Chapter 22
BEA
I’ve been circling the same path through this apartment for the past hour, turning over the harsh truth again and again.
I’m a prisoner.
I haven’t said the word out loud, not once. But somewhere in the last forty minutes, I let myself think it. And once it existed in my head, it refused to leave.
I’m a prisoner in a penthouse, with its marble countertops and private elevator access. There’s even a guard stationed outside the door.
His name is Frank. At least, I think it is.
That’s what he told me when I asked, and then he offered nothing else.
Eventually, I stopped trying. He’s built like a doorframe and acts like one too—weight balanced, hands visible, gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance.
It includes me but never quite lands on me.
I tried to leave at nine.
I opened the door.
I told him I needed to go to work.
He said, “Mr. D’Amico has asked that you remain in the residence today, ma’am.”
I told him just an hour.
He repeated the exact same sentence, same tone, like a recording stuck on loop.
So, I closed the door.
That was two hours ago. I’ve been pacing and rummaging through drawers ever since, trying to keep myself occupied. Before I can even think to start cleaning up the mess, the elevator chimes.
I’m in the kitchen, leaning on the island when it happens. Red saucepan next to me. At one point, I was thinking about cooking. Not anymore. My palm flattens against the marble before I even realize I’m bracing.
Footsteps. Then Raffaele steps into the kitchen.
Still in last night’s suit. The shirt’s been buttoned back up at some point, but you can see where it was untucked before.
He doesn’t look at me, just walks past me toward a cabinet.
“Where have you been?”
He doesn’t answer. There’s a darkness to his energy. It should scare me. Instead, it makes me insatiably curious.
“Raffaele.”
He pulls a glass off the rack, grabs a bottle off the counter—whiskey, it looks like—pours.
“Raffaele,” I repeat. “We need to—”
“Not now.”
“Not now?”
I follow him.
“I’ve been locked in this apartment since you left. I don’t know where you went, what you did, or what the hell’s happening with my life. And you walk in here, looking like that, and tell me not now?”
He takes a sip of the whiskey and looks around at the mess I made.
“Looks like you’ve been keeping yourself busy.” He nods at the saucepan next to me. “Thinking about cooking, huh?”
I push it away. “I’m not hungry. All I—” Before I can finish, the saucepan slips over the edge of the island and crashes to the floor.
The sound makes me nearly jump through the ceiling. Raffaele doesn’t even flinch. Instead, he takes another sip of whiskey and slowly moves closer.
“It’s for your own safety,” he says, bending down to pick up the saucepan. His fingers wrap around the handle, and a sinful glint flashes across his eyes.
For a split-second, I feel like I know exactly what he wants to do with that.
Spank me.
“I’m your assistant,” I gulp.
“Is that so?”
He twirls the saucepan in his fingers. Once. Twice.
“That’s right. That’s the job. I have a job. I have files. The Martinez depositions are due Friday, and I was halfway through cross-referencing the witness statements when you took me out of the office last night, and if we miss that filing window, the whole—”
He sets the saucepan back down next to me, and a strange wave of disappointment crashes through me.
“The Martinez case is closed,” he says.
I freeze.
“What?” Since when? The arraignment is next week. I was in those files until eight last night.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. The court has dates. The prosecutor has dates. There are deadlines—”
He moves.
I don’t see him decide to. One second, he’s at the island; the next, he’s across the kitchen and I’m being walked backward in a single fluid motion that ends with my shoulder blades flat against the wall and his palms on either side of my head.
The gasp arrives a beat after the impact, small and useless.
“Raffaele—what—”
His mouth finds my neck.
There’s nothing tentative in it. He puts his lips on the spot just below my ear, and my entire argument rushes out in one warm, embarrassing exhale.
It’s immediately obvious to me that he’s doing this to shut me up. A spark of fury flickers up in me. My fingers clench.
“The depositions—”
He bites down. Carefully. Just enough that I feel it. A warning shaped like a kiss.
“The court—the dates—”
His hand is under my shirt. His palm is flat on my stomach, fingers spread and moving up. My breath catches in a rhythm he sets.
“Deadlines—”
Suddenly, I’m flipped around. My chest is pressed against the island. Raffaele pins me there with one hand. With the other, he grabs the saucepan.
“None of it matters,” he growls.
“But the files—”
“Fuck the files.”
The first spank arrives, stinging and hot. The painful heat flashes across my cheeks.
“Fuck,” I gasp, toes curling.
“That’s right, fuck,” he says. “Fuck. The. Files.” Each word is punctuated with another spank.
My hands grasp for something to hold onto, but before they find anything, Raffaele throws the saucepan aside and twists me back around to face him.
The metals clangs against the wall as his thumb traces the edge of my jaw. His other hand is somewhere under my ribs, working up.
“The cases. The clients. The whole goddamn operation. Fuck it.”
He kisses me harder.
His hands have moved past undressing me and into a more possessive maneuver—under the blouse he hasn’t bothered to take off, into the cups of my bra, palms hot against my breasts as his thumbs work until I’m arching up off the wall and into him.
