Chapter 17 Raphael
RAPHAEL
The whiskey burned a path down my throat, but it couldn’t touch the words lodged in my chest.
You’re not your father.
I poured another glass. The study was dark except for the glow of the fireplace, shadows pooling in the corners like secrets, and I’d been sitting here for hours.
Replaying every moment of that confrontation.
The way she’d walked into my study without fear.
The way she’d looked at me like she could see through every layer of defense I’d spent thirty years constructing.
She sees us, my wolf murmured. She stayed. She didn’t run.
I drained the glass and reached for the bottle again. The burn wasn’t working. Nothing was working.
On my desk, the collar glinted in the firelight.
Silver chain and diamonds, delicate and perfect.
I’d had it made specifically for her, sized to fit that slender throat, designed to mark her as mine whenever she left this house.
A symbol of ownership that could pass for jewelry. A reminder of who she belonged to.
I picked it up, felt the weight of it in my palm. Cold metal warming against my skin. The diamonds caught the light like captured stars.
Put it on her, the wolf demanded. Mark her. Claim her. She’s ours.
I set it down harder than necessary. The sound echoed in the empty room.
She wasn’t mine. She was a means to an end.
A pawn in a game she didn’t even know she was playing.
Her father had helped destroy my childhood, funneling payments to that godforsaken boarding school while the senator’s conscience stayed clean.
Richard Hughes had known exactly what he was doing when he signed those wire transfers.
Known a child was suffering. Taken the money anyway.
And now his daughter thought she understood me.
The laugh that escaped me was bitter, hollow. She understood nothing. She’d learned a few tragic facts from Alice and suddenly thought she could see the real me. As if anyone could. As if there was anything left to see except the monster I’d built from the wreckage of that little boy in the closet.
A knock at the door. I scented Parsons before he spoke.
“Come.”
He entered, his wolf senses no doubt cataloging the whiskey, the darkness, my foul mood. The slight tension in his shoulders told me he’d rather be anywhere else. But Parsons was nothing if not professional.
“The investigation update, sir. Petrov’s team traced the building access logs for the heating system. Three staff members had keycard access during the relevant window. We’re running backgrounds now.”
“And?”
“Three maintenance staff had keycard access during the relevant window. We’re still running backgrounds, but nothing suspicious so far. Whoever did this knew exactly how to make it look like an accident.”
An inside job. Someone who knew the building’s systems, its routines, its blind spots. The same profile as the person who’d sent the dead corgi. The same careful planning.
“Keep digging.”
“Yes, sir.” Parsons hesitated, and I could smell his reluctance. “There’s also the matter of Viktor’s report to the Pakhan.”
I didn’t need the reminder. Viktor had seen my distraction during the Diamantis exchange. He’d seen the way my mind had wandered to her, to the scent of her, in the middle of a multi-million dollar handoff with vampires. And Viktor was nothing if not loyal to Max.
The ultimatum would come. I could feel it approaching like a storm on the horizon, and I knew Max’s solutions were never kind.
“That will be all.”
Parsons withdrew, leaving me alone with the silence and the whiskey and the ghost of her words.
You wanted to remind me who was in charge. But I think you were really reminding yourself.
My hand tightened on the glass until I felt the crystal creak.
She was wrong. This morning had been about control. About reminding her that she was mine to do with as I pleased. About proving that her little moment of independence at the hotel meant nothing in the grand scheme of our arrangement.
Liar, the wolf growled. You were afraid. She’s getting too close. You tried to push her away.
I threw the glass into the fireplace. Watched it shatter against the stone. Watched the flames leap higher as the alcohol ignited, blue and hungry.
It didn’t help.
Nothing helped.
I checked my watch. Seven o’clock. Time for our evening routine. Time to prove that nothing had changed, that her understanding meant nothing, that I was still the man in control.
I stood, adjusted my cuffs, and went to summon her.
The walk to the library took longer than it should have.
I paused at the threshold, one hand on the doorframe, steeling myself like a man preparing for battle.
Which was absurd. She was a twenty-year-old virgin bound by a contract.
I was a Bratva vor with a billion-dollar empire and a wolf that could tear her apart in seconds.
