Chapter 14 #4
He was devastatingly handsome in a way that felt almost cruel.
As if nature had gone too far, had added too much, had tipped the balance past fairness.
His cheekbones were sharp and aristocratic, carved with an almost surgical precision.
His jawline was strong, defined, shadowed by the faintest trace of stubble that only made him look more dangerous.
His eyes—
God.
Dark. Piercing. Alive with something that felt both controlled and unpredictable at the same time.
When they landed on me, it didn’t feel like a glance.
It felt like impact.
Like being seen... and measured.
His black hair was styled with effortless perfection, though one rebellious strand had slipped free, falling just slightly across his forehead, softening nothing about him.
His lips—full, sculpted—curved into the faintest hint of a smirk.
Everything about him radiated power.
He looked like sin wrapped in expensive fabric.
Beautiful enough to tempt.
Lethal enough to destroy.
My pulse stumbled, then began to race.
Their eyes—his eyes—locked onto mine.
And in that instant, before a single word was spoken, before anything else could interfere...
I knew.
My boss.
My husband.
The man I had imagined a hundred different ways in the dark was standing right in front of me—and every version I had created fell apart like it had never existed.
He walked straight toward my desk.
Not a single ounce of hesitation in his stride.
My fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the table, grounding myself as he approached, each step amplifying the tension coiling in my chest.
Up close, he was even more overwhelming. Larger. Sharper. Real in a way that made my thoughts scatter.
That faint smirk deepened as he stopped in front of me.
And then he looked at me.
Not the way people glance. Not even the way they observe.
He studied me.
As if he were taking in every detail—my face, my eyes, the way I stood, the way I breathed.
And beneath that gaze, something inside me shifted, unsettled by the undeniable fact that this was the first time he was seeing me see him.
“Loretta.”
My name rolled off his tongue low and smooth, his voice exactly as I remembered—rich, controlled, threaded with something dark beneath the surface.
But now, paired with his face... it hit differently.
It sent a sharp, unwelcome shiver down my spine.
“Hi...” The word slipped out before I could form anything better.
My mind was still struggling to reconcile the voice I knew so intimately with the man standing in front of me.
His lips twitched slightly, as if amused.
“Congratulations,” he said, his tone calm, almost casual, though his eyes remained fixed on mine with unsettling intensity.
He stepped closer.
Too close.
The faint scent of him reached me—sandalwood and aged whiskey, warm and intoxicating, wrapping around me in a way that felt far too familiar.
“Thank you,” I managed, forcing my voice to steady. “You’ve been... absent.”
The faintest shift crossed his expression—not quite guilt, not quite acknowledgment.
“Yes.”
Just that. One word.
No explanation.
His gaze flicked briefly over my shoulder, toward Ramiro, and with nothing more than a subtle tilt of his head, he dismissed him.
Ramiro didn’t argue. Didn’t hesitate. He simply inclined his head and left, closing the door behind him with quiet precision.
The click of it echoed louder than it should have.
Now it was just us.
Rafael’s attention returned to me fully, and something about that felt... heavier.
“I’ve been with Zara,” he said.
The name hit like a small, sharp blade.
My chest tightened, the air in my lungs suddenly not enough. “You were with Zara for three whole days?”
“Yeah.” His answer came easily. Too easily. Like it required no further thought, no justification.
He glanced down at his watch, the movement casual, almost bored, before turning away from me as if the conversation had already run its course.
He began walking toward his private office, his tone shifting into something more businesslike.
“I believe work has not been too stressful?”
The dismissal in that—so smooth, so effortless—snapped something inside me.
“Zara is dead.”
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
He paused mid-step.
For a moment, he didn’t move at all. Then, slowly, he turned back to face me.
“Yes,” he said. “I know she’s dead.”
Something in his tone made my frustration spike.
“No,” I shot back, shaking my head, my voice rising despite myself. “You don’t seem to know that she is dead—dead dead.”
The room felt tighter now, the air heavier, but I couldn’t stop.
“Even if you spend a whole year at her grave, she will never hear you,” I continued, the words tumbling out faster, fueled by something I didn’t fully understand—anger, maybe... or concern twisted into something sharper. “Whatever you think you’re saying to her—it’s only air.”
His expression didn’t change.
But something in his eyes did.
I pushed on anyway.
“I know it’s hard to move on after losing someone you...” I hesitated, the word ‘love’ catching in my throat. It wasn’t love. “...someone you cared about,” I corrected softly. “But you can’t keep living like this.”
“Like how?” he asked finally.
His voice had dropped—no longer casual.
It was colder now. The kind of tone that didn’t need volume to carry threat.
I swallowed, but held my ground.
“I understand honoring her memory,” I said, forcing my voice to steady even as my heart pounded against my ribs. “But disappearing for days, sitting at her grave, thinking it will numb your pain... thinking it will stop the nightmares—”
I took a small breath, my hands curling slightly at my sides.
“That needs to stop.”
The shift in him was instant.
One moment, Rafael stood across the room, distance and control wrapped around him like armor.
