Chapter 9
RAFAELLE
Out in the cold moonlight, I open her car.
It’s parked under the trees, its matte finish blending into the shadows. Inside, I go methodically. Glove box, under seats – knives, panels, trunk, spare tyre compartment. Two Berettas.
Her bug-out bag’s slick and light. The kind I’d pack. She travels lean. Efficient. The girl was born into chaos and has learned how to dance through fire. I feel my obsession-tinged fascination rear its head once more.
I reach for the fob that opened her car door and press the second button. A small pop sounds. It takes a minute to find the compartment.
It’s subtle. Heat-shielded, locked behind an invisible panel behind the passenger seat most wouldn’t think twice about. But I’ve spent my life gutting cars for disposal and ghosting clean through safehouses.
I pop it open and there it is. Her real prize. And it’s not the burner phone or the obligatory passport stack tied with a pile of Benjamins.
It’s a single tablet, cold, new and clean.
I boot it up. Takes me ten minutes to break in – she’s got three layers of encryption, an AI-randomised code-shuffler, and a self-wipe failsafe.
Smart. Meticulous. Like everything she does, it’s engineered to vanish without a trace.
I peel it open, one barrier at a time, until her sins spill into my lap. A trail of dark web inquiries and cryptic intel buys. She’s been hunting me. Not by name – she’s not that stupid – but by trace and timestamp.
She’s paid out crypto from multiple ghost wallets. She’s traded favours and sold data. Scraped rumours from encrypted boards. All to find the moment I’d be on that rooftop ready to take out my wrath on her family.
And… fuck, she got it right.
I’m torn whether to be more impressed or fucking furious. My hard dick jerking against my fly makes the decision for me.
A hit I spent weeks lining up… and she walked into it like it was her fucking playground.
I let out a slow breath, half a curse, half a laugh. Damn.
Then I scroll lower.
My gut clenches, with disappointment and with a touch of dismay, when I see the search for Giada. Sofiya truly doesn’t know where her sister is. And she—
I freeze. Read and re-read the next thread.
Fuck.
She’s been digging for something else too.
Something bigger. Something she probably doesn’t fully understand.
She’s like a child skipping after a gaily dressed stranger at the fair, not knowing a monster lurks underneath.
I stare at the reams of feelers. Probes.
Code drops in the right message boards. Looking for a dangerous door she can’t name, but I know it instantly.
Aegis.
Most federal agents don’t even know it exists. Those who do? They don’t say the name out loud. But I’ve seen what it does. I’ve killed for it. Survived because of it.
After tonight, after watching her drop me with a clean shot and handle chaos like it’s coded into her blood – I know one thing.
She has the makings of a good assassin, but she’s nowhere near Aegis level.
But if I don’t reel her in, they’ll eat her alive for knocking on doors she was never meant to find.
I could sit back… let this happen, but I need her to find El Topo.
Or I could… Fuck no.
I don’t want to train a Mancinelli.
Do I?
Well… I could.
It wouldn’t hurt to see how far her instincts go, what I’m dealing with as both the Enforcer for the famigghia and the Enforcer for Aegis.
One mission. No more. Just control the chaos by bringing it closer?
My pulse jumps with more than a thread of rare, unsullied excitement.
Cesare will shit himself. Orazio will rain Armageddon on my head. But fuck it, if you’re living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room. Right?
So I step off.
Slide into the driver’s seat and grab my phone, thumb hovering over a contact I haven’t used in over a year. When the line picks up, I speak one name.
‘Sofiya Mancinelli.’
No explanation.
I hang up. It’s done.
Ghost or a more lethal rival in the making?
Either way?
Game fucking on.
My phone vibrates once, a sharp pulse against the silence as I sit in the dim corner of the room. Sofiya’s tablet sits on my bent knee like a shiny piece of a puzzle I’m yet to solve.
The message is encrypted, cloaked in the same layered code I’ve used since my first black-ops assignment in Karachi. Only three people in the world can reach me through this channel. I tap to unlock it.
Operation at handler’s discretion
Failure will be dealt with accordingly.
And there it is. My jaw tics as I read the message twice.
The fine print written in blood.
Translation: If she cracks, I bleed for it.
‘Yeah, I know what you’re thinking,’ I mutter to no one. ‘Let the fucker with the hard-on for chaos babysit the daughter of his sworn enemy. What could possibly go wrong?’
Typical Aegis. No medals for foresight – just a bullet when instincts go bad. I should pay them back by going freelance.
