I snort. “You think you scare me?”
“I know I scare you.” He doesn’t blink. “You like it.”
I want to deny it, but last night’s marks are proof.
His arm tightens, a fraction of an inch, just enough to remind me that I’m not free. My freedom is measured in the space he allows, the perimeter of his claim. I could fight him—could elbow, scratch, wriggle away—but he’d only enjoy it, and so would I.
Instead, I go limp, exhale a sigh that shakes the dust from my bones.
“Bam?”
He grunts again, not quite an answer.
“My father won’t let this go.” The words shatter the moment. “He’ll come for me.”
He shrugs, one giant shoulder rolling under my cheek. “Don Aurelio can try. But if he doesn’t accept this, he’ll die like a ditch pig.”
The list of bodies is long and growing. I see them sometimes, in the cracks of memory—faces I know, faces I made disappear, faces that looked at me and thought, for a second, that I was just a girl.
“You can’t just kill everyone,” I whisper.
“Sure I can.” Bam’s voice is low, flat. “You want him dead, I’ll do it. You want him alive, I’ll make him beg.”
I look at him, really look, and wonder if this is what love is: a monster who’ll burn the world just because you asked.
“Don’t talk like that,” I say.
“Why not? He’s the reason they sent killers after you. Why they sent killers after me. Only difference is, I’m better at it.”
A silence stretches. The memory of the Hunt—the blood, the chase, the broken glass—flickers through the haze of warmth. My chest goes tight. It would be so easy to let myself belong to him completely, to drown in the rough comfort of being wanted this much.
But I’m not a thing. This arrangement only works if we mutually respect our own destruction.
I push up on one elbow, the blanket slipping down to expose my shoulder. The bruises are an ugly deep purple now, a garland around my collarbone. I see his eyes track them, pupils dilating with a kind of sick pride.
“I need to call him,” I say.
He tenses. “You want to negotiate?”
“I want to try.”
He’s silent, then. His jaw sets, sharp and cruel. But he lets me go. Just releases, as if he’s curious what I’ll do unrestrained.
I slide out of bed, pulling the blanket with me. My feet are bare and the floor is cold. Every movement is slow, deliberate, like I’m performing a ceremony. He watches, eyes hot, as I wrap the blanket around myself and go to the corner where an ancient landline sits.
I want to laugh. I want to smash the phone and every memory of him, of home, of the kingdom I was raised to inherit.
Instead, I stare at the phone debating on what to even say.
I remember the last time he called me in the morning, his voice syrupy with threat: “Don’t disappoint me, Lia.”
I was the last hope, the only daughter left worth the trouble of keeping alive. My sister, Bianca, was more of a pretty shelf decoration than a true heir.
I dial, and wait.
He answers on the first ring.
“Dahlia,” he says.