The next—
He moved.
So fast my mind barely registered it.
My pulse spiked violently, every nerve in my body snapping to attention as his face came dangerously close to mine.
Up this close, there was no space for illusion, no distance to soften him.
His eyes burned into mine.
Dark. Furious. Controlled only by the thinnest thread.
“I warned you, Loretta,” he said quietly. “Keep Zara’s name out of your mouth, and you’ll be spared the worst of me.”
A pause.
“Always remember your place. You are in no position to tell me to stop anything.”
Each word was precise.
My breath hitched, but I didn’t look away.
“Don’t start something you’ll regret,” he said.
The warning should have sounded threatening.
Instead, it sounded strained.
Now that I could see him, I noticed things I never could before. The rigid set of his jaw. The tension pulling across his shoulders. The way his gaze kept dropping to my lips before snapping back to my eyes as though he resented himself for it.
I wondered if it had always been like this.
If all those times I had been blind, he had been looking at me this way while pretending not to.
My chest rose unevenly, but I refused to back down.
“The kiss,” I continued. “the way you held me when I fell asleep on your chest like I belonged there.” I shook my head, a bitter laugh catching in my throat. “You can’t do all of that and then pretend I mean nothing to you.”
The muscle in his jaw tightened.
“Am I really so unlovable?” My voice cracked, raw and ugly. “Tell me the truth, Rafael. If there’s even a shred of desire in you—if you feel anything when you look at me—just say it. Stop making me beg for scraps.”
He froze.
For one fleeting second, something flickered across his face—regret, maybe pity—but it vanished before I could name it.
He took two deliberate steps back, as if proximity to me was suddenly dangerous.
“I apologize if I ever gave you the wrong impression,” he said quietly, his tone painfully polite. “But no. I don’t desire you. Not in the way you want.”
The words landed like a blade between my ribs.
I had expected them, and yet the pain still stole the air from my lungs.
My eyes burned, but I refused to let the tears fall.
I lifted my chin, clinging to the only weapon I had left—my family’s name.
“I already spoke to my brother. Vincenzo is coming for me in three days.”
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue. I hadn’t called Vincenzo. I’d burned every bridge with him months ago.
Rafael’s dark eyes widened slightly, the first real crack in his composure.
He knew exactly who my brother was. Everyone in our world did. The man who ruled Italy’s largest mafia empire with ice and blood.
I forced a sharp, brittle laugh. “I’d love to see you try to stop him from taking me. Go on, Rafael. Tell me how you’ll keep me here when he comes.”
For a moment he just stared at me, jaw tight.
Then something in his gaze shifted—hollowed out. The emptiness there hurt worse than any anger could have.
He swallowed once, the only sign of discomfort, before looking away.
When his eyes returned to mine, they were flat.
“I have things to attend to,” he said simply.
No denial. No challenge.
He turned on his heel, movements as controlled and elegant as ever, and slipped off his coat.
The fabric whispered as he hung it neatly on the polished wooden stand beside his desk.
Then he disappeared into his office without another word, closing the door with a soft, final click that echoed louder than any slam could.
I stood there long after he disappeared into his office.
The silence he left behind was worse than any shout.
I had thrown Vincenzo’s name at him like a grenade—my brother, the man who could burn empires to ash—and Rafael had simply... walked away.
No “No one will take you from me.” No flash of possessive fire in those dark eyes.
Just that strange, unbearable silence.
Why?
Why was I falling for him more with each passing day?
When had my heart become so stupid, so traitorous?
When had that happened?
Somewhere between the snow.
The hospital.
The surgery.
The nights he held me together when I was falling apart.
I had fallen in love with him.
The realization settled over me with a quiet kind of horror.
Because Rafael did not deserve it.
And worse—
He did not want it.
And yet I couldn’t stop.
I pressed a hand to my chest, where the ache bloomed sharp and unrelenting, like a bruise that never healed.
He doesn’t love you. He never will.
The truth tasted like blood.
I wanted to scream it at myself until it stuck.
I couldn’t keep handing pieces of myself to a man whose heart was buried beside another woman.
And yet...
The moment I tried to resent him, something inside me resisted.
I should call Vincenzo for real.
Leave this place. Leave him. But the thought of walking away from Rafael and little Tess made something inside me splinter.
I wanted us to be a family—messy, flawed, and painfully real; I wanted warmth instead of distance, laughter instead of silence, and a love that burned with passion rather than leaving us stranded on opposite sides of a cold, endless grief.
But Zara still haunted him.
The woman who had given him a daughter. The ghost whose shadow I could never quite escape.
A shaky breath left me.
Maybe I had been approaching this all wrong.
Maybe the answer wasn’t demanding that he move on.
Maybe it wasn’t accusing him of loving a dead woman more than the living one standing in front of him.
Maybe the answer was understanding.
Listening.
Seeing the wounds beneath his anger the same way he had once seen mine beneath my blindness.
Because if I wanted him to understand my darkness...
Perhaps I had to understand his.
Even if doing so broke my heart.
Even if, in the end, he never loved me back.