Chapter 24
RAFE
Riley's body slides out from under the sheets, and I feel the mattress dip as she tries to ease away without waking me. My hand shoots out and catches her wrist before she can stand.
"Where you going?" I ask, still halfway asleep and barely coherent enough to speak.
Her skin is warm under my fingers as she leans back and kisses me softly. "I was going to make coffee."
"Stay," I tell her, but she still backs away.
"Rafe—"
"Stay," I repeat, and I pull her back toward me.
She resists for half a second, then relents, sliding back under the sheets and turning to face me.
Her hair is tangled from sleep, and her eyes are still heavy with exhaustion, but she's still just as beautiful as ever.
I look forward to waking up to her face like this every morning.
"You're not usually this clingy," she mumbles as she snuggles closer and I feel the chill of her toes on my legs.
"I'm not usually watching the woman I love try to sneak out of bed."
Her expression softens, and she reaches up to brush her fingers through my hair. "I wasn't sneaking. I was just trying not to wake you."
"Well, you failed." I tighten my arms around her and sigh contentedly, then close my eyes and think about drifting back to sleep, but the image of Riley standing by Feodor's car like she was preparing to run keeps popping into my head.
I've thought about it a dozen ways and it always comes down to the same question. "Why didn't you run?"
She pulls away so that she can look up at me and says, "What?" The chasm her shift created between us is painfully cold.
"Yesterday, you had Feodor's keys and the door was open. You could've left, and I never would have caught you in time. So why didn't you?"
Her face pales slightly, and I see the realization dawn in her eyes. "You saw that?"
"Yeah, on the home security cameras, I watched the whole thing."
She looks away, and I watch her throat work as she swallows. "I stood there for five minutes trying to convince myself to get in that car."
"But you didn't."
"No. I couldn't." She turns back to me, and I see the vulnerability in her expression, the raw honesty that she's not trying to hide.
"I couldn't leave you, Rafe. I thought about what would happen if I ran.
I know how bad it would get for you." I sense that she's not finished speaking, but she doesn’t continue, so I prompt her.
"But that's not why you stayed."
"No," she admits quietly. "It's not. I stayed because I love you and because I didn't want to see you destroyed for something you didn't choose.
You were seventeen when you took over your father's position.
You didn't have a choice. You did what you had to do to survive.
And now you're trapped in this life the same way I'm trapped here.
Except you've been trapped for decades."
Riley says those words like they're so easy for her to articulate but they're true. And to me they're not something that's easy for me to accept. But knowing that she sees me makes me feel less defensive as she points it out.
"I won't leave this life," I say, and I need her to understand that. "Even if I could, I won't. This is who I am now. It's what I've built. And I'm not going to walk away from it."
"I know."
"Do you? Because it might take you a while to realize what that means. What staying with me means…"
She reaches up and cups my face, and her thumb brushes across my cheekbone. "I know what it means. I'm not naive, Rafe. I know you're not gonna suddenly become a law-abiding citizen."
I stare at her, searching her face for any sign of doubt or any hint that she's saying what she thinks I want to hear. But all I see in her eyes is confidence in me.
I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her, and she presses her face against my chest. We lie there in silence for a long moment, and I let myself feel comforted by what she just said.
She loves me and she's choosing to stay.
And for the first time in weeks, I feel like maybe this isn't going to end with me losing her.
But I can't ignore the situation we're still in.
Her work might be finished but the threat isn't over.
"You're still a risk," I say. "Sal made that clear yesterday. If you don't prove you can be trusted, he'll want you gone."
She pulls back to look at me. "And if I do prove it?"
"Then he'll consider bringing you in. Making you part of the family."
"As what? Your girlfriend who happens to know how to hack databases?" Riley chuckles, but I'm dead serious when I respond.
"As our new banker."
Her eyes widen slightly like she hadn't considered that. The role Marco held, the one that kept the organization running smoothly for years, is vacant, and Riley's already proven she can do the work better than he ever did.
"You want me to take Lombardi's place," she says slowly, as if chewing on the thought carefully.
I know what she's thinking and she wouldn’t be wrong to be fearful.
Lombardi was killed for what he knew. Enemies are always looking for a place to strike, but I wasn't with Marco like I'm with Riley. I won’t let anyone come within a mile of her.
"I want you to have a reason to stay. Sal won't eliminate someone who's vital to the operation. And you're vital, Riley. You've done more in a month than Marco did in years."
"If that's what it takes to stay with you, then okay. I'll be your banker." I can hear the reluctance in her voice, and I won't ever make her do anything she doesn't want to do at all.
"It's just an option," I say, but she shakes her head firmly.
"I'll do it," she repeats, and I believe her.
Relief floods through me, and I pull her in for a kiss. So much has been riding on her work for so long, it feels strange knowing it's done. But stranger still knowing she's not leaving, and I don't have to wrap up any loose ends.
"I want you to see your family," I say. "For your sister's wedding. I'll make it happen."
Her breath catches. "How?"
"I don't know yet, but I'll figure it out. I promised you I'd find a way, and I will."
"The FBI thinks I've been kidnapped. My family thinks I'm dead or being held somewhere against my will. If I just show up at the wedding, they'll have questions I can't answer."
