, not looking up.
“I’m doing damage control. I sent out a company-wide email explaining my appointment as interim CEO.
” She meets my gaze, eyes pained. “I told them my father almost died from a heart attack and made the excuse that my concern for him has impacted my focus, which is why my decision making has been entirely contradictory.”
“Is it true? About the heart attack?”
She nods.
I’d known something wasn’t right with Philip, but the fucks I have to give about his health are minimal. What worries me is how she’s had to juggle this burden on top of everything else.
“The email will hopefully dilute the damage to my reputation and buy me a few more days before having to return to the office.” She turns her head, focusing out the window as the coastline sharpens in the distance. “I need more time to process.”
She needs more than time. She needs a fortress. An army. A protector who isn’t one bad decision away from becoming a monster.
I push from the doorframe and go to her.
“He didn’t want anyone to know.” She looks defeated. Remorseful. “But senior staff were demanding an explanation for my behavior, and I didn’t know how to justify what I’d done.”
My hands flex uselessly at my sides. I hate that this mess has tarnished what should’ve been her flawless transition into power. “He sold your future to save his own. A little medical transparency is the least of what he deserves.”
She winces. “I know… But he’s still my father.”
I drag in a breath, understanding the brutal conflict of loving the person who causes you the most harm and wishing she didn’t have to feel it, too.
What I also understand is that being near her and witnessing her pain isn’t good for either of us.
Not when I’m struggling to curb the violence that surges with her suffering.
She sniffs and fidgets with the strap of her tote.
“Do you have everything?” I ask.
“Elena packed for me.” She indicates my T-shirt that she’s still wearing.
“I hope you don’t mind. Your clothes are comfortable and I couldn’t stomach corporate slay this morning.
” Her chuckle is faint as she raises the hem an inch up her thighs, revealing my shorts underneath.
“I stole these too... Not that I can get them to fit.”
The waistband swims around her hips.
I grab her wrist and gently drag her to her feet. “Let me.” I palm her waist, pulling her close.
She holds the shirt up as I grip the drawstrings, the scent of my soap on her skin sinking into my lungs.
My blood doesn’t just heat. It ignites. The primal impulse to take this further is a savage counterpoint to how wounded and broken she is.
She’s become an obsession. A compulsion.
I tighten the drawstring with more aggression than intended, jostling her roughly. I should let her go. But I can’t. My fists are white-knuckled around the cord.
“Raffael?” Her voice is a whisper. A questioning plea.
“Give me a second.” The war inside me digs deeper. The desire to keep her, the torment of knowing I can’t, the sickening certainty of the man I’d have to become if I succumbed.
One day my lineage will become public knowledge and the vultures from my father’s world will circle, looking for a piece of his sons.
We’ll be targeted. Attacked.
I’ve made contingencies for when that day comes.
I’ve spent a fortune on private intelligence and have mercenaries on retainer.
There are safe houses scattered across Europe and South America, properties buried under shell corporations with no paper trail leading back to us.
I even have falsified passports stored in vaults under assumed identities.
I’ve planned for every threat except the one standing in front of me.
There’s no thinking straight around her, which means I can’t protect my siblings if I have to protect her, too.
I stare at my fists, willing my hands to release her. “Walk away, Isla.”
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t move.
She remains in front of me, her fingers finding my chest as she denies my command. “I don’t want to walk away.”
“Even after those men hunted us down?”
She stands taller, her lips parting. She knows we dodged a bullet with Bishop and Langston. “Did they work for your father?”
“Yes.” My hands move of their own accord, sliding to her hips, skimming upward under her shirt to the softness of her bare waist.
“Do I want to know what they’re capable of?”
I raise my gaze to hers, unable to voice the atrocities I’ve tracked for years. I’ve kept tabs on my father’s organization since I was nineteen through a network of private investigators smart enough to understand that what they witnessed wasn’t something to take to the cops.
Sometimes I wonder if my father knew. He had to. Maybe he wanted me to gain insight into who he was—or maybe it was a way of keeping me tethered, his version of fatherly affection, letting me hold space in his world.
Her grip tightens on my shirt. “What happens if they find out the truth?”
“You didn’t cut ties.”
Her expression turns somber. “Raffael—”
“You didn’t cut ties,” I grate, then soothe the bite of my tone with a skim of my thumbs over her ribs.
“You’re going to go home. Take a few days to regroup.
And while you’re away from the office I want you to contact a few of your closest staff members.
Tell them, privately and personally, that your actions were a power play.
That you threatened to cut ties with the Cavallo group for a reas—”
“But—”
“Just listen. Tell them that it was a bluff due to a decline in the professionalism you’d seen from us over the years. An orchestrated move that worked like a charm because it pulled us into line and brokered a new mentoring program.”
“But won’t that admit—”
“My father’s men can’t punish you for a bluff.
” I frame her face in my hands. “And they can’t prove it wasn’t.
But it will show your staff that this was a highly thought-out plan, while distracted by your father’s failing health, that you also took the fall for despite achieving success. You’ll be admired for it.”
“What if those men—”
“A bluff is the best way to explain your way out of this. It’ll be enough.” I’ll make sure of it.
Her eyes search mine, her fear turning into hope. “Are you certain?”
“I wouldn’t risk your safety.”
“Okay.” She nods. “I’ll do it. Thank you.”
Her returning confidence is a potent drug. The way her glow returns. Her eyes brighten. I want to bottle this feeling—her trust, her drive—and feed on it forever.
Instead, I force my hands back to my sides, knowing I only have to hold myself together until we reach New York. Less than an hour of restraint, and then distance will dull what she’s made me crave. “We should go upstairs and enjoy what’s left of the return to the city.”
The glimmer of her shine siphons a little. As if she doesn’t want to leave the confines of this moment, which only makes it more necessary.
“Come on.” I lead her to the sun deck and settle us on a daybed, the memories of last night haunting every breath as she sits on my lap, pliant in my arms, her head resting on my shoulder as New York’s skyline grows taller.
It’s right, and perfect, and utterly un-fucking-sustainable.
But I eat it up, committing the feel of her to memory, the warmth, the peace.
I drag my thumb back and forth over her thigh as the yacht docks with practiced efficiency, the marina staff compensating for our reduced crew. Tourists watch from the pier, the familiar sounds of the city a soundtrack to our epilogue.
I slide an arm around her waist, stealing one last moment before the thrusters cut out and the inevitable reaches us. Then I press a kiss to the crook of her neck in silent farewell.
Isla stares straight ahead, goose bumps rising on her skin. “I…” She drags in a tortured breath. “I care about you, Raffa.”
Her admission is a knife through the heart.
“It’s not enough, though, is it?” she asks.
I press my nose into her hair, breathing her in like oxygen. “No. It’s not.”
She nods, her posture strengthening, her resolve beating back all the hits she’s taken since stepping foot on the Requiem. Then she stands and turns to me, her eyes sad but full of purpose. “As fun as this has been, I guess it’s time for me to go.”
I ignore the gut punch her words deliver. “A limo will be waiting for you in the parking lot.”
She offers a pained smile and backtracks, each step a fresh cut. “I want you to know that even when I hated you, I still adored you, Raffael Cavallo.” She sniffs and lifts her chin. “No matter what happens, I think I always will.”
Then she turns and disappears down the stairs.