There was no battle here. There was only the arrangement.
I sent a servant to fetch her and waited by the piano, running my fingers over the polished wood.
The surface was cool and smooth beneath my touch.
My mother had played. Not this piano, not this instrument that I’d bought to fill a room in a house she’d never seen.
But the memory lingered. The way her fingers had danced over the keys.
The way she’d hummed along to the melodies, her voice soft and sweet.
The way she’d screamed when my father’s claws had torn through her throat.
Stop, I commanded myself. Stop thinking about her. Stop letting the past control you.
But that was what Lena had done, wasn’t it? She’d dredged up the past and laid it bare, forcing me to look at the bloody foundations of everything I’d built.
The door opened, and her scent hit me before I saw her.
Sweet and soft and unblemished. But there was something different underneath it now, a new note in the familiar symphony. Something that made my wolf sit up and take notice.
She wasn’t afraid.
Lena walked into the library with her chin level and her shoulders back, and she wasn’t afraid of me. Not the way she had been before. The fear was still there, faint and sharp like copper beneath the sweetness, but it wasn’t the dominant note anymore.
Now there was something else. Something that smelled like understanding. Like knowing.
I hated it.
“Sit at the piano,” I said.
She obeyed, settling onto the bench with a grace that spoke of years of practice. The lamplight caught the gold in her hair as she positioned her hands over the keys. She began to play without being told what piece I wanted.
Something soft. Something haunting. A melody I didn’t recognize but that seemed to seep into my bones nonetheless, wrapping around my ribs like a fist.
I circled her the way I always did, predator assessing prey, but the ritual felt hollow tonight. The words I wanted to speak, commands and reminders of her position, threats dressed up as promises, stuck in my throat like ash.
She kept playing. Didn’t look at me. But I could feel her awareness of my presence, could smell the subtle shift in her scent as I drew closer. Wariness, yes. But not the sharp spike of terror I’d grown accustomed to.
The song ended. Her hands stilled on the keys, hovering there for a moment before settling into her lap.
“That was beautiful,” I said, and then immediately wanted to take the words back. I didn’t compliment her. I commanded her, used her, controlled her. Compliments had no place in our arrangement.
She looked up at me, and there it was again. That knowing look. That understanding that cut through every defense I had, saw past the monster to the bleeding thing beneath.
“Thank you.”
Two words. Simple. Polite. And somehow more devastating than any defiance she could have mustered.
“Strip.”
The word came out harder than I intended, an overcorrection. She didn’t flinch.
Slowly, she stood from the piano bench. She unzipped her boots first, then her hands went to the hem of her dress, and she pulled it up and over her head with none of the trembling resistance I’d come to expect. The burgundy fabric pooled at her feet in a whisper of wool.
Beneath it, a simple cotton bra. White. Innocent. The curve of her breasts rising with each breath. She reached back and unhooked it, let it fall. Her nipples pebbled in the cool air.
Matching white underwear followed. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband and slid them down her thighs, stepping out of them with a grace that made my mouth go dry.
She stood before me in the lamplight, completely bare. All pale skin and soft curves, the golden curls between her thighs catching the light. She didn’t try to cover herself.
She just looked at me. Waiting. Not afraid.
“Come,” I said, and led her to my bedroom.
The familiar space felt different tonight. Charged with anticipation I refused to name. The bed where I’d touched her, where I’d made her cry out, where I’d proven over and over that her body belonged to me. It waited like a question I didn’t know how to answer.
“Lie down.”
She climbed onto the bed and reclined against the pillows, watching me with those eyes that saw too much. I stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her, and felt the walls, decades in the making, begin to give. A hairline fracture spreading through everything I’d constructed.
This was the arrangement. This was what she’d agreed to. One year of her body in exchange for her family’s hotel.
So why did it feel like I was the one being undone?
I moved to the bed, settling beside her. My hand found her hip, fingers pressing into the soft flesh there. She was warm beneath my palm. Warm and alive and looking at me like I was a man, not a monster.
“Raphael.”
My name on her lips. Not “Mr. Antonov.” Just my name, spoken softly, without fear.
My control splintered.
I kissed her.