Archie
There was a warm body beside me.
For one fractured second, I didn’t know where I was. Didn’t know why the sheets smelled faintly like her skin and clean soap and something soft and fragile I couldn’t name.
Then I opened my eyes and found Antonella beside me. And everything came back.
Her ridiculous heels abandoned somewhere between the hall and the bed. Her mouth on mine. Her body arching beneath my hands like she’d been made for sin and I’d been born to commit it.
She was half-curled against me, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, hair spilled wild across the sheets and my chest. Morning light bled weak and grey through the curtains, catching the gold in her skin. She looked too soft for this world. Too soft for mine.
Taking her should’ve felt like a victory. Instead, it felt like the kind of peace a man only got right before someone put a bullet in the back of his head.
I lay there longer than I should have, watching her breathe. Watching the tiny shifts of her face as sleep loosened its hold on her. There was no armor on her like this. No sharpened tongue. No cool control. Just a woman carrying the weight of a family name that dealt in blood ties and war lines.
She stirred before I could stop staring. Her lashes fluttered. Her eyes opened slowly, still heavy with sleep, then sharpened the second they found me.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Something moved between us. Quiet. Loaded. Intimate in that way that new love is.
“You’re staring again,” she murmured.
I brushed a strand of hair from her face before I could think better of it. “You make it difficult not to.”
Her mouth curved, but it wasn’t a full smile. There was too much thought behind it. Too much reality creeping back in.
We both heard the crash at the same time. What sounded like a door downstairs.
Tone went still beside me.
I was already moving.
Years of instinct snapped into place before thought could interfere. I was out of the bed in a heartbeat, scanning for a weapon, dragging on my slacks quickly while listening for movement. Heavy steps trailed up the stairs, fast and certain, like they knew their way.
Tone pushed up on her elbows, the colour draining from her face.
“Raze,” she murmured.
There was no time to answer.
The bedroom door swung open so hard it cracked against the wall.
Raze Cavalho filled the doorway like violence itself. Barely contained. Barely human. His gaze hit the bed first, to where his sister lay half naked, the sheets held close around her upper body. Then his eyes shifted to me, half dressed, standing on the wrong side of every line that mattered.
His face changed.
I’d seen dangerous men before. Been raised among them. I knew the look of fury, knew the shape of murder when it walked into a room.
But this—this was different.
His eyes landed on me, and I knew immediately that if he’d had a gun in his hand, this chapter of my life would have ended right there.
“You.” His voice came out low enough to curdle the air.
Tone pushed up from the bed, sitting up fully. “Raze—”
“Don’t.” He didn’t look at her. “Don’t you say a fucking word to me right now.”
I stepped forward, putting myself between him and the bed.
“Careful,” I said quietly.
He laughed, sounding almost hysterical.
“Careful?” he repeated. “You wake up in my sister’s bed and tell me to be careful?”
His chest was rising hard now, each breath dragging violence closer to the surface. He looked like he wanted to rip the room apart with his bare hands, starting with me.
“Raze,” Tone said again, sharper this time. “Enough.”
He paused for half a second and glanced at her. Whatever restraint he had left died.
He came at me without warning.
His fist collided with my jaw hard enough to snap my head sideways and send me stumbling into the dresser. Pain burst bright behind my eyes. I barely had time to right myself before he was on me again, driving forward with enough force to knock us both into the wall.
The room exploded.
Wood cracked. Glass shattered beneath our feet. His second punch clipped my cheekbone. I drove an elbow into his ribs and felt muscle, bone, rage. He grunted but didn’t slow. He swung again, wild and brutal, all weight and grief and possessive fury.
I blocked one swing, then took the next across the mouth.
Blood flooded my tongue.
He grabbed my throat and slammed me back into the wall so hard the plaster groaned. “I should fucking kill you.”
“Do it. I dare you.”
His forehead nearly hit mine, his breath hot with rage. “In my house?”
I shoved him hard enough to create space and drove my fist into his ribs, then his stomach. He bent slightly, and I hit him again across the face. His head snapped to the side. For a second I thought I’d bought myself a break.
Then he smiled. I thought I’d seen every version of Raze. I was wrong—I hadn’t met the monster yet.
He lunged, caught me around the middle, and drove me backward over the side of the bed.
The mattress frame groaned. We hit the floor in a knot of fists and snarling breath.
