Trapped
The city doesn’t sleep, but the street outside my building is quiet. Too quiet. The usual rattle of traffic is replaced by the low hum of an idling engine, the kind that stays just out of sight until you notice the rhythm of it, pulsing under your skin.
My gut knots.
I know before I even round the corner.
Rafe doesn’t send warnings twice.
The black car parked half a block down gleams beneath the flicker of the streetlamp, windows tinted so dark it’s a mirror. As I approach, the door swings open, and a voice cuts through the night like smoke curling down my throat.
“Dean.”
I freeze. He doesn’t need to step out for me to feel the weight of him, but he does anyway, one polished shoe at a time, deliberate, unhurried, like the devil unfolding himself from hell.
Rafe looks the same as he did upstairs at Club Z—tailored suit that probably costs more than my first car, dark hair slicked back, smile sharp enough to bleed you out before you notice you’re cut.
“Going somewhere?” His eyes flick to the keys in my hand, then back to me.
“Home.” My voice is flat. Controlled. He doesn’t need to hear the thrum of my pulse.
“Mm.” He steps closer, and suddenly the whole street feels smaller, his presence pressing the walls in. “Home. How nice. Shame time’s up.”
He says it so casually, like we’re talking about a tab left unpaid at a bar. But I know what he means.
He’s been circling me for months. Little meetings, little reminders. Tonight wasn’t an accident. James didn’t set me up—he delivered me.
“What do you want, Rafe?”
“You know what I want.” He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t need to. He just looks at me with those pale, unblinking eyes, and I feel the years of men before me folding into this same moment. “I don’t like repeating myself.”
“I’m not in the business anymore.”
He laughs softly, a sound that scrapes like broken glass. “Oh, Dean. You don’t get to retire from me.”
I grit my teeth, but I don’t move. Moving would mean giving him something—fear, defiance, anything he could twist into leverage.
He steps in close enough that I catch the faint tang of his cologne—sharp, metallic, like gun oil masked with citrus. His hand lands heavy on my shoulder, and I feel the chill seep straight into bone.
“You owe me.” His thumb presses, deliberate, reminding me of every debt I thought I’d walked away from.
“And now, you pay. No more stalling. You’ll come back in.
You’ll run the books for this new development.
You’ll get my men clean papers, clean contracts, and a clean front.
You always were the best at making dirty things shine. ”
My jaw tightens. He’s not wrong. It was what I did before, what I promised myself I’d never do again. Scrubbing bloodstains with ink, laundering sins through signatures and seals. My talent wasn’t pulling a trigger—it was erasing the trail.
And he knows it.
Rafe leans closer, his voice low enough that only I hear. “You want to keep breathing? You want that pretty little house across the hall to stay untouched? Then you’ll do exactly as I say.”
The mention of the house makes my stomach twist. He doesn’t say her name—he doesn’t have to. He knows she’s there. He knows everything.
“What if I say no?” My voice is hoarse, but I force it out, anyway.
He smiles wider, shark-like. “Then I bury you where no one will ever find you. And her? I let my men decide how long she lasts. You think I don’t see the way you look at her?”
I don’t let my expression slip, but inside I’m already burning. He’s baiting me, pressing the one bruise I can’t hide.
Rafe tilts his head, studying me. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours to make peace with it. Tomorrow night, my man will bring the files. You’ll sign what I tell you, move the money where I say. Or I cut pieces.”
His hand leaves my shoulder, but the weight stays, pressing me down as he slips back into the car. The door clicks shut, the engine growls, and then he’s gone—like he was never there at all.
But the ghost of him clings, the threat wrapping around my throat tighter than any tie.
I stand in the empty street, chest heaving, every nerve screaming at me I’ve just stepped back into the cage I swore I’d burned down.
And this time, I’m not the only one he’ll burn if I fail.
I don’t go upstairs right away.
I pace the length of the block twice, three times, the city lights slanting like broken neon ribs across the wet pavement. My lungs feel raw, my skin too tight, and still, I can hear his voice—casual, sharp, lethal.
Tomorrow night.
I can’t wait for tomorrow night.
So when my phone buzzes in my pocket, the number unknown, I already know who it is.
“Pick up,” a voice rasps when I answer. Not Rafe’s. One of his lieutenants. “You’ve got ten minutes to get to the docks. He says You’ll remember the place.”
I hung up without replying.
I remember.
The docks used to be the place I ran the numbers on—shell companies shipping cargo that wasn’t cargo, paperwork sliding through my hands until guns looked like produce and bodies like exports. I swore I’d never step foot there again.
But ten minutes later, I’m there.
