I shatter a second time, harder than the first. My back arches off the leather, and my nails rake down his back. He hisses and his pace falters for the first time, but he doesn't stop as the waves of pleasure roll through me. It's intense, so much that I fear I may even lose control of my bladder, but just as I think I'm on the edge, he pulls out abruptly and flips me onto my stomach.
My knees hit the thick rug in front of the hearth and he yanks my hips up. My chest stays pressed to the ottoman as he spreads my cheeks, licks a hot strip from clit to entrance, then surges back inside me from behind.
The angle is devastating. He bottoms out with every thrust, one hand fisted in my hair, pulling my head back, the other clamped on my hip hard enough to bruise. The room fills with the wet sounds of sex, my broken moans, his guttural curses, and I almost whisper our safe word because I don't know how much more I can take before I lose it altogether and I hate the idea of being mortified in front of him.
“Touch yourself,” he snarls.
I snake a hand between my legs, fingers slipping over my swollen clit, but if I do this, all hope is lost. My God, do I want it, though. Still, when he grits out, “Come with me,” I clench and bite my own wrist, but even without the third orgasm, my vision goes white at the edges.
Rafe slams deep one last time, hips jerking as he comes with a hoarse groan, flooding me with heat. He stays buried there as he drapes himself over me, and I feel the pulse of his heartbeat in my core for a moment. There's nothing gentle about it. He's so worked up.
Finally, he pulls out slowly, and I melt into the ottoman for a moment, feeling boneless. He presses a kiss between my shoulder blades, then stands, but not before plucking a sweat-damp strand of hair from my temple and pulling it across my back.
I watch through heavy-lidded eyes as he tucks himself away, zips up, pulls his shirt back on. I'm so lethargic I can barely move, but I slide to a seated position, letting the heavy relaxation of post-sex bliss drain me. He adds two more logs to the fire, then without a word, he walks to the doorway, pauses only long enough to glance back, and disappears down the dark hallway.
The fire pops and hisses at me like I’m offending it as I curl on my side on the rug, pulling a forgotten throw blanket over my trembling body, heart still racing. The taste of him lingers on my tongue and his cum drains out warm between my thighs. And I'm a giddy puddle of gooey pleasure.
The house is silent except for the storm outside and the crackle of burning wood. He hasn’t left—he’s somewhere in the shadows of his own home. But for reasons he doesn’t share with me, he's withdrawn. Maybe fucking me like that made him feelvulnerable, the way it has me. Or maybe he enjoyed it too much and he knows he'll want more.
Or maybe he’s had his fun with me and as soon as I finish his precious ledgers, he won't have a single reason left to keep me alive.
The thought makes me shudder and I press my eyes closed.
Well, I'll just have to give him reasons, then.
10
RAFE
The conference room stretches along the eastern side of the building, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the industrial district below. I sit at the far end of the table with my hands folded in front of me and listen to men who have never touched a ledger in their lives lecture me about financial oversight. The board of directors fills the seats on either side in their expensive suits and their concerned expressions. And at the head of the table sits Don Salvatore Ferretti, my uncle, the man who built this empire before I was old enough to