Chapter 28 #2
I step closer to be in her space but also to move things along. I need my tigra’s tight cunt before the hour ends or I’ll go feral.
I crouch beside him so he can see the truth in my eyes. ‘You were a shitty inside man. You’ll make a shittier corpse but, alas, that can’t be helped.’
He opens his mouth again. I’m done listening.
I toss Sofiya the blade. ‘Do your worst, baby. Make it quick. I have better plans that don’t involve keeping traitors breathing.’
She catches it mid-air like the weapon was born in her palm. No hesitation. She steps to the squealing rat and drags two clean, precise cuts on his forehead – twin Xs. A brand for a rat as it squeaks and begs.
‘Now we’re even, you double-crossing fuck,’ she says softly, and before she steps back, I’m yanking her to me, tongue-fucking her mouth because it’s fucking glorious seeing her back in her element.
I drag De Luca out a moment later, my own blade finding its way into his ribs while she waits in the next room.
Sofiya
I’m cleaning my knife when I hear the thud of De Luca’s body hit the floor.
My lungs exhale like I’ve been holding them hostage.
The heat that follows isn’t guilt – it’s hunger.
Relief, yes because for a while there in the past couple of weeks I wondered whether the incident in the safehouse had shattered me forever. It didn’t.
But now I have a craving. One I know only Rafaelle can satisfy.
He steps into the side room, blood barely dry on his gloves, and I’m already reaching for his belt.
‘We celebrating?’ he growls, mouth hard on mine.
‘I didn’t lose my touch,’ I whisper, pushing him against the wall. ‘Let me show you how much I’ve missed it.’
His laugh is a low rumble, primal and real. ‘Let me show you what I do to girls who make me hard with a single look.’
He lifts me to the table. I wrap my legs around his waist. And the rest?
The rest is vengeance and victory, written in skin and sweat, in the echoes of a life we’re no longer running from – but charging straight into.
Rafaelle
London, 03:19
The suite is silent, save for the soft tick of the grandfather clock and the low, erratic beat of my heart.
Glass and shadow rule the room – floor-to-ceiling windows catch the city’s glow like a trap. The penthouse smells of lavender and gun oil, of blood barely washed from my hands before we were on each other, fucking like the world was ending.
Sofiya sleeps tangled in sheets the colour of old champagne, her bare back kissed by slivers of moonlight.
My phone vibrates on the table. One sharp pulse. Then another. I know who it is before I reach for it. And I make a vow. One day I’ll make the fucker pay for toying with the Enforcer.
Nightowl
Traitors dance in old flaming ruins and snakes in rafters.
Fuck.
I sit up, drag a hand over my face, then stand. The cold marble bites into my soles as I pace across the polished floor. Shutting the double doors to the bedroom, I prowl into the living room, typing furiously.
Enough riddles. Give me the fucking intel.
I’m barely done hitting send when another message pings in.
Nightowl
Genesis 3:19. Black soil. Eve weeps where she waits to forget her name.
God-fucking-dammit.
I turn ready to launch my phone… or myself… at the wall. Only to find her watching me from the doorway. Eyes drowsy but sharp.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Just a job that needs doing,’ I lie, low and smooth. ‘Nothing urgent.’
She cocks a brow. ‘Rafaelle—’
I shake my head. ‘It’s nothing,’ I insist, walking over to take her hand. ‘The family’s safe. We’re safe. That’s all that matters. Come back to bed, tigra.’
She lets me coax her down, band her tight in my arms just the way I know she likes.
She sleeps. I don’t.
Because that last message about Eve?
It’s got my mind spinning.
Sofiya
It’s not a feeling I expected to feel again this soon, and not with Rafa, but… I can’t shift the hollow in my belly.
Something’s going on. Maybe good. Maybe bad.
But he’s keeping secrets. And fuck… that hurts more than I want to admit.
Maybe he’s protecting you?
I throw a silent finger at the voice because that’s bullshit. Rafa, more than anyone else on this earth, knows I can take care of myself. Hell, he nearly burst with pride and into applause watching me carve up fucking DeLuca.
No, he’s hiding more than he’s protecting this time. And I sense it involves that mysterious owl and green code on his phone.
I haven’t gone snooping and I don’t plan to.
Honour among thieves or, in our case, assassins? Maybe.
Am I burying my head in the sand? Also maybe.
The thing I can’t bury for much longer though?
The way I feel about him. The way my heart cracks wide open when he walks into the room.
When he smirks and winks and catches me around the waist like I’m the only thing tethering him to this world.
Like I’m danger and salvation wrapped in one reckless, breathless little package.
