Chapter 23
The collar buckle opens with a soft click that sounds like a bone breaking.
My hands shake as I remove the thin black leather from Carmela's throat.
The mark that she asked to keep wearing after last night's claiming, and which I hungrily agreed to.
Without this, she's just Carmela Rosetti again.
Not my sunshine. Not my submissive. Not the woman who chose to embrace her family's darkness alongside mine.
Free.
The phantom rope burns erupt across my wrists like fresh wounds, agony so real I can smell the hemp cutting through skin. Cold sweat coats my body, sheets twisted around my legs like restraints. Another night, another vision of the damage I'll inevitably cause.
I study her sleeping face, memorizing the curve of her cheek, the way her lips part slightly in sleep. Twenty-three years old. My fierce baby who's already seen too much blood because of me.
The nightmare wasn't random. It was a warning.
After 's blood on my doorstep, after watching Carmela handle the Torrino threats with terrifying competence, my military programming whispers what I've always known.
I'm designed to neutralize targets, not protect the women I love.
What if I hurt her during a flashback? What if my training kicks in and I see her as a threat?
Part of me wants to chain her to the bed, make it impossible for her to leave. My broken mind whispers instructions for keeping assets secure, for neutralizing escape routes. The fact that I'm thinking about Carmela like a tactical problem proves exactly why she needs to run.
She deserves better than a man who wakes up screaming, who sees violence in his sleep, who will inevitably harm the thing he's trying to protect.
I move through the apartment methodically, erasing evidence like I'm sanitizing a crime scene.
Her coffee cups go into a box. The novels she leaves scattered on every surface. The bright throw pillows that somehow appeared on my couch, bringing color into my sterile space. Each piece of her presence gets packed away systematically.
Taking off her collar felt like ripping out my own heart, but it was necessary surgery. Cut out the infected tissue before it kills us both.
Her clothes hang in my closet like accusations. Soft dresses between my pressed shirts, delicate lingerie mixed with my utilitarian underwear. I fold each piece carefully, packing them into her suitcase like I'm closing an incision. Clean. Professional. Final.
In the mirror, I recite every way I've already pulled her deeper into the darkness.
She chose to stay in Chicago despite the danger.
Now she bears the invisible marks of my world.
Rope burns on her wrists from last night's session, the knowledge of violence that funds the protection she's learned to wield.
I've made her complicit in what I am.
The trauma between us creates an unbridgeable chasm.
My nightmares versus her determination to heal them.
I've taught her to find pleasure in restraint, in pain, in surrendering to a man who wakes up violent.
She needs to be building a life free from the shadows that consume me, not binding herself to a thirty-five-year-old man broken by war and torture.
Every instinct screams at me to wake her up, to explain, to beg her to stay despite what I am. My hands itch to touch her one more time, to memorize the silk of her skin. But that's exactly the possessive obsession that makes me dangerous.
The note I write is brief, professional:
Carmela—The threat level has escalated beyond acceptable parameters. Your safety requires immediate extraction from Chicago. Your transport back to New York has been arranged through Dom.—Van
I don't sign it with love. Don't acknowledge what we've built together. Clean extraction requires cutting all emotional ties. I learned that in the military. Sometimes you have to abandon people to save them.
I text Dom from my secure phone: Threat assessment critical. Multiple Torrino cells still active. Carmela needs immediate extraction.
The response comes too fast: What changed? Thought we had them contained.
The family protective instincts kick in immediately. They'll want details, want to hunt down threats.
I can't tell them the only threat to Carmela is me.
New intelligence suggests coordinated retaliation. Professional assessment: she's not safe in Chicago with current resources.
Fuck. Car will be there at 0800.
That simple. One text and I destroy the only good thing in my life.
Dom trusts my tactical assessment. Believes I'm protecting her best interests. He has no idea I'm performing emergency surgery on both our lives, cutting out what's killing me to save her.
The damaged men like me don't get to keep women who've learned to love our darkness. We contaminate them until there's nothing left but shadow. The nightmare was right. My hands will hurt her. Maybe not tonight, maybe not next week, but eventually.
My programming doesn't differentiate between enemies and the people I'm supposed to protect when the violence kicks in.
I need to save her from what I am before I destroy her completely.
The car arrives at exactly eight o'clock.
I watch from the across the street, huddled in the shadow of a doorway, as Dom's driver loads her suitcase into the black sedan. Carmela moves like she's processing a tactical retreat, still studying the note I left on her pillow, the packed bags, the efficiency of her extraction.
She doesn't look up at my window. Doesn't search for me in the building's facade. She simply gets into the car with the same composure she showed when facing down the Torrino threats.
I memorize the curve of her hip beneath that yellow dress, the way her pulse used to flutter at her throat where my collar belongs. In six hours, she'll be safe from the violence that follows me. The thought makes my chest cavity feel hollow, but that's exactly why she needs to go.
The sedan disappears into Chicago traffic, carrying her back where she belongs. Back to safety. Back to a world where the Torrino retaliation can't reach her.
She's the only thing that's ever made the nightmares stop, and I'm throwing her away to protect her from becoming one of them.
My phone remains silent. No desperate calls, no demands for explanation. She accepts the tactical decision because she understands the reality of the life she was born into. Sometimes love isn't enough when the threats escalate beyond control.
The empty apartment echoes around me, sterile and controlled exactly as it was before she brought chaos into my ordered existence. No bright colors, no scattered books, no unconscious humming to disturb my perfectly managed isolation.
Her pillowcase still smells like her shampoo. Something bright and citrusy that used to cut through my nightmares. The apartment's silence presses against my eardrums like deep water.
So why does victory taste like ash?
The playroom feels like a tomb without her.
I sit in the leather chair facing equipment that once represented healing, control reclaimed from trauma. Now the restraints look sinister in the afternoon light filtering through the blinds. Instruments of manipulation rather than mutual trust.
The rope I used to bind her wrists hangs coiled on its hook, innocent hemp that became a tool for sharing the darkness we both carry. The paddle that made her gasp with pleasure now clear evidence of what I really am. A broken surgeon who found healing in a woman's willing surrender.
My skin feels too tight, hypersensitive like after a firefight. Every sound amplifies. The building settling, traffic eight floors below, my own heartbeat hammering against my ribs.
This is who I was before her. This is who I am without the woman who chose to bind herself to my demons.
I force myself to remember the routine: Hospital at 6 AM, my suspension already lifted thanks to Marco Rosetti.
Surgery until exhaustion. Home to this controlled environment where nothing unexpected can trigger the violence sleeping in my programming.
Sleep interrupted by nightmares, but at least now they can't reach her.
No one else gets damaged by what the enemy made me into.
The isolation protects everyone. I learned that in the compound.
Dangerous men like me belong in cages, not in the beds of women who've learned to navigate our darkness.
My broken programming is a weapon that will eventually misfire, and removing Carmela from the blast radius was the only moral choice.
I check my watch. 1:30 PM. Carmela's private jet will be landing in New York City by now, carrying her back to safety. Back to a world where brilliant women who understand violence don't have to risk their lives loving broken soldiers.
The darkness I've lived with for three years welcomes me back like an old friend, wrapping around my shoulders with familiar weight. My programming recognizes home. Isolation, control, the tomb-like quiet of a life designed to protect others from the weapon trauma made me.
I close my eyes and let the emptiness consume me. The silence doesn't feel like victory. It feels like death. Like the tomb I've built around myself has finally sealed shut, and this time there's no woman fierce enough to break through the darkness.
This is what love looks like when the threat of what you might become is stronger than what you are.