Chapter 21
Raze
Izzy’s head rested in the crook of my arm, hair spilled across my chest, her fingers tracing lazy patterns over my skin. Searching, seeking. Content.
The afterglow lingered between us—heat, sweat, breath still syncing. The room was lifeless except for the soft drag of her fingertips along the ink that marked me.
She’d been bold earlier. Now she was curious. Her fingers followed one line across my ribcage, then dipped lower to the raised patch of scar tissue that twisted beneath a tattoo.
“What about this one?” she ventured softly.
Her voice held no accusation. No judgment. Just interest.
I stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
“That one,” I pointed out, “isn’t decorative.”
Her fingers paused, then resumed tracing.
“They’re not random,” she noted. “Your tattoos.”
“No.”
“What do they mean?”
I could’ve brushed it off. Given her something light or surface-level. But she deserved more than that.
“The ink came after what happened. To cover what was already there.”
She lifted her head slightly to look at me. “The scars?”
“Yes.”
Her hand flattened against my chest, warm and steady.
I swallowed once.
“There was an explosion.” The words felt distant. Like they belonged to another man. “It was meant for me.”
Her fingers stilled.
“It detonated with my wife inside.”
The air turned. I could feel her breathing change.
“She was pregnant,” I added. “Eight months.”
Silence fell between us. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. If I did, I wasn’t sure I’d keep from breaking.
“I heard the blast before I understood what it was. The sound… it wasn’t just noise. It was deafening. Forceful. It hit your chest. Rattled your teeth.”
I could still feel it. The vibration. The heat.
“I ran.” My jaw tightened. “I didn’t think. I just ran.”
I remembered the way the air tasted—metal and gasoline. The way the world blurred at the edges as I closed the distance between myself and the car that was already engulfed in flames.
“I could see her through the flames.”
Izzy’s hand slid higher, resting over my heart.
“I tried to open the door.”
My voice thickened, but I didn’t stop.
“I burned my hands first. Then my arms. My side. I didn’t feel it at the time. I just kept pulling, trying to get her out. But it was too late.”
I shook my head. I could still hear the screaming. Not hers. Mine.
“They dragged me back,” I recalled. “My men. They had to tackle me to the ground. I was still trying to get to her.”
The silence in the room felt sacred.
“She died in that car. So did my son.”
Her fingers smoothed up and down against me.
“How long ago?” she whispered.
“Six years.”
Her breath hitched.
The ceiling blurred.
“Not a day goes by,” I forced out, voice thick with emotion, “where I don’t think about what I could’ve done differently. If I’d gotten to the car first. If I hadn’t been late. If I’d kept them further away from my world.”
Izzy didn’t interrupt. She just listened. Rapt. Present. Attentive. And what I liked most about her was that she didn’t offer her pity. Just her presence.
“You know what the most twisted part is?” I stared at the ceiling like it might crack open and swallow the words before they reached her. “It’s the guilt.”
The words scraped past my throat on their way out.
“It eats at you,” I went on, my voice low and rough.
“Slow. Steady. Like rust under the skin. Knowing she was angry at me when she got into that car. We’d argued about me being pulled in too many directions.
” I swallowed. “I got caught up on a call. Business. Always business. I told her to go wait in the car. Told her I’d be two minutes. ”
Two minutes.
“I remember the look she gave me,” I shared, and I couldn’t stop the feeling of guilt that washed over me. “Frustrated. Hurt. Tired of coming second.”
The memory tightened around my ribs.
“That bomb was meant for me. They wired it for my routine. My car. My schedule. My enemies.” My jaw flexed. “And instead, I sent her straight to it. I put her in that seat.”
Her fingers wound tighter around mine.
“That’s not on you, Raze. There’s no way you could’ve known.”
“Of course I couldn’t have known.” I forced myself to breathe. “If I had even suspected, I would’ve burned the city down before I let her touch that ignition.”
I turned my head to look at her. The shame settled uncomfortably in my chest.
“I chose work. Again. I told myself it was for us. For our future. For the empire he’d inherit.” A bitter laugh left me.
“You can’t do this to yourself,” she whispered.
“I thought losing them would kill me,” I admitted after a moment. “And in some ways, it did.”
I stared at my hands, remembering the way they’d clawed at metal that was too hot to touch. The way men had dragged me back while I fought them like an animal. The way I’d watched flames swallow everything.
“I replay it,” I told her. “Over and over. If I hadn’t answered that call.
If I’d told her to stay inside. If I’d driven.
If I’d insisted we take separate cars. If I’d left the life sooner.
If I’d been less ambitious. Less ruthless.
” My throat tightened. “There are a thousand versions of that night where she’s still alive. ”
“But that’s not the one that happened,” she said gently.
“No.” I closed my eyes briefly. “It’s not.”
The air left me in a fragile gasp.
“She died thinking I was choosing something else over her. That’s what kills me.” My voice dropped. “I don’t even remember if I told her I loved her before she walked away.”
Her silence told me she understood the weight of that. Her hand moved to my face, steady and warm.
“Raze, it wasn’t your fault. Sometimes, you just can’t fight fate.”
I held her gaze.
“I know that,” I said. “Up here.” I tapped my temple lightly. “But in here?” I pressed my fist to my chest. “It doesn’t care about logic. It only knows that I told my pregnant wife to wait in a car that exploded.”
Something inside my chest had calcified that day. Grief had turned into function. Function into purpose. And purpose into something colder.
Her thumb brushed lightly over the edge of a scar.
“Is that why…” She hesitated. “Is that why you’re so involved with explosives?”
A faint, humorless smile touched my mouth.
“Yes.”
She waited.
“When something takes everything from you,” I breathed, “you either let it own you… or you need to understand it.”
Her brows pulled together.
“I learned it,” I continued. “I studied it. I dismantled it. I rebuilt it. I studied every variable until I understood-literally-what made a bomb tick.”
Her fingers resumed tracing patterns.
“Explosions are chaos,” she whispered.
“They don’t have to be,” I clarified.
She looked at me.
“There’s a formula,” I explained. “A ratio. Pressure, ignition, environment. When you understand it, it stops being random.”
“You can control it,” she murmured. “Is that what you like?”
“Yes.”
Her gaze softened.
“You couldn’t control what happened to them.”
“No.”
“But you can control it now.”
“Yes.”
The silence settled in around us.
Her fingers drifted up my chest, across my collarbone, over the ink that marked dates only I understood.
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
The confession didn’t hurt the way it used to. It ached. But it didn’t fracture me.
I closed my eyes briefly.
“I always will.”
She repositioned slightly, pressing closer, her cheek resting over my heart. The simplicity of it undid me more than the confession ever could have. I slid my hand into her hair and held her there.
She tilted her head, looking up at me.
“Does it ever get easier?”
It seemed like she genuinely wanted to know. The honest answer hovered between us.
“No.”
Her face fell slightly.
“But it starts to feel… different,” I amended. “You learn to carry it. You learn how to function with it. Some days it’s intolerable. Some days it’s just there.”
And for the first time in six years, the weight of what I’d lost didn’t feel like the only thing in my chest.
There was grief. Yes. But there was also her. Warm. Alive. Locked into my side like she’d chosen me. And that terrified me. Because wanting her meant risking everything all over again. But not having her… That wasn’t an option anymore.