Chapter 19 Raphael
RAPHAEL
I didn’t sleep.
The hours crawled past in silence, marked only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the restless pacing of the beast behind my ribs.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her. Standing there naked, my release still cooling on her skin, looking at me like she could see straight through to the rotting core of me.
You think if you’re cruel enough, I’ll hate you.
Her words echoed through my skull, relentless.
I’d tried everything. Spanked her until her ass was red and hot under my palm.
Made her come against her will, her body clenching around my fingers while she cursed my name.
Finished on her back like she was nothing but a vessel for my pleasure, painting her skin with the evidence of my contempt.
Every weapon in my arsenal, deployed with surgical precision.
And she’d stood up. Turned to face me with her spine straight and her chin raised and my release still dripping down the curve of her back. Refused to break.
It’s not working.
Three words. That was all it had taken to shatter decades of carefully constructed defenses. Three words from a girl half my age who should have been trembling and broken on my floor.
The wolf snarled, pacing faster. He’d been furious with me since I walked away from her door.
Since I stood there like a fool, jaw working, tongue thick and useless in my mouth, unable to find words that wouldn’t damn me further.
Since I turned away without speaking because speaking would have meant admitting she’d won.
Coward, he spat. She saw you. She stayed. And you ran like a pup with his tail between his legs.
I wasn’t running. I was regrouping. There was a difference.
Is there?
I told him to shut up. He ignored me.
Dawn crept through the curtains, pale gray light that did nothing to warm the cold in my chest. January in the mountains. The world outside was frozen, locked in ice, but the chill I felt had nothing to do with temperature.
Her scent clung to my sheets, to my skin, to the very air I breathed. Sweet and soft and innocent. Except it wasn’t innocent anymore. Now it was blended with something darker, something richer. My scent and the musk of sex. Marking her whether she wanted it or not.
The wolf liked that. Preened at the evidence of possession, at the way our scents had mingled into something new.
I hated that he liked it. Hated the satisfaction that curled through me every time I caught a trace of her on my pillow, my robe, the bathroom door she’d touched on her way out.
I threw off the covers and stalked to the bathroom, running the shower hot enough to scald. Steam filled the room. The water beat down on my shoulders, almost punishing.
It couldn’t wash away the memory of her hand on my chest. Pressing hard against my heartbeat. Feeling the way my pulse raced under her palm, giving away every lie I’d tried to tell.
The things I feel for you. They’re dangerous. For both of us.
I’d said that. Actually admitted it out loud, standing there stripped bare while she looked at me with those wide blue eyes.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, then dressed in the dark. Charcoal suit. White shirt. The mask of civilization over the beast that wanted to hunt.
By the time I made my way to my study, I’d patched some of the defenses she’d cracked.
Work. I would bury myself in work. The revenge plot was nearly complete, documents gathered over two decades now compiled into an airtight case against the senator.
This was familiar territory. Destruction I understood. Control I could wield.
Not whatever that was last night.
The manor was quiet. Alice would be in the kitchen by now, preparing breakfast. And Lena…
I could smell her. Even through closed doors, my wolf tracked her scent like a compass pointing north. She was still in her room. Still sleeping, maybe. Or lying awake like I had been, replaying the same moments over and over.
Go to her.
No.
She’s confused. Hurting. You did that to her, and now you’re hiding in your office like a coward.
I said no.
The wolf subsided, but his presence pressed against my ribs, watchful and waiting.
Viktor called at eight. I let it ring twice before answering, using the seconds to ensure my voice would come out steady. To make sure no trace of last night’s weakness would bleed through.
“The media contact is confirmed,” he said without preamble. Viktor never wasted words. It was one of the things I valued about him. “Timing is set for next week. The documents will land on his desk Monday morning. By Tuesday, every news outlet in the state will have the story.”
Senator William Prescott. My grandfather. The man who’d made me disappear after my parents’ deaths, who’d paid Richard Hughes to keep me locked away in that boarding school for years while he built his political career on the corpse of his daughter’s memory.
