Chapter 14
Day twenty-seven. Six days since she confronted me about Hallstein. Six days of maintaining careful distance while I planned tonight, while the need to claim her publicly burned through my veins like poison I craved.
Saturday morning. Nine AM. The security office reeks of stale coffee and electronics. Two monitors cycle through La Sirena's cameras. Kitchen, hallway, loading dock. The endless surveillance I've maintained since Jorge Delgado pulled me from the rain nine years ago.
There. Daphne walking past the staff coat hooks, barefoot like she does most mornings now.
Those fucking bare feet on my clean concrete, like she owns the place.
Like she owns me. Jeans and t-shirt, hair in that loose knot that makes my fingers itch to pull it free, heading from the laundry room toward the apartment stairs.
Someone passes her going the opposite direction. One of the new hires, Eric, I think Logan called him. Started three months ago, brought in from that Doral security firm. As they pass, his head turns. His mouth moves. One word. The audio captures it clearly.
"Baby."
Not the word itself. It's the tone that makes my blood turn to ice. Suggestive, possessive, the kind of tone that makes me want to break fingers one by one.
Daphne doesn't react. Keeps walking. Maybe doesn't even register it consciously. Eric continues toward the staff entrance like he hasn't just signed his own transfer papers.
I replay it. Four times. Memorizing his face, the exact inflection, the way his eyes track her ass for a beat too long. By the fourth replay, rage has crystallized into decision.
My phone is in my hand before I've finished the thought. Logan answers on the second ring.
"Eric. The new hire from Doral. Move him to the Hialeah warehouse. Night collections. Effective Monday."
"Understood."
No questions. Logan knows this voice, the one that handles Delgado family business without explanation. The call ends. Sixty seconds from footage to consequence.
I close the feed, but something fundamental has shifted.
Nine years of iron control, and I've just acted on pure possessive instinct in under a minute.
The discipline isn't breaking. It's transforming into something darker, reshaping itself around her.
That decision I made five nights ago while watching her sleep, about keeping her forever, is already making my choices for me.
She'll never know. Eric will spend his nights collecting debts in Hialeah, wondering what he did to get demoted from the family's crown jewel. The corridor will stay safe for her barefoot mornings. My protection invisible, like the cage I'm building around her without asking permission.
Four-thirty PM. The apartment thrums with air conditioning fighting Miami's wet heat. The box waits on the bed where I left it while she was downstairs. Courier delivery this morning, no sender name, though she'll know I ordered it.
She's in the bathroom now, the shower just ended, humming something French that makes my chest ache.
The box lies open. Tissue paper pushed aside, gold silk catching afternoon light like liquid money.
The gown is heavy silk that will cling to every curve, the back cut low enough to make my mouth go dry.
Three-inch heels in matching gold leather that will bring her mouth closer to mine.
I sit at the desk, laptop open to territory reports I've read three times without absorbing a word.
My focus keeps drifting to the sounds from the bathroom.
Drawers opening, the whisper of fabric against skin, her voice soft and content.
The domesticity of it fucks with my head.
My captive humming while she prepares for a night where I'll parade her as mine.
I stand, cross to the closet. Pull out the suit.
Charcoal wool, custom-tailored three years ago by that Bal Harbour tailor who outfits all the Delgado men and knows not to ask questions.
The only suit I own because one is all a man like me needs.
White shirt, pristine from the dry cleaner who handles the family's clothes.
Dark tie. Italian leather shoes I polished last night while she slept, thinking about how tonight changes everything.
The bathroom door opens. She's by the bed in her robe, fingers working through her dark hair with bobby pins, each movement precise and practiced.
I take the bathroom, shave with care. Tonight demands perfection, no stubble, nothing rough except what I am underneath.
The suit goes on like armor. Shirt crisp against my skin, pants fitted perfectly, jacket transforming me into something that belongs in La Sirena's world of beautiful criminals.
When I emerge, she returns to the bathroom. Through the cracked door, I glimpse her hands twisting her hair into something elegant at the nape of her neck. A chignon, the ballet style that will leave her throat exposed to every eye in that room. To my mouth, if I let myself.
