Chapter 10 #2
I turned my head toward him, uselessly trying to orient myself in the dark world I lived in. “So you know my father, right?”
Still nothing.
The car began to move, tires humming over concrete.
“Rafael,” I pressed harder, voice tightening. “Answer me. You know him, don’t you? You’re just like—”
“I am not like your father.”
The interruption was immediate.
My breath caught.
He continued, slower now, each word deliberate. “And I will never be. But yes... our worlds have crossed. That is all you need to know for now.”
“That’s not enough,” I whispered. My hands curled tightly in my lap until my nails pressed into my palms. “You expect me to just sit here and accept that?”
The car slowed at a turn. I felt his hand leave the wheel briefly—and then, unexpectedly, settle on my knee. Not lingering, not claiming.
The contact made my body freeze.
I couldn’t decide if it was grounding or another kind of cage.
“Fine. I know your father,” Rafael said suddenly, voice breaking the careful control like glass under pressure.
“I knew that bastard since I was child,” he continued, and now the restraint was gone. “Since before I understood what kind of world I was born into.”
My throat tightened.
I stayed still, listening, because there was something in his voice I had never heard before.
Not power. Not control.
Wound.
“When I was thirteen, he had my father and mother hanged. In public... on a remote island off Italy.” Rafael said
The words landed too heavy to fully process at first.
I swallowed hard. “What...?”
“I was forced to watch,” he said flatly. “Thirteen years old, Loretta. They dragged me out of school while I was still in my uniform. I remember screaming. I remember thinking it was a mistake. That my parents would come back.”
His breath hitched once.
Then steadied again.
“They didn’t take me to a courtroom. They didn’t take me to a prison. They took me straight to that island. So I could see it.”
My hands trembled in my lap.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear it in everything—the way the past still sat in his throat like broken glass.
“I remember my father looking at me,” he said. “He told me to be strong. My mother... she was crying, but she still whispered to me. She said they were about to die—but if I survived, I had to protect my younger brother.”
A pause.
Longer this time.
“Bruno was ten.”
The name softened something in his voice, just for a fraction of a second—enough to make it more painful.
“Our family was mafia,” Rafael continued, harsher again, like he hated the softness. “Yes. That’s the truth. But I had never watched anyone die before that day. Not like that. Not helpless.”
The car turned. I felt the shift in motion.
“I tried to run to them,” he said suddenly, voice rising. “I screamed until my throat tore. I fought the men holding me—bit at their hands, their grip on my shoulders. I begged them to let me reach my parents.”
His hand tightened briefly somewhere near the steering wheel—I could hear it in the leather creak.
“Your father’s men held me down like I was nothing. Like I was an animal they could restrain and forget.”
My chest tightened painfully.
The silence that followed was full of something I couldn’t name.
Grief. Rage. Memory still bleeding after twenty years.
I sat frozen in the passenger seat, blind eyes open but seeing nothing, as the man beside me drove through the night carrying a past I had unknowingly stepped into.
And for the first time since this marriage began—
I realized I might not be trapped with a stranger.
I might be trapped with someone who had been broken long before he ever met me.
The car surged forward, faster now, the engine’s growl deepening into something almost angry.
I tightened my grip on the door handle until my knuckles ached.
The world outside was nothing to me—only motion, vibration, and the suffocating certainty that I was trapped in a sealed space with a man who harbored deep, unforgivable hatred for my parents.
My blind eyes stayed open anyway, as if forcing them to see could make sense of the darkness.
Rafael’s voice continued, low and carved from something raw.
“I offered myself,” he said. “I told your father to kill me instead. I said I’d do anything—anything—if he let my parents live.”
His voice hardened again, like he was forcing himself through it.
“But... he just laughed.”
My stomach twisted violently.
“I watched the life drain from their faces,” he said. “My protectors. My entire world. Gone in minutes because of your father.”
I pressed a hand to my mouth, swallowing hard against the nausea rising in my throat.
My chest felt like it was collapsing inward, every breath too small to fill the space inside me.
“I... I had no idea,” I whispered.
My voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else entirely.
“I’m sorry, Rafael.” My throat tightened painfully. “I’m so sorry.”
For a long moment, he didn’t respond.
The silence stretched between us, thick enough to suffocate thought itself.