The flesh on my ass is tingling… along with the rest of my body. We’re making out the way teenagers make out, open-mouthed, breathing into each other, neither of us coming up for air.
I get a word out between his mouth and mine.
“What—what happened—”
“I had a revelation.”
He says it against my throat. His voice is wrecked.
“About what?”
“About what actually matters.”
His mouth moves down. His teeth catch the lace at the top of my bra. My voice isn’t mine when it comes out next.
“And what—what is that?”
His hand slides between my thighs.
“That only you matter. That only this fucking matters. This. You wet for me at eleven in the morning in your work blouse with your boss’s hand inside you.
” His fingers find me through the fabric and push.
“This is what I was born for. Not the firm. Not the famiglia. Not the chair I’ve been polishing for some other man’s son for twenty fucking years. This.”
His mouth is at my ear.
“I was born to fucking worship you, Bea.”
I’m dripping for him. He knows it.
I’m rocking against his hand and, without thinking, have brought my own hand down to the front of his trousers. He’s hard for me. It’s exhilarating.
My fingers are working the belt before either of us has decided we’re doing this here, against this wall, in the kitchen, in full daylight.
“Raffaele—”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him? What happened to Martinez?”
He stops moving for a fraction of a second. Just long enough that I feel him decide to answer.
He lifts me. Picks me up like I weigh nothing. My legs wrap around his waist and my back slams against the wall. He stares at me with blue fire raging in his perfect eyes.
“Dead.”
He pushes inside me on the word.
“Choked. On his own floor. With my hands.”
He’s not gentle. He fucks me against the wall with my back grinding into the plaster and my forehead pressed into the side of his neck, and every thrust drives the next sentence out of him in a hot, low murmur against my hair.
“The bastard thought there was a version of this where you were a piece of leverage. Thought he could reach over and take what’s fucking mine, like I would just let him.” A thrust, hard. “I disabused him of the notion.”
“Did—did he deserve—”
“I don’t ask that question.”
He grips me harder.
“I’m a criminal, Bea. I’m a killer. I haven’t asked did he deserve it in twenty years.” His mouth is at my ear. “Anyone who reaches for you is going to die. That’s the only rule in my life that matters anymore.”
He pulls back enough to look at me.
“You’ve ruined me,” he says. “You have fucking ruined me, Bea Mendez.”
I clench around him. And the words come out in a rasp before I can stop them.
“You ruined me, too.”
He kisses me on the word too.
Then he stops being careful.
He fucks me against the wall harder than I thought he would let himself, harder than I would have asked for if I had a voice left to ask in. I bite down on his shoulder to keep the noise in. His hand comes up and cups the back of my skull and pulls me off him.
“No.” His mouth at my temple. “I want to hear it. Every fucking sound. Now.”
I let go.
He spills inside me with a low, wrecked sound at my throat. Holds me there against the wall while my whole body shakes through it. I can feel his arms, the muscles that have been holding me up, start to give.
So, I get my legs under me. I slide down the front of him, slow, my own thighs trembling, and I land on my knees on the rug at his feet.
He looks down at me.
“You’re a fucking queen.”
I take him in my hand first. He’s wet and hot from being inside me. I work him with my fist, slow at first, watching his face. His head goes back.
I take him in my mouth.
He growls up at the ceiling, deep and primal. His hand finds my hair and fists it, but he doesn’t push or guide—just holds. I take him as deep as I can. He hisses. I do it again. The third time, my eyes start to water, and he rumbles my name like a god.
I know I have him.
I don’t stop until he’s shaking. Until his hand in my hair is the only reason he’s still upright. He tries, once, to pull me off—I hear him say, Bea, you don’t have to—and I dig my nails into the back of his thigh and keep going. He gives up.
When he comes in my mouth, I swallow it, all of it, and I look up at him while I do it. He stares back at me like I’m a goddess.
Then there’s nothing left to take. I sit back on my heels, drunk on what I’ve just done to him. This god, brought down to his own carpet by my mouth.
His chiselled chest heaves with an otherworldly strength. I assume that means we must be done.
I’m wrong. We’re far from done.
With a grunt, Raffaele lifts me by the elbows, pulling me back up against him so he can kiss me hard.
I melt into his lips as he walks us to the nearest couch and bends me over it.
Then he gets back onto his knees.
I feel his tongue first, right between my thighs, and I shudder so violently I worry I might shatter.
He works me there until my hands are clawing into the cushions and my forehead is pressed into the leather and I’m openly begging for him to do something, anything, the next thing, please.
He obeys.
With one last kiss to the inside of my thigh, he stands and drives into me.
From this angle, he feels even bigger. He plunges so deep inside of me that I have to scream into the couch cushions just to make room for him.
He fucks me until I can’t feel my legs.
By the time the daylight has worked its way across the room, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve come. And I’ve definitely forgotten about what the hell we were even arguing about.
All I know is that as soon as my body recovers from his ravaging, I’ll be on my knees, begging for more.