She steps out.
The breath leaves my lungs. The gold silk transforms her into something mythical, dangerous.
It pours from her shoulders to the floor like melted sunlight, the back cut so low I can see the dimples at the base of her spine.
Her hair pulled back in that sleek chignon reveals the delicate line of her neck.
Minimal makeup. She doesn't need more when she looks like every man's ruin.
My hand grips the back of the chair hard enough to crack wood. Something primal roars to life in my chest. Mine, mine, fucking mine. She's ethereal and untouchable and wearing silk I chose, and the contradiction makes my blood burn so hot I'm surprised the suit doesn't combust.
She crosses to the desk on bare feet, those fucking feet I've been protecting, and picks up the heels.
Sits on the bed's edge to put them on, and I watch her calves flex, imagine those legs wrapped around my waist. The added height brings her to 5'7", closer to my mouth, closer to everything I want to do to her.
She stands, looks at me, waiting.
I offer my arm. She takes it.
No words between us. We both understand what tonight is.
The public claim I've been building toward since I carried her back from that alley, since I decided she's never leaving.
Three hundred of Miami's criminal elite about to witness me stake my claim, while underneath runs the darker truth.
The permanent keeping she doesn't know about, the cage that's already locked.
The apartment door opens. We step into the hallway.
Her hand on my arm burns through the suit jacket, and I imagine that heat on my bare skin, imagine her nails dragging down my back.
Tonight, Adrian will welcome her into the family's inner circle.
The room will watch. Three hundred witnesses to a possession that goes deeper than they'll ever know.
Two flights down the back service stairs, her heels clicking against concrete like a countdown to something irreversible. At the landing, instead of turning toward the loading dock, I guide her left. The staff door behind the cabaret bar, where family enters when they want the room to notice.
My palm finds her bare lower back as I guide her, skin against skin, and fuck, she's soft. Warm. The contact shoots straight to my cock. She doesn't flinch, doesn't stiffen. If anything, she leans into it, and I spread my fingers wider, claim more of that exposed skin.
The door opens to golden light and the Siren's voice, low and smoky, filling the room.
Three hundred of Miami's players at capacity on a Saturday night.
Adrian works the floor in his perfect suit, moving between tables like he owns every soul in the room, which, in a way, he does.
Logan and Wren at their corner table, Logan in a blazer that screams money, Wren in something black that makes her look like a beautiful weapon.
They register our entrance with brief nods. Family acknowledging family.
Marisol sits near them, blood-red dress, golden hair loose, Nico at her side in midnight blue, soldier-still amid all that glitter.
Her eyes find mine across the room and hold.
Ice in that look. Then she turns back to her conversation with some politician who doesn't know he's being played.
No approach, no acknowledgment beyond that frozen moment.
She's been giving me the Delgado cold shoulder since Daphne arrived.
Protecting me from myself, probably, or punishing me for forgetting what we are. What I am.
Adrian crosses to us, reading the room's energy shifting like only he can. That's his gift, making Miami's underworld dance to his rhythm without anyone noticing they're being led.
"Daphne." His voice carries that perfect pitch of welcome that makes you feel like royalty. "You look absolutely devastating. Let me show you to your table. Best view of our Siren in the house."
He leads her to prime real estate near the stage, the table we reserve for visiting capos and politicians we're buying.
Pulls out her chair himself with that flourish that's pure Adrian, mentions something about champagne service, tonight's performance.
I step back to the wall near the staff door.
My position when I'm working security, except tonight I'm not working.
Tonight I'm watching my woman become the center of gravity in a room full of predators.
The Siren continues her song, something sultry that makes couples press closer.
Daphne sits alone at the front table in gold silk while heads turn at nearby tables.
The regulars studying her, wondering who she belongs to.
The men's eyes lingering too long, making my hands itch for violence.
Every inappropriate glance is a debt I'm keeping track of.
Twenty minutes pass. Twenty minutes of watching her exist in my world, untouchable and mine.