Chapter thirteen — Vinny
I opened my eyes.
The sheets still smelled like her skin. My dick lay sticky against my thigh, and there was a heavy, suffocating ache in my chest that hadn't been there the night before—a raw longing. I had been dreaming of Sophia, but it wasn’t Sophia who had touched me.
Fuck.
Guilt coiled tight and heavy in my gut. I shouldn’t have drunk. I should've never let her into my bed. I knew better. I wanted her too damn much—had wanted her from the literal moment I broke into that apartment. Where the fuck did we go from here?
I lay there for a second, just breathing, trying to slow the chaotic race of my thoughts. But there wasn’t much point. I sat up slowly. Through the heavy silence of the apartment, I could hear the scrape of pots and catch the rich, salty scent of bacon.
She was cooking again. Probably naked again.
My heart kicked into overdrive. Letting out a rough breath, I tried not to make a sound as I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom.
The hot water beat down on my shoulders, steam rising fast, but the heat did shit to wash away what I was feeling. I kept seeing her face behind my eyelids. Not Sophia’s. Jamie’s.
I could still feel the phantom slickness of her hand wrapping around me.
I remembered how violently she’d tasted when she kissed me back, kissing me like it didn’t even matter what dead woman's name I was calling out into the dark. My hand drifted down over the wet, hard planes of my stomach, remembering how soft her curves had felt, how fucking good she’d made me feel right before I ruined it.
I wrapped my hand around my shaft. I was so hard I was throbbing, a tight, painful ache. I stroked from root to tip, imagining how incredible it would feel to finally break her open, to completely bury myself inside of her. To see how deep I could go until she forgot whatever name she used to have.
I caught myself. I was too far gone, standing on an edge I couldn’t drop over. I ripped my hand away.
“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath, my forehead leaning against the cold tile.
I wasn’t going to get off thinking about her.
Not after last night. Not like a desperate teenager.
I tried to block out the memory of how perfectly her hand had fit around me, how natural it felt. My fist cracked against the tile once.
Stupid. I shouldn't have let it get that far.
I got dressed, deliberately deciding against a suit. I pulled on a black tee, sweatpants, and yanked my hoodie over my head like the heavy fabric could somehow block out everything I was trying not to feel.
When I walked out, she was moving around the kitchen comfortably, as if she lived here. As if she belonged. I paused in the shadow of the hallway, watching her.
She had on one of my oversized t-shirts now. No more bare skin. No more teasing.
“Good morning?”
She jumped at the sound of my voice before turning around.
The expression on her face was caught somewhere between a fake smile and a grimace.
Everything about her posture was fiercely guarded now.
Before last night, she had been brazen, weaponizing her body.
Now, she was completely folded into herself. Not scared. Just... closed off.
And I was the reason.
“Vincente.”
Her voice cutting through the room pulled me out of the haze. I looked up and realized she was waiting for me to respond. Seeing that I hadn’t been listening, she repeated herself, her tone flattening.
“Do you want a plate of food?”
I nodded. She slid the plate toward me without saying another word, rolling up the long sleeves of my shirt before she dug into her own food.
I had to say something. The silence between us was too loud, vibrating with the echo of her sticky fingers and my dead wife's name.
“You’re not walking around naked anymore,” I said finally. The moment the words left my mouth, I inwardly cringed. Of all the things to say, that was what I chose?
She didn’t look up from her plate. “Didn’t seem appropriate now.”
I nodded once, the bacon turning to ash in my mouth. “How did you sleep last night?”
She looked up then, her doe eyes locking onto mine. There was something deeply unreadable, something hollowed out and biting, in her gaze.
“Fine. I slept peacefully,” she lied.
My teeth ground together. I guess we were going to pretend nothing had happened. I could play that game too.
I cleared my throat, pulled my phone from my hoodie pocket, and slid it across the table. “Order what you need. Clothes, toiletries, food. Enough to stay comfortable for a few weeks.”
She blinked, genuinely surprised. “A few weeks?”
The way she said it rubbed a raw spot in my chest, like she couldn’t bear the thought of being trapped in my space for that long. But could I blame her?
“Yeah. Just in case.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, trying to map my angles, but she didn’t push. She just picked up the phone and started scrolling, ordering things like it was no big deal. I watched her fingers move. The delicate curve of her wrist. The deliberate way she avoided making eye contact.