There might be a hard reckoning down the road but for now I’m choosing to douse myself in his growly ‘You’re mine’ when he’s deep inside me.
When his face cracks with lust and awe and savage hunger. When he pants like he’s running out of oxygen and would gladly die just to be inside me.
With me. Holding me.
I jump when my phone pings a familiar sound. Then my heart follows. My contact. My eyes widen when I read the message.
‘Rafa!’
He prowls into the room all swagger and sin, muscles cut from menace and a mouth built for ruin.
I almost forget why I called him until he starts to smirk, one eyebrow quirking. Mentally slapping myself, I show him my phone.
His smile vanishes. ‘The intel is solid? You trust your source?’
I shrug. ‘If he wants to get paid, it better be.’
He nods. ‘Let’s fucking go then.’
We dress in silence.
I tug on my tactical pants, pockets heavy with spare mags, while he loosens his silk-collared shirt and swaps it for a black anti-stab T-shirt, sleeves pushed up to reveal the sexy ink on his forearms. Each garment is a second skin, essential armour against the coming storm.
Our eyes meet across the bed. A silent vow.
All in. No holding back this time.
I slip a leather harness over my torso then attach the throat mic to my neck, smoothing the strap across my collarbone. Rafa picks up his Kydex holster and belts it on; metal glints as he checks his Beretta at his hip.
I consider the faint line where my scar meets unbroken skin. Tonight, I’ll cross El Topo’s threshold and end this. I look up and the look in Rafa’s eyes holds me there. Fierce with determination, blazing with protectiveness.
He stalks to me and grips my hand, calloused thumb brushing my knuckles. ‘Ready, tigra?’
I rest my forehead against his, breathing in the scent of him now imprinted on my heart. ‘Ready.’
He crouches and slides a blade into my boot sheath.
I nod. It’s time.
Rafaelle
Outside Limassol, Six Hours Later
The rental car hums over cracked coastal asphalt, moonlight a sliver of silver above the sea. My beauty sits beside me with her eyes closed but I know she’s not sleeping. Her presence is steadying the wild pulse in my throat. We move like we always do – stealthy, synced. Ghosts on a mission.
The city lights are dying behind us as we push deeper into old country. I know what’s waiting up that hillside. A half-forced villa belonging to El Topo’s Cypriot mistress.
Fucking Nightowl and his fucking ‘Traitors dance in old flaming ruins and snakes in rafters.’
I mutter a curse under my breath, gripping the wheel tighter. ‘Old mistresses in ruins and fucking traitors.’ If he’d just said Cyprus, we could’ve been here days ago. This would be over by now.
Sofiya glances at me. The corner of her mouth twitches, her eyes sharp but sombre. As necessary as this is, it’s still not a light undertaking. ‘You talking to yourself there, killer?’
I know she didn’t hear me, but I still stiffen, and I loathe the knots building in my gut. More fucking secrets.
I vow to tell her about Nightowl… as soon as I decode the other message.
I shake my head, grab her hand and kiss her knuckles. ‘Not now you’re looking at me with those beautiful eyes. You good?’
Those said eyes dim a little and I’m not sure if it’s because of my clear evasion or because of what’s about to happen in the next ten minutes.
She nods after a moment. ‘You think Cesare will get the men here in time?’
I nod, my trust in my brother unquestioning. ‘He will. And the FBI too. If El Topo’s there, he’s not getting away this time. Trust me.’
Is it my imagination or does her smile waver just a tiny fraction? A conscience I haven’t met since childhood rears its head and gut-punches me. Hard.
I realise I’m holding my breath until she breathes softly, ‘I do.’
Those two words reverberate through my skull. And long after the dilapidated villa appears in the distance – a fitting tomb for an old monster, ruined, half-swallowed by vines, a relic on a wind-blasted hill – I’m thinking about those words.
With a fat ring attached to it. My name engraved on her heart. A Salvatore in her belly.
She reaches over and takes my hand. No words. Just a quiet, firm squeeze. My breath shudders out as my thumb brushes her knuckles.
And for a second, the pressure in my chest eases. For a second, the world stills.
‘Whatever happens,’ she murmurs, ‘I’m glad it’s you.’
I look at her. At the woman who saved herself and still lets me pretend I’m her protector. ‘Me too.’
It goes like clockwork.
The best fucking aria in the world.
Bonafacio Mancinelli, a wraith of the man whose evil and greed murdered my mother, is bound in chains within one hour and I didn’t even have to draw my gun. A few shuriken and a couple of viper steels end four ageing capos.
Moonlight slants through the trees, catching the dull gleam of his battered silver hair. He leans on a rusted iron gate in his silk pyjamas, eyes alive with hate.