He got one hand around my throat. I jammed my forearm into his neck and twisted, forcing enough space to breathe.
We rolled, trading top position, neither giving an inch.
He fought like I expected him to—fast, vicious, filthy when needed. No wasted movement, no concern for damage. Just the raw intent to hurt.
I fought the same way.
Because there was no talking a man down once he found a man in his sister’s bed.
Especially not a man like Raze Cavalho.
“Stop!” Tone’s voice split the room, sharp and close.
I saw her in flashes between blows—off the bed now, barefoot, hair wild, a shirt she’d slipped over her head hanging off one shoulder as she moved toward us.
“Tone, stay back,” I barked, shoving Raze off me long enough to get one knee beneath me.
That was my mistake.
Raze surged upright and swung a lamp from the bedside table. I ducked just in time. It smashed against the wall, spraying shards and dust. Tone cried out and rushed in anyway, throwing herself between us before either of us could stop her.
“Enough!” she shouted, hands out, chest heaving. “Are you both insane?”
Raze’s face had gone beyond anger now. Colder and more lethal, harbouring a murderous rage that no longer recognized logic.
He reached for her, and for one stupid heartbeat I thought he meant to pull her out of the way.
Instead, his arm lashed out with enough force to send her flying sideways.
She hit the room’s small writing desk hard, the wood splintering beneath the impact before she crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and dark hair.
The sound she made cut through me.
Everything in me locked onto her. The room narrowed. My pulse went feral.
“Tone.”
She sucked in a breath, dazed, trying to push herself up.
That one second of distraction nearly cost me my teeth. Raze’s fist slammed into the side of my face, and white light burst across my vision. I staggered, caught myself on the bedpost, and turned back with murder climbing my spine.
“You touch her again,” I said, voice scraped raw, “and I’ll forget who the fuck you are.”
He looked at me, then at his sister on the floor, and something ugly moved behind his eyes. It wasn’t remorse, but the shock of seeing what his own fury had done.
Tone coughed and managed to sit up, one hand braced against her ribs. “I’m fine,” she bit out, even though she clearly wasn’t.
Raze dragged a hand over his mouth, breathing hard. Then he looked back at me, and whatever pause had existed was gone.
“This is on you,” he hissed.
Blood ran from my split lip down my chin. My jaw throbbed. My knuckles were raw. The bedroom looked like a bomb had gone off in it, and the woman between us was bruised because neither of us had known when to stop.
He stepped toward me again.
Tone rose too quickly and winced, one hand pressing into her side. “Raze, enough.”
He ignored her.
“If I ever,” he said, each word carefully enunciated, “ever see you near my sister again, I’ll bury you so deep no one will find enough of you to identify.”
I held his gaze.
There were a thousand possible answers. Most of them would’ve ended with one of us dead.
Then Tone moved into my line of sight, not fully between us this time, but enough. Her face had gone pale around the mouth. A red mark was already rising along her arm. She looked furious. Hurt. Humiliated. But under all of it was something else.
A plea. Not for her brother, but for me.
Don’t.
My teeth locked so hard my head pulsed with it.
Raze pointed toward the door. “Get out.”
“Raze—” Tone started.
He turned on her, not with his hands this time but with all the force of his voice. “I’ve said enough.”
She flinched at his tone.
“Get your Russian ass out of my house,” he said to me, quieter now, which somehow made it worse. “And pray I never catch your scent near her again.”
I wiped blood from my mouth with the back of my hand and looked at Tone.
I wanted to go to her. Wanted to touch her face, check her ribs, make sure nothing was broken.
I wanted to tell her none of this changed what happened between us.
That I’d still taste her on my mouth when I walked out that door.
That I’d carry the shape of this room, this bed, this ruin, like a curse.
But I knew her brother well enough to know any move toward her now would light the fuse again.
So I stayed where I was.
Her eyes met mine, burning bright with too much unsaid. Anger. Desire. Regret. Maybe all three.
I bent, picked up my shirt from the floor, and dragged it on over skin already stiffening with bruises. Every movement hurt. But that was fine, because pain was clarity. Pain reminded a man what he was.
A bastard. A fool. Dead if he lingered.
At the door, I stopped and glanced back once.
Tone stood rigid near the wreckage of the desk, her chin high even now, hurt. Raze stood between us like a guard dog.
I looked at him. “You can’t decide her life for her.”
His expression turned murderous again. “Fucking watch me.”