My mother. His daughter. The woman he’d disowned when she married my father, then exploited for sympathy after she died.
Half my life I’d waited for this moment. Fifteen years of building power, accumulating wealth, positioning chess pieces across a board that spanned continents. All leading to the moment when William Prescott would finally pay for what he’d done.
“Good.” The word came out flat. Empty. Like air escaping a punctured tire.
Viktor paused on the other end of the line. “You sound distracted.”
“I’m fine.”
“The girl?”
My hand tightened on the phone until the plastic creaked. “What about her?”
“You’ve been different. Since the arrangement began.” Viktor’s tone was carefully neutral, the way wolves spoke when they were delivering information that might provoke their superior. “Distracted. Unfocused. Some of the others have noticed.”
The others. Meaning the pack. Meaning wolves who reported to the Pakhan, who would relay any sign of weakness to the Alpha without hesitation.
“If you need assistance managing the situation,” Viktor continued, “I can arrange for someone else to handle the hotel surveillance. Remove the temptation, so to speak.”
“That won’t be necessary.” My voice was ice now, the mask firmly in place. The vor who had clawed his way up from nothing, who answered to no one but the Pakhan himself. “The arrangement is proceeding exactly as planned.”
“Of course.”
He didn’t believe me. The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything unsaid. Viktor knew me too well. He’d watched me build this empire. He knew what I was capable of, and more importantly, what I’d never allowed myself to be.
Vulnerable. Distracted. Compromised by a girl with blue eyes and a spine of steel.
“Keep me updated on the Prescott situation,” I said, and ended the call before he could respond.
The documents spread across my desk should have commanded my attention.
Three decades of evidence, sorted into categories.
The shell company records tracing my grandfather’s investment in the network of schools where children were sent to disappear.
The cover-up files documenting payments to silence parents, correspondence about journalists who’d gotten too close before their accidents.
And the personal file. Financial records tracing payments from the senator’s office to the Hughes Hotel, laundered as vendor services.
Correspondence proving he knew exactly where I was and chose to leave me there, year after year, while the headmaster’s punishments grew more creative and I learned that no one was coming to save me.
Testimony from former staff members. Receipts. Photographs. Everything I needed to end him.
Some of it would end her too. The hotel’s role in the cover-ups, the money laundered through its accounts. If I released everything, Lena would face investigation. Criminal exposure. The legacy she was fighting to save would become a crime scene.
I’d already decided which files to leak and which to hold back. Protect her while still destroying him. The wolf approved. The strategist in me called it weakness.
I told them both to shut up.
The wolf prowled restlessly through my thoughts, uninterested in paper vengeance. He wanted something else. Someone else.
She’s awake now. I can smell her moving through the manor. Coffee. Toast. She’s in the kitchen with Alice.
I ignored him and kept reading. The same paragraph, three times over.
Alice likes her. Did you know that? Our housekeeper, who barely tolerates anyone, actually likes the little mate we’ve claimed.
She’s not our mate, I snapped back. She’s a business arrangement. A means to an end.
Then why can’t you stop thinking about the way she felt when she came on your fingers? Why can’t you forget the sound she made when you spanked her, that little gasp that went straight to your cock?
I slammed the folder shut. The wolf’s laughter echoed through my skull.
An hour passed. Two. The words blurred together on the page, and I stared at the window instead of the documents. The gardens were white with frost, the morning sun doing nothing to thaw the January cold. Icicles hung from the eaves like frozen tears.
She’d touched my chest. Felt my heart hammering under her palm like a caged animal trying to break free. And instead of recoiling from the monster who’d just degraded her, she’d stepped closer.
I don’t know how to do this, she’d whispered. I don’t know how to give you my body without starting to give you other things.
Neither did I. That was what I’d admitted. Standing there stripped of every defense, I’d told her the truth. That I was just as lost as she was. Just as terrified.
What kind of predator admitted fear to his prey?
The kind who’s falling, the wolf said, almost gleeful. And you hate it because you can’t control it. Can’t manipulate it. Can’t bend it to your will like everything else in your miserable life.