I draw a sharp breath, heart hammering against my ribs.
I’ve done this a hundred times – lined men up, put one bullet in their brains, walked away whistling.
But this is different. This is the man who took away the woman who taught me how to cook, who taught me how to love my family, myself.
Even love the woman who stands beside me.
Solid and loyal.
Sofiya’s rifle is pressed into her shoulder, her gaze on me, not him. I feel her eyes, calm and fierce. Even as her grandfather curses her in brutal Sicilian.
‘Traitrice! Putana! Figghia di malanova!’
She says nothing, her attention steady on me. Her presence is the strange comfort I didn’t know I needed.
Bonafacio sees me raise my gun and howls, staggering straighter even though he’s clearly bearing the signs of heavy drinking. ‘Shoot me, if you dare! But remember, I’m the snake who taught her how to strike!’
I swallow, finger tracing the trigger. One squeeze – brain matter, and it could be over. My mother’s ghost will sleep easy.
I feel Sofiya’s breath on my jaw, soft and urgent.
I hesitate. The rage in me bleeds out.
‘Life or death. Your call, tesoru,’ she whispers.
Bonafacio continues to spit blood-red curses, foaming with venom as if they could still hold weight. I flick my gun downward and squeeze the trigger once. A thunderclap cracks the night wide open, followed by a wet crunch of bone as the bullet rakes through his right knee.
He screams. Not just in pain, but in rage, defiance, disbelief. He topples onto his side, flailing like a gutted dog. I stride forward and plant my boot over his ruined kneecap. He bucks. Tries to crawl.
I press harder.
‘Stay down,’ I growl.
He manages to brace on one elbow, chest heaving, lips slick with blood. Still reaching. Still arrogant.
I slam him back to the floor, pinning him with my foot on his chest, then I lean close, my voice as quiet as a confession. ‘Show some respect to your granddaughter, you old bastard.’
His bloodstained grin splits wide. ‘Do it. I dare you. End me now, Salvatore.’
It’s not bluster. He wants it. Like a coward who wants to die before he faces everything he’s wrought.
Which is why I don’t.
Instead, I grin right back, deranged and deliberate, and yank my phone from my back pocket. I dial the direct line.
Cesare picks up on the first ring.
‘How close are they?’ I ask, not taking my eyes off El Topo.
‘Ten minutes,’ Cesare says. ‘Our man from Interpol is en route – Orazio vetted him personally this time. No more fuckups.’
I exhale through my nose. ‘Good.’
In the background, I hear movement, voices – Fallbrook is alive with tension. And then, Orazio’s voice cuts in, sharp and hungry.
‘Is he there?’ he demands. ‘Put me on video.’
I do.
‘Bonafacio,’ Orazio snarls, and the air thickens with decades of venom. ‘You motherless figghiu di buttana. Look at you now. Pinned like the rat you are.’
Bonafacio laughs wetly. ‘You finally sent one of your mongrel grandsons to do what you couldn’t.’
Orazio ignores the barb. ‘You know I used to call you brother? You remember that? Before Valentina?’
Bonafacio’s smile falters. Just a flicker. Enough.
‘She chose me,’ he rasps.
‘No, you took her,’ Orazio says, voice rough. ‘Like you took everything. The business. The alliances. The trust. And then you broke it all because you couldn’t stand not owning everything in the room.’ He pauses, voice lowering. ‘I know you killed her, Bonafacio.’
Silence. Except the faint wheeze of blood in El Topo’s throat.
Orazio continues, a bitter sigh wrapped in a choked whisper. ‘You let everyone believe she ran. But I knew. I always knew. Maybe now she’ll rest in peace, you miserable son of a Sicilian whore.’
I cut the call.
Bonafacio’s chest rises and falls beneath my boot, his mouth twitching like he wants to spit again but can’t find the energy.
I crouch beside him, pistol lowered. ‘You don’t get to die yet, old man. Not until you bleed. Not until she’s buried with the truth.’
I cock my head, listening to the approaching rotor blades.
‘The start of your reckoning is almost here. And you’re going to live long enough to rot.’
He doesn’t laugh this time. Just closes his eyes like he’s already starting to fade.
Too bad for him. I’ve got more bullets.
We wait until the authorities swarm the crumbling ruins. Until more shackles are added to the ones I put around my mother’s killer.
As they haul him away, I step into the moonlight, heart pounding.
Sofiya is beside me, shoulders trembling. ‘She would be proud of you,’ she murmurs.
Tears sting my eyes and I realise I am… broken open by her, by this moment. By seconds and minutes and hours that look like the kind of forever I never dreamed of.