After a while, I leaned back, forcing my mind onto business. “You know anything about Lady of Rage’s girl?”
She looked up slowly. “Which one?”
“Delilah.”
She shook her head. “I know of her. She comes from some deep South crime family. I can’t think of the name right now. Why?”
“She’s missing. Rage is flying solo.”
Jamie nodded, her sharp mind instantly tracking. “And that matters why?”
“I think Rage did something to her,” I said, leaning in.
Her eyebrow rose. “If she did, Delilah’s brother would take her head off.
Them country boys are a different breed of violent,” Jamie said, a dark smirk touching her lips.
Then she paused, her eyes widening slightly.
“Now that I think of it, there was another girl before Rage took over. Some chick from D.C. She came up missing too.”
I sat with that, rolling the pieces around in my head. Rage was cleaning house, eliminating liabilities.
“This might work in our favor,” I muttered. “If I can figure out what happened to Delilah, let her brother know his sister is gone, and link it back to Rage... it gives us room to move. It forces Rage to play defense.”
Jamie nodded, her expression turning calculating. She was already ten steps ahead of me.
“Tell me about your father,” I said, shifting gears. “If you needed him, would he be someone you could call?”
Jamie’s entire face hardened into stone.
“My father doesn’t give a fuck about me.
He loved my brothers. He saw them as tools, and he saw me as decoration.
Just some pretty pussy he could eventually sell off to the highest bidder.
” She looked at me dead-on, her gaze lethal.
“I knew everything my brothers did. Did half of it better. But he never cared to see past the surface.”
Then she leaned across the table, her voice dropping to a dangerous, purring whisper. “Looking at me right now, would you think I’d press a knife to your throat?”
I looked at her sharp jawline, the fire in her eyes, and shook my head slowly. “No.”
Her beauty was deceptive. Like sugar laced with arsenic. I had known what she was probably capable of the moment she told me her last name, but up until the point she actually drew blood, I hadn't truly believed it. Because nobody expects a rose to slice them open.
And the worst part? Even knowing exactly what she was—I’d probably still let her get that close to my throat again.
She batted her dark lashes slowly, a sudden, sharp laugh cutting through her cold exterior. “Exactly.”
She wasn’t joking. Not fully.
“I’m going to go down and grab the packages you ordered,” I muttered, pushing away from the table to escape the suffocating pull of her.
She just nodded without looking back at me, acting like she didn’t give a fuck if I ever walked back through that door. She probably didn’t.
An hour later, I walked back into the apartment, bags in hand. I was walking past the guest bathroom just as she was stepping out.
She froze when she saw me, and the air immediately left my lungs.
She was wearing a white tank top she’d just unpacked, and the thin fabric clung to her heavy, damp breasts. No bra. Droplets of water slid down her collarbone, disappearing into the dark valley between her tits like it was doing it on purpose.
I didn’t move. My eyes fell—and stayed locked—right where the hem of the shirt ended against her thick, smooth thighs.
She shifted from one foot to the other, the friction of her thighs rubbing together cutting through the quiet room. She felt it too. That heavy, volatile tension coiled tight in the narrow hallway between us.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice a little too light, reaching out to grab the bags from my grip.
She went to walk past me, but the hallway was too tight, and I didn’t step aside.
She brushed hard against me anyway. I felt it everywhere—in my chest, in my teeth, straight down to my dick.
She smelled like rich chocolate and warm vanilla, a heavy, intoxicating scent that had me wanting to trace every single inch of her deep-brown skin with the tip of my tongue just to see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled.
Just the thought of her mouth had my dick throbbing, leaking precum against the fabric of my sweatpants.
She disappeared down the hall into her room without casting another glance back.
I stood there in the empty hallway for a second too long, forcing myself to exhale, before turning into my office. I needed a distraction. I desperately needed to concentrate on something else besides the agonizing urge to drag her back to my bed and ruin us both.
I sat down, opened my laptop, and started digging into the dark web. I had digital records on almost everyone in Rage’s inner circle—but not Delilah. She had always been completely close-mouthed. But Jamie had just given me a thread to pull.
I knew that just telling Rage I wanted out didn't mean a damn thing. I needed leverage. Real, bloody leverage. For both me and Jamie.
And Delilah might be exactly that.