Train this Mancinelli and go rogue with her.
If Cesare and Maddie are Romeo and Juliet, Sofiya and I can be Bonnie and Mutherfukin’ Clyde.
I let the screen dim, middle finger raised to the shadows watching from whatever bunker hell they operate in now.
But I don’t toss the phone. Or delete the message.
The burn that’s been riding beneath my ribs since I dragged her unconscious ass to this safehouse flares hotter. I should be furious. Should feel the weight of every dead Salvatore whispering warnings.
But what I feel instead makes me want to punch through concrete. Not out of rage entirely. Because this already feels more dangerous, an almost relieved thrill.
Because deep down, beneath the sarcasm and resentment and the sick twist of loyalty to the family I love, a buzz is building.
Swelling my mind, and yes, my cock, with the possibilities of utilising her raw talent. Seeing what else her clever brain can do. How she can be moulded.
Her loyalty may be fractured, her blood tainted with Mancinelli sin, but her bones? Her reflexes? Her instincts?
She’s mine to train.
Or bury.
I push to my feet, stalking back to the bed like I’m not about to cross a line I can never uncross.
She’s curled where I left her, cuffed to the headboard, wrists slack, lashes dark against her cheeks. But even drugged, she’s not defenceless. There’s tension in her limbs, a current under the surface. She’s still fighting me in her dreams, in her blood.
Good.
She should know exactly what I am. Because now I know what she is.
Mine.
And maybe this sick, fucked-up world just handed me the excuse I’ve been craving – to keep her close. Closer. To study her. If necessary, break her.
To make her feel the slow, consuming agony of loss the way I have.
I sit beside her, fingers brushing her bare arm.
Her skin’s warm. Velvet-soft. Alive. I should hate that my cock jumps from that tiny contact.
That the thought of her working her way into the dark corner of the world I’ve built for myself like a parasite makes me want to take her again and again until she forgets who she is in the first place.
But further down all the layers I’m uncovering tonight, there’s something wrong and raw. A sick, almost tender twist in my gut that maybe I’m not elated because I get to train or punish her.
Maybe I’m elated because I get to keep her.
For as long as I want.
Sofiya
I wake slowly.
The sheets smell like cedar smoke and him. I blink through the bleary fog, limbs heavy and my mouth cotton dry. My wrists are sore where the cuffs held me, but it’s not the pain that jerks me fully awake.
It’s the weight of his stare.
Rafa sits in the leather chair near the bed, his legs spread, another mug of coffee in his hand.
He’s already dressed in black pants and a half-zipped hoodie, his dark hair damp from a shower.
The way he’s watching me makes my stomach curl into knots.
It’s not fear. It’s something worse. Anticipation.
The events of last night trickle in slowly. Then gush in a torrent.
I frown. I shouldn’t remember it all so vividly. And yet I do.
‘You about to drug me again?’ I ask hoarsely, sitting up, yanking at the tangled sheet to cover my chest. ‘You fucking psycho lunatic – madunnuzza bastarda.’
He grins like I’ve just paid him a compliment. ‘I told you I’d take care of you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t drug you a little.’
‘Just a little?’ I snap. ‘I want to know exactly what was in it.’ It was too effective. I’ve been drugged before. Part of my later training in the Sicilian hills under Bonafacio’s orders. That had been brutal. I’d retched my guts out for twenty-four hours straight.
Not this time though. I feel no after-effects. Not even the faintest hint of nausea. I bite my tongue against asking for his dealer.
He shrugs, maddeningly casual. ‘I told you. It’s a black-market sedative. It didn’t hurt you. And it’s not like you didn’t need sleep.’
‘I don’t trust what you put in my body,’ I hiss, heat flushing up my neck the second the words leave my mouth.
His brows lift, and a wicked grin spreads across his face like a slow drag of silk over bare skin. Shit.
‘Oh?’ he says, voice suddenly low and gleaming with promise. ‘That’s a shame, bedda. Because if you did… I’d put a hell of a lot more in your body. And I guarantee, you’d beg me for it as you die with pleasure.’
My breath snags and my face ignites. My knees draw together under the sheets, a pitiful reflex against the throb that hits me low and hard. He didn’t even touch me – didn’t need to.
Just those words, that voice, and my body’s reacting like I’ve already let him in.
He stands now, looming, all dark heat and command. ‘You should trust me,’ he continues, calm again – too calm.
‘Why?’
Then his gaze sharpens, flicking from my mouth to my eyes with that blade-edged focus that makes him so dangerous.