Archie
I wanted to break something.
The urge sat under my skin from the moment the sun came up—hot, violent, coiled tight in my chest like it was waiting for an excuse.
Cold water didn’t touch it. Silence didn’t dull it.
It had been there the second I heard Michalo Machado’s name the night before, and it had only sharpened with every passing hour.
Because now I knew.
The men I’d put in the ground hadn’t been random. Not hired hands drifting toward easy money. They belonged to someone. They’d been sent with direction. With intent.
With her name behind it.
And the man who sent them was obsessed with Antonella Cavalho.
The word didn’t sit right.
Obsessed.
I knew exactly what that meant.
Knew what it looked like when something got under your skin and refused to leave. When it rooted deep enough that everything else started to bend around it. I’d seen it in men before—watched it strip them down to something simpler, uglier.
I understood that kind of fixation better than I should. Understood what it was to look at a woman and feel your focus narrow until she was the only thing left in it. Until everything else blurred at the edges and ceased to matter.
I’d been fighting that exact thing since the moment I met her. And now I had to picture someone else looking at her the same way.
That some rich Spanish bastard had seen her—really seen her—and decided she was something he could claim. Something that belonged to him.
My jaw tightened hard enough to ache.
It did something to me. Something I didn’t like. Something I wasn’t interested in pulling apart or naming.
Because it wasn’t clean. It wasn’t reasonable. It was possessive in a way that had no right existing.
She wasn’t mine.
I had no claim. No history that justified it. No reason to feel anything beyond the job in front of me.
It didn’t matter. The anger was there anyway. Sharp. Territorial. Sitting just beneath the surface like it had always been there, waiting for a reason to show itself. And now it had one.
Machado thought he was circling her. Thought he had time. Thought he could reach into my world and take something while no one was looking.
I exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down my face, trying—failing—to shake the pressure building behind my ribs.
He didn’t understand what he’d stepped into. Didn’t understand what it meant to put her in his sights.
Because obsession? I knew it. Lived it. And if he thought his version of it made him dangerous—he hadn’t seen mine yet.
I stood at the safehouse window, one hand braced against the frame, the other locked around a mug gone cold. The street outside was dead quiet.
I watched the parked cars, the narrow lane. There was no movement where there should’ve been some. My reflection stared back at me in the glass—and behind it, hers.
I didn’t turn. I knew she was there. Awake. Watching me.
I could still feel last night under my skin. Her breath catching. Her mouth parting. The way she’d looked at me when she said I wasn’t as dangerous as I thought.
A lie. One I’d almost proved wrong.
I hadn’t almost kissed her. I would have.
There was nothing uncertain about it. The space between us had been gone. Her voice had dropped. My control had thinned to nothing. Another second and my hand would’ve been in her hair, my mouth on hers—consequences be damned.
The phone call cut through it. Sharp and perfectly timed. Like something had taken one look at the disaster we were headed for and stepped in before we could get there.
Another second—and it would’ve been a problem. A real one. But the call came, and just like that, it broke us apart before we could cross the line neither of us was pretending wasn’t there.
After that, everything cooled.
Words thinned. Distance crept back in. Not enough to kill it—but enough to stop us toppling over.
She’d folded into herself on the couch, legs tucked in, like she could ignore what had just happened.
But I saw it.
Every glance she thought I missed.
The way her eyes kept drifting back to me, then snapping away when I caught them. The way she’d smooth my shirt over her thighs like it grounded her.
She felt it. Every second of it. Every inch. And I knew—down to the bone—that something had started between us. Something that didn’t stop just because we pretended it didn’t exist. And I wasn’t letting another man step into that.
The sound behind me shifted—glass against counter, a soft movement. I turned.
She stood near the kitchen, one hand wrapped around a glass of water. My shirt hung off her frame like it belonged there. Her hair had dried loose, dark and uncontained, falling around her shoulders like it had a mind of its own.
She looked softer in the morning light. Which didn’t make her any less dangerous.
“You’ve been staring out that window for twenty minutes,” she said, voice rough from sleep. “Should I be worried?”
I took a slow sip of cold coffee, buying the second it took to steady the edge in me.
“Depends.”
Her mouth curved.
“There he is,” she murmured, stepping closer. “I was starting to think the crazy Russian had died overnight.”
A breath left me—close enough to a laugh to pass.
“Disappointed?”
“A little,” she said. “He was kind of growing on me.”
I didn’t move when she came to stand beside me. I didn’t step back when her shoulder came within reach.
The tension came with her. Immediate. Alive.
She looked out the window. Then at me.
“They’re coming soon, aren’t they?”
I nodded once.
“Are you scared of him?” I asked.
Her head snapped toward me, sharp enough to cut.
“My brother?”
“Yes.”
A quiet scoff.
“No.”
I believed that. Antonella didn’t scare easily. That was part of the problem.
“What then?”
She hesitated. Too long.
Then, quieter, “The idea of him dragging all of you into something I should’ve handled before it got this far.”
My jaw tightened.
“That’s not how this works.”
“It should be.”
“It isn’t.” I set the mug down, turning toward her fully now. “A man sends soldiers after you, Tone, it stops being your problem alone.”
Something flickered across her face. It hit harder than it should’ve.
I almost reached for her, but she broke the moment by looking away.
Which was a good thing, because if she hadn’t, I might’ve forgotten myself again.
The convoy hit the street not long after.
Raze didn’t come, but he sent two black SUVs with bikes flanking them. Another car trailing like a shadow. Enough presence to turn a quiet street into a message.
By the time we stepped outside, the whole place was swarming with security.
She took it in, unimpressed.
“Subtle.”
I opened the door for her. “Your family doesn’t do subtle.”
“No,” she agreed as she slid in. “They don’t.”
I shut the door on the hint of a smile.
The drive was tight. Every car we passed got assessed. Every shadow checked. My hand stayed close to my weapon the entire time.
Beside me, she sat composed. One leg crossed. Eyes on the world outside the glass like none of it touched her.
Control. She was always in control.
Her hand shifted once on the seat between us. I took it for what it was; a small, restless movement.
My eyes dropped before I could stop them. Long fingers. No rings. Her pulse flickered at her wrist. Alive.
She was right there. Too close.
I dragged my gaze away before it went somewhere I couldn’t afford. Because this—whatever this was brewing between us—it was already too much.
And if Machado thought he had a place in it—he was about to learn his reality the hard way.