"Then we'll come up with a story. Something that explains where you've been without exposing me or the organization. We'll make it believable."
"And what about you?" she asks. "Are you just going to drop me off at the church and disappear?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm not going home alone, Rafe. If you want me, you have to accept my family too. You have to be willing to meet them, to be part of my life in a way that isn't just keeping me locked in a safehouse."
It makes me feel tense for an entirely different reason to think about that…
Meeting her family. Sitting across from her parents at a dinner table.
Shaking her father's hand and lying to his face about how we met.
It's absurd and dangerous, and Sal will have a heart attack.
But the way she's looking at me makes it clear this isn't negotiable.
"You want me to meet your family?"
"Yes. If we're doing this, then you don't get to be a shadow in my life. You have to be real. And that means being part of my world, not just pulling me into yours."
I stare at her, and my mind is already racing through the logistics. How do I explain who I am? What I do? How do I sit in a room with her family and act normal when I'm the man who kidnapped her and forced her to work for me?
But Riley's watching me, waiting for an answer, and I realize she's not going to back down on this.
"Alright," I finally say, "I'll meet them. But you have to understand that if we slip up or say the wrong thing, it could destroy everything."
"Then we won't slip up."
"It's not that simple."
"Yes, it is. We just have to be careful. We come up with a story, we stick to it, and we don't give them any reason to doubt us."
I shake my head, but I'm smiling despite myself. "You make it sound easy." Riley's gone from law-abiding citizen to partner in crime so easily.
"It's not easy. But it's worth it."
She's right. It's worth it. She's worth it.
"Come on," I say, sitting up and pulling her with me. "Let's take a shower. We can figure out the details later."
She laughs and follows me into the bathroom where I turn on the water and wait for it to heat up.
Once steam fills the small space, Riley steps under the spray, tilting her head back and letting the water run through her hair.
I step in behind her and reach for the shampoo, squeezing some into my palm as she turns to face me, and I start working it through her hair, my fingers gentle as I massage her scalp.
"What do you think they'll say when I show up?" she asks quietly.
"Your family?"
"Yeah, I mean, I've been gone and then after weeks of no contact I just walk in and tell them I'm fine?" I can definitely see her point. It's not normal, and everyone will have their questions.
"They'll be relieved, baby," I say as her eyes shut tightly.
"But what do I tell them?"
"We'll come up with something. Maybe you were in an accident and lost your memory." I pause as I think that one through. It even sounds too fake. "Maybe you were staying with a friend and your phone died and you couldn't reach them… We'll figure out a story that makes sense."
"Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants, then how do I explain you? Especially after my phone pinged in a warehouse owned by your family…."
I rinse the shampoo from her hair to give myself time to think, and she turns to face the spray, her eyes closed. I've never had to deal with this issue because I've never had any person I've taken captive remain alive after their usefulness ran its course. Every part of this is daunting.
"You tell them we met during your time away and that I helped you. That we fell in love."
"It's not exactly a lie," she mumbles.
"No. It's not."
She turns back to me and picks up the soap, lathering it in her hands before pressing them against my chest. I feel the tension in my shoulders start to ease as she works her way down my torso and around to my back.
When her arms are fully wrapped around me, washing my back, I pull her against my body so her tits press on my soapy chest.
"The FBI's going to be a problem," I say. "They've been investigating your disappearance. If you suddenly show up and say you're fine, they're gonna want to know where you've been. And they're not going to accept a vague story about memory loss or dead phones."
"Then we give them something they can't disprove…" She looks thoughtful for a moment and then sighs. "I think we tell them the truth."
I laugh heartily and turn us both so the water is running over my soapy back and down between us. Riley closes her eyes against the spray and I take the opportunity to kiss her lightly.
"And you think it'll work?" I find it hard to imagine that telling the FBI everything Riley has done will go well.
"The redacted truth will." She pulls away and sets the soap on the soap dish. "I met you, and we had a spark. I emailed my family saying I had car trouble." She narrows her eyes at me and I shrug.
"What? I can't help that part… The dead man's body left evidence."
"And," she says with emphasis, "you brought me to your house because of the storm. We had a spark, we really connected…." I'm starting to catch where she's going.
"And you fell in love and never looked up to take a breath until you realized how long we'd been holed up in this house outside of town…." It could work. "You really think they'll buy that?" I ask her, still not really believing it.
"I think it has to work. Because the alternative is never seeing my family again. And I can't accept that."
I pull her close, and she wraps her arms around my waist. We stand there under the spray, holding each other, and I let my mind turn over the problem. We still have a lot of risks to take, and it's not going to be easy. Hell, it might be impossible. But Riley's right. We have to try.
The idea of watching her go through the emotional pain of never being able to see her family again isn't something I’m willing to walk through.
"We'll make it work," I say quietly. "I'll find a way to get you to that wedding. And I'll be there with you. Not hiding in the shadows."
She kisses me, and I feel the desperation in it, the relief, the overwhelming emotion she's been holding back. I kiss her back, and we stay there under the water until it starts to run cold.
This whole time, I thought the raciest part of this situation was going to be convincing Sal to keep her around. Now I realize we've only started to see the challenging moments.
But if Riley is confident that we can do it, so am I.
And there isn't anything I wouldn’t do for her.