Chapter 27 Raphael
RAPHAEL
The man’s nose broke under my fist with a satisfying crunch.
Blood splattered across my knuckles, warm and wet, and I watched it drip onto the concrete floor of the warehouse with the same detached interest I might give to rain streaking a window.
The traitor slumped in his chair, zip ties cutting into his wrists, his face a mess of purple bruises and split skin.
His fear-sweat stank of ammonia and desperation, sharp enough to make my wolf curl its lip in disgust.
“I’ll ask you again.” My voice was calm. “Who’s paying you to move product through our territory without permission?”
He spat blood onto my shoes. Expensive Italian leather, now ruined. I didn’t blink.
Behind me, Viktor shifted his weight, the creak of his leather jacket the only sound in the stillness. Dmitri cracked his knuckles. And in the corner of the warehouse, watching from the shadows with those ancient amber eyes that saw everything, the Pakhan waited.
Max Ivankov didn’t need to participate in interrogations anymore.
He had men like me for that. But sometimes he liked to watch.
To remind us that he was still the apex predator in any room he entered, regardless of how old his human body had grown.
His wolf was ancient, patient, and absolutely ruthless.
Mine recognized that dominance even when my human mind wanted to forget.
Her.
The thought sliced through my focus like a blade.
Apples and cream. The ghost of her scent still clinging to my shirt from this morning, when I’d held her in my office and promised her tonight.
The softness of her skin under my palm. The way she’d looked at me when I left, like she was already counting the hours until I returned.
I hit the man again, harder than necessary. The crack of bone against bone echoed through the warehouse, and I welcomed the pain that lanced up my arm. It was real. Something that wasn’t her.
“Diamantis,” he gasped through broken teeth, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. “The Diamantis clan. They wanted a foothold, said they’d pay double what you’re charging for passage rights.”
Vampires. Of course it was vampires. The cold-blooded bastards had been testing our boundaries for months, sending their lackeys to probe for weakness. This was the third runner we’d caught in as many weeks, and each time the offers had gotten more generous. More desperate.
“And you thought you’d help them.” I grabbed his jaw, forcing his head up so he had no choice but to meet my eyes. Let him see what lived behind them. Let him understand exactly what kind of creature he’d betrayed. “You thought the Bratva wouldn’t notice one of our own selling us out.”
“I needed the money.” His voice cracked, snot and tears mixing with the blood streaming down his face. “My daughter, she’s sick, the treatments cost—”
I released him, stepping back, flexing my aching fingers. “Everyone has a story. None of them change the rules.”
Viktor moved forward with the plastic sheeting, his movements efficient and practiced.
I didn’t need to watch. I’d seen it a hundred times.
Would see it a hundred more. This was the life I’d chosen.
The life that had chosen me when I was eighteen and starving on the streets, before the Pakhan had found me and recognized what I was. What I could become.
A weapon. A killer. A wolf without a pack until he gave me one.
I turned away, rolling my shoulders to release the tension coiled there, and found Max’s eyes already on me.
The weight of his attention was a physical thing. Like standing too close to a bonfire, feeling the heat press against your skin until it hurt to breathe. Every instinct I had screamed to submit, to bare my throat, to prove I was still loyal. Still useful. Still worthy of my place in his pack.
But somewhere deeper, in that feral part of me I usually kept locked down tight, something else stirred. Something that wanted to snarl at my Alpha for the first time in seventeen years.
She’s mine. Not his to threaten. Not his to take.
I crushed the thought before it could fully form. Dangerous. Stupid. The kind of thinking that got men killed, and worse, got the people they cared about killed too.
“Diamantis is getting bolder. We should send a message.” I kept my voice neutral. Professional. A soldier reporting to his commander, nothing more.
Max said nothing. Just watched me with those eyes that had seen three generations of wolves rise and fall under his command, eyes that had witnessed betrayals and executions and the slow rot that attachment brought to men who should have known better.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Behind me, the wet sounds of Viktor’s work continued, rhythmic and final.
“Your mind is elsewhere tonight, Raphael Antonovich.”