The air stinks of brine and diesel, the black water slapping against the pylons like it’s chewing bone. Floodlights cut the dark into sterile slices, and standing in the middle of it all—Rafe.
He doesn’t bother with greetings. He just points to the table under the light. Stacks of papers. A sleek laptop. A black pen lay neatly across the top like a weapon.
“Sit,” he orders.
My jaw locks. “I told you—”
“Sit, Dean.” His tone hardens, and two men step from the shadows behind him, both carrying the hardware that makes arguing stupid.
So I sit.
The paper smells of fresh ink, still warm from the printer. I skim the headers, bile rising when I see what they are. Real estate transfers. Corporate registrations. On the surface, clean. But I know the names—ghost companies, every one of them.
“Sign them,” Rafe says, lighting a cigarette. The glow cuts across his face, carving him into something inhuman. “File them in the system. Route the assets through the new accounts. Make it look like the whole city just decided to fall in love with me overnight.”
“And if I don’t?” My voice is quiet, but it trembles at the edge of rage.
He exhales a stream of smoke, slow and deliberate, before flicking the ash onto the table between us.
“Then I send my men to that little apartment you think is invisible. The one across the hall.” He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t need to.
His smile is pure blade. “She screams, Dean—I promise you that. And she screams loud.”
The pen is in my hand before I even know I’ve picked it up. My knuckles ache from the grip.
He watches me work, calm, detached, as if he’s just overseeing a routine. And maybe he is. For him, this isn’t personal—it’s business. But for me, every stroke of the pen feels like blood on my hands all over again.
The numbers blur as I type them in.
The signatures crawl like worms across the page.
Every keystroke is a chain snapping closed around my neck.
By the time I’m done, the files are sent, the papers signed, and the laptop closed with a soft click that sounds too final.
Rafe leans back, satisfied, blowing another slow drag of smoke into the night. “See? I knew you still had it in you.”
I want to break his jaw. Instead, I sit still, staring at the table, the rage burning so hot it feels cold.
He leans closer, his voice almost intimate now. “Get used to it. This is just the first taste. Tomorrow, I’ll have another job for you. And the day after that. Until you remember that you were never clean, Dean. You were just hiding.”
He leaves me there with the papers, the smoke, and the stench of my own betrayal.
And when the docks finally empty and I’m left alone, I realise what he’s done.
He’s put me back in the game.
And this time, if I falter, he’ll take her as the prize.
The night doesn’t end when Rafe walks away.
It lingers, heavy and wet, like the stink of diesel seeping into my skin.
I stay on the docks long after his taillights vanish, staring at the water, daring myself to throw the signed contracts into the sea and follow them down. But I don’t. Because if I go under, she goes with me.
That’s how he set it up. A tether, a leash. My name is on every file, my fingerprints all over every keystroke. He doesn’t even need to touch her yet—not when he can keep me obedient with the promise that he could.
I light a cigarette I don’t want, drag it into my lungs until it burns, and let the smoke cut a hole through the rage swelling in my chest.
I tell myself it’s survival. That I’m protecting her. That the papers mean nothing compared to her heartbeat, her safety.
But deep down, I know the truth.
I’m his again.
My hands shook so much that I couldn’t stop them from trembling when I got back to my car. Not from fear—fear is clean, sharp. This is filthier. This is the shake that comes when an addict takes their first hit after swearing they were done.
The engine roars to life, but I don’t drive straight home. I make loops through the city, every streetlight flashing like an interrogation lamp. Memories bleed in with the glow—handing over shipments, laundering blood money, listening to Rafe’s voice like it was gospel.
I promised myself I’d buried that man.
But here he is, wide awake, hungry, crawling out of the grave with dirt still in his teeth.
When I finally pull into the driveway, dawn is threatening the horizon. The house looks peaceful, still, like nothing in the world has shifted. But I know better.
Everything has.
I sit in the car, staring at the front door, fighting the urge to put my fist through the windshield just to feel something break. I want to storm inside, haul her against me, brand her mouth until she forgets my name and only remembers mine.
I want to confess what I’ve done.
I want to lie.
Instead, I kill the engine and press my forehead against the steering wheel. A wave of coolness washed over me as the leather touched my skin, giving me a fleeting sense of calm.
Tomorrow, Rafe will call again. He’ll want more. He always does.
And every time I say yes, it’s another nail in the coffin I swore I’d never build.
But I’ll do it.
For her.
Because the alternative is unthinkable.
And when the time comes—when the noose tightens too close—I’ll burn his entire empire down with my bare hands.
Even if it takes me with it.