CHAPTER 7
The Stranger
Rain eventually started falling sometime after midnight, cold enough to soak through denim and leech heat from skin.
Marcello, the caring bastard he was, had rented this place for her.Safe. Quiet. Clean.
Two nights ago, when I carried her over the threshold, I had already decided. By sunrise, the paperwork transferring ownership into my name would be signed.
Ownership meant access.
Access meant control.
Control meant she was safe.
Security didn’t mean shit if I couldn’t enforce it. And right now, that was all I cared about.
Sean’s voice kept circling back like a bad echo, scraping through my skull.
She doesn’t belong to you. She never did.
I knew that. I’d known it for three fucking years. I didn’t need the reminder. But it didn’t stop anything.
Didn’t stop the thought from living under my ribs like shrapnel. Didn’t stop the way my chest tightened when I thought about her curled up in bed, unaware of how close I was to breaking every promise I’d ever made and stuck to all this time.
I told myself it was the right thing to do—to leave.
Because distance meant safety.
Because silence meant survival.
Because staying would destroy the life she’d fought to build.
My hands shook from restraint.
From the image of her under strobe lights, refusing to leave me alone.
That makes her a liability.
Sean knew. Of course he knew. Men like him didn’t accuse unless they already had answers.
I shook the thought away. Right now, all I had to think of was that she needed protection, even if I was the last man she wanted to see.
Sean called her a liability. Maybe she was. Maybe anyone standing too close to me eventually became one.
But if danger followed me, then I’d stand close enough to be hit first. That wasn’t possession. It was penance. Better me bleeding than her. Better my ruin than hers. Let the damage stop with me. If someone had to break, it would be me.
Damn you, Sean.
He had a way of getting under my skin. That’s why I’d sworn never to see him again after my divorce.
Until the realisation of my obsession with her cemented my decision.
I crushed the fourth cigarette under my boot and finally moved. This was a mistake. I knew that.
I told myself I was checking the house. The lie lasted all the way to the front door.
The door didn’t creak when I stepped inside. The house breathed with warmth. Lived-in.
Her scent still lived in the air. Faint. Fading. Still enough to find with my eyes closed. Soothing and sweet that hit my chest like a bruise.
I stood there longer than I should have, blood drying across my knuckles, ribs aching under my shirt, head still ringing from the fight.
Then I stepped inside anyway. Discipline had already failed.
Two years ago I would’ve called this instinct. Now I knew better. This was weakness wearing devotion’s face. And every step toward her felt like testing the leash I kept wrapped around my own throat.
I walked to the kitchen sink, and I shoved my hands under scalding water, watching Big Bob’s blood swirl down the drain in dark ribbons, spiralling like it belonged there. My knuckles throbbed with every heartbeat.
Red diluted to pink. Pink to nothing. Like violence could be erased if you scrubbed hard enough. It never is.
I shouldn’t be here. I knew that. But I wanted to see her again. Proof that she was breathing. Safe. Alive. Untouched by the parts of the world I lived in.
I’d watch her for a bit, like I’d done the past two nights, and leave. She wouldn’t even know. I’d already broken that promise twice. Two nights of breaking the same vow, each time easier than the last.
I came here to escape, disappear. Only to find she had a project here. And since I’d committed to Sean, I couldn’t leave.
Fate had a funny way of dragging her back into my orbit ever since I met her. She arrived like gravity. And gravity doesn’t ask permission.
I’d stayed away every time she was in town. Forced myself not to check, not to trace her movements the way I used to. I even stopped memorising her schedules—the cafés she preferred, the hours she slept. Avoided the manor, avoided the roads I knew she’d take twice a month.
My plans to avoid her washed away the night I spotted her at the club. I should have turned around the second I saw her silhouette. But I didn’t.
Mistake One: Going to the club.
Mistake Two: Seeing her under strobe lights, having the world narrow to only one point. Her.
For one stupid second, I told myself it wasn’t her. Her hair was wrong—vibrant, cut different.
Mistake Three: Being bothered when another man stood too close to her. An old, ugly and violent streak loosened inside my chest. Like barbed wire snapping.
Touching her should have been the final mistake.
My pulse hadn’t slowed since. I shouldn’t have.
But that once was enough for me to confirm my instinct, that she was real.
And when she went still, something in me went cold.
I disappeared into the shadows before she turned. Coward. Self-preservation.
Same thing to me. Always has been.
Dragging her out of the club should have been the moment I learned something. Instead, I carried her home.
The memory of her slumped in the passenger seat bled into me like poison.
She kept drifting in and out of consciousness.
And when I turned on the heat to keep her warm, she murmured “hot,” and touched herself—hands gliding down her neck, over breasts, down her thighs.
My grip on the wheel had turned bone-white, leather creaking under strain.
I sped through the night before I did something I’d regretted.
The plan was simple.
Get her home. Make sure she was safe. Don’t touch her again. The last part—I could barely contain.
I grabbed paper towels and pressed them against my knuckles until fresh blood slowed and started wrapping my knuckles.
Fuck. What am I doing here?
My cock strained against denim, heartbeat pulsing like it would split the zipper, at the memory of bringing her here. I closed my eyes, remembering.
I’d carried her to the bedroom, lights low, her warm breath fanning my neck. She mumbled unintelligibly. I sat her against the headboard, watching her for a beat too long, staring at the dress like it was a problem I couldn’t solve without making a bigger one.
Leaving her in it felt wrong. Touching her felt worse.
I swore under my breath, reaching for her zipper, peeling her dress off. Slow. Careful. Mechanical. Like diffusing a bomb. The dress slid down her body and pooled around her hips.
I turned my head when I unclasped her bra.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t Look.
Then I looked anyway. Just once.
Another fucking mistake. By this point, I stopped pretending the number mattered.
Her heavy breasts spilled out, pebbling her nipples as cool air touched her skin, chest rising, body chasing warmth without knowing why.
Perfect. Just perfect.
My chest tightened, temptation and guilt colliding until I couldn’t tell them apart. My hand hovered.
I should have stopped there. I didn’t. And for one stupid, dangerous second, I let my knuckles brush the underside of her breast as I pulled the fabric away. Soft, warm beneath my hand.
Not mine to touch.
I circled one nipple with my finger, again and again, and she moaned in her sleep, leaning into my touch. Her moan was low, unconscious, but it branded me like a scar.
Air was punched out of my lungs, and realisation hit hard. Heat slammed low in my gut, pulse erratic, straining my already hardened cock.
“Fuck,” I breathed, stepping back like I’d touched fire. Restraint tasted like blood in my mouth.
One more second and I would have crossed a line I could never uncross.
I ripped my hands through my hair, grabbed the tee, slipped it over her and pulled up her shorts, fingers rougher than I meant them to be, as if distance could erase what almost happened.
She was covered, safe, untouched.
Lie.
Not untouched. But not ruined either.
I tucked the blanket around her and stepped back until the bed wasn’t within arm’s reach. I had stood at the foot of the bed for a long time, mind disarrayed, not breathing properly. Just existing in the aftermath of almost being the worst version of myself.
Then I left the room.
Because staying in her presence would end badly.
So, I fixed things. Straightened cushions. Moved objects out of walking paths. Checked the locks twice.
Fixing the room was easier than fixing what she did to my head. Order was the lie I told myself when chaos lived under my ribs.
I sat on the couch and smoked until my ribs screamed and my lungs burned, because if I stayed in the same room, I wouldn’t be able to hold back the line I drew. So I stayed where I could hear her breathe but not feel her skin.
Now, I stood in the house which felt too quiet, except for the odd buzzing of the refrigerator.
I worked my way with the bandages. The storm had finally arrived—rain came down hard in slanted sheets like a warning, the storm outside echoing the one I carried in my chest. I knew where everything was. Two nights was enough to memorise its bones, its breath, its secrets, if you paid attention.
I heard her before I saw her. Soft steps. Controlled breathing. Knife sliding free of wood. Still dangerous. Even half-asleep.Smart girl.
Her scent hit me a second later. Soap. Skin. Warmth. Something sharper underneath—adrenaline, maybe. Something entirely her, cutting through smoke and sweat like a blade.
Intoxicating.
I didn’t turn.
I let her come closer. Let her believe she had control.
Cold steel pressed against my neck.
“Don’t move,” she said.
Her voice steady.
Good. She was thinking.
Never show weakness to an enemy.
But I knew her better. Her pulse was racing. I could hear it. I stilled anyway. Then slowly lifted my gaze to the window reflection. Our eyes met as lightning lit up the sky outside.
Of course it was lightning.
Then recognition hit her like a physical thing.
Now it was time for her to go rigid.
I turned slowly, let her see me properly. Let it land. Let it hurt if it had to. Let her see everything. The bruised mouth. The split knuckle, tired eyes.
She froze. Completely.
Her breath was gone, but the knife was still at my throat, a slight tremor in her hand that she tried to hide.
And me?
I was lost yet again in those big brown eyes that pulled me into the depths of a grave I’d dug myself, dark and endless, impossible to climb out of.
She looked at me like she was seeing a ghost that refused to stay buried. Because I was supposed to stay gone before I became the kind of man who would burn a life down just to stand in the ashes beside her.
But here I was.
In her kitchen.
Bleeding on her floor.
Breathing her air like I had a right to it.
Sean was wrong about one thing. She wasn’t my weakness. She was the line I would kill to never let anyone else cross. Even if that meant becoming the danger she needed protection from.
The corners of my lips lifted.
“Hi, Volpi.”