We drove in silence for a while longer. I didn’t know how long. Time meant nothing in darkness.
Then, quieter—dangerously calm—he said, “So now you know. And knowledge comes with consequence. You made me speak what I buried for years... and I will never see you through the same lens again. Not as someone to be shielded for Tess’s sake—but as the heir of the man who ruined my entire existence. ”
“Is that why you made me your personal assistant? Why you married me—to keep me within reach, close enough to pay for what my father did to you?”
The truth settled in slowly, like sinking into cold water.
Of course.
I lowered my head slightly, my fingers curling into the fabric of my dress.
My throat burned, but I refused to let any more tears fall. There was nothing left in me that I could afford to lose.
It had been implied rather than spoken outright—that there was more to our marriage than I understood.
And now I was caught in it, unable to see what future he had decided for me, especially after uncovering the truth he had kept buried for so long.
The car slowed.
Then stopped.
The sudden stillness made my body tense instinctively. I reached for the door, but before I could find it, I heard his side open.
Rafael moved first.
The air shifted as he came around the car. I felt him before I heard him.
His hand settled at my waist once more, steady and deliberate, steering me with a precision that felt almost habitual.
Not what I would expect from someone who, by all logic, should have begun to destroy me.
I paused—just a moment too long—uncertain, wary.
Maybe this was the beginning of punishment. Maybe worse.
I knew this place. His home.
He didn’t speak.
A slight pressure at my side urged me forward, and after a beat, I obeyed.
My steps were careful, silent except for the soft scrape of my shoes against stone.
Every sense I had sharpened in place of sight tried to map the space around me, but tonight even that felt unreliable.
We crossed the threshold into the vast foyer.
Warmth met us, but it didn’t reach me.
And then—
Rafael leaned in slightly.
His breath brushed the edge of my ear.
Low and dangerously intimate.
“Are you truly certain you would feel nothing if I went and fucked another woman?”
I stiffened instantly, my entire body going rigid at the image his words forced into my mind.
Another woman.
His hands on someone else. His voice softened for someone else. That same dangerous attention I could feel even when I couldn’t see him—given freely, carelessly, to someone who wasn’t me.
My stomach twisted violently.
“Do whatever you want,” I lied.
The words tasted like poison.
Because it wasn’t true.
And he knew it.
I just didn’t have the courage to admit that the thought of him with someone else made something sharp and ugly claw its way up my throat.
I didn’t want it. Not his touch. Not his attention. Not the rare moments of restraint and control that made him feel... almost human given to anyone else.
“Because this is what your first punishment looks like—you’re going to watch me destroy another woman’s pussy while you sit there dripping and denied, learning exactly who owns you.”
My chest tightened like a vise, each breath sharp and painful as if he’d already dragged the other woman in here and started.
Tears burned hot behind my eyes, but I blinked them back furiously.
I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
Swallowing hard, I lifted my chin and whispered, “If you think I deserve it... then do it. I can take it.”
His steps stopped somewhere in the wide hallway, the echo of our movement dying into stillness.
I couldn’t see him, but I felt the shift immediately.
Then suddenly, he turned me.
My back barely had time to register the motion before I was pulled straight into his chest.
I gasped sharply.
“Rafael—”
I shoved at him immediately, panic flaring on instinct.
My palms pressed against solid muscle, expensive fabric, warmth that felt too close, too overwhelming.
I tried to push back harder, but his arm locked around my waist with unyielding strength.
Steel disguised as a man.
I froze for half a second, trapped.
His hold wasn’t painful.
It was Intentional and certain.
Heat radiated through him, surrounding me in a way that made the world narrow to nothing but sensation.
“You can’t fucking take that,” he snarled, the words cutting through the air. “I would never do that to you.”
He didn’t release me. If anything, his hold tightened, pulling me closer as if the mere idea pissed him off.
I managed to twist just enough to create space between us, sucking in a sharp breath like I’d been pulled out of deep water.
Rafael didn’t step back.
He stayed too close.
“I know how difficult your past has been—how unstable it was for you—and I’m not here to add to that pain. But you have to allow yourself to heal.”
That made my throat tighten.
I turned my face away on instinct, as if hiding could change anything. As if blindness hadn’t already made me too exposed.