The formal address hit me like ice water. He only used my full name when he was reminding me of my place. Of who owned my loyalty. Of what the rules demanded from men like us.
“No, Pakhan.”
“Don’t insult me by lying.” He pushed off from the wall, moving with a predator’s grace despite the gray threading through his dark hair.
His wolf moved beneath his skin, visible in the too-fluid motion of his limbs, the way his head tilted as if scenting the air between us.
“I’ve watched you for fifteen years. I know when your thoughts are divided. ”
I had nothing to say that wouldn’t make it worse. So I said nothing, holding his gaze even though every instinct screamed to look away, to submit, to grovel.
Max stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell the wolf beneath his expensive cologne. Old power. Ancient authority. Pine and cold stone and the blood of a thousand kills. The scent of the man who’d pulled me out of the gutter and made me what I was.
“We’ll talk soon,” he said.
Four words. No threat in his tone. No anger. Just that calm certainty that was somehow worse than any ultimatum he could have delivered.
Because I knew what those words meant. I knew the rules. No attachments. No weaknesses. No vulnerabilities that enemies could exploit. A Bratva wolf with a human woman in his bed was a liability. A distraction. A target waiting to be painted on her back.
And the penalty for breaking that rule was clear. Had always been clear.
End it yourself, or we end it for you.
“Of course, Pakhan.” The words felt like razors in my throat, scraping raw as I forced them out.
He nodded once, then turned and walked toward the warehouse door.
His footsteps echoed in the silence, steady and unhurried.
A man with nothing to prove and everything to protect.
Viktor and Dmitri had finished their work.
The plastic was being rolled. The evidence was disappearing into the back of a van that would never be traced.
Just another night in the life I’d chosen.
I stood there until I was alone with the stench of blood and the weight of borrowed time pressing down on my chest like a stone.
The drive back to the manor took forty minutes.
Forty minutes of darkness and silence, Parsons’s steady hands on the wheel, the headlights cutting through blackness as the city lights gave way to forest. The road climbed into the hills, winding through pines that pressed close on either side, and I watched the shadows slide past the window without really seeing them.
I didn’t wash the blood off my knuckles. Some part of me wanted her to see it. Wanted her to understand what she was choosing. What I was beneath the suits and the money and the careful control I wore like a shield.
We’ll talk soon.
The Pakhan’s words circled in my skull like vultures waiting for something to die.
He knew. Of course he knew. Men like Max always knew.
He had eyes everywhere, ears in every room, a network of loyalty and fear that stretched across three continents.
The moment I’d started spending nights with her instead of working, the moment I’d given her that collar, the moment I’d started thinking of her as something other than a means to an end, he’d known.
And now the clock was ticking. I could almost hear it, each second falling away like drops of blood hitting concrete.
I stared at my hands in the darkness of the car.
The blood was drying, turning brown and flaky at the edges, cracking in the creases of my knuckles.
Violence. That’s what I was built for. What I’d been trained to do since I was old enough to throw a punch.
My father had been violent too. Had loved violence, craved it, needed it the way other men needed air or water or touch.
My father had killed my mother.
Different, the wolf in me insisted, pacing behind my ribs. We would never hurt her. We would die first. Tear out our own throat before we let the beast touch her.
But my father had probably thought that too. Before the rage took over. Before the shift came without warning during a fight that should have been nothing, just words, just anger, and the beast inside him did what beasts do when they feel threatened.
I remembered the blood. I’d been three years old, hiding in the closet, watching through the slats as the wolf that was my father stood over what was left of my mother.
I remembered the sound he’d made when he shifted back and realized what he’d done.
A howl of such utter devastation that it had haunted my dreams for thirty years.
Then the gunshot. Then silence.
Then me, alone with the bodies, for three days until someone finally came.
The manor lights appeared through the trees, warm and golden against the darkness. Warm against the dark. I could see the glow from my bedroom window, soft and steady, and the knowledge that she was there, waiting, exactly where I’d told her to be, made something in me give way.
Home, the wolf whispered.
The word rose unbidden, and I didn’t push it down. Didn’t have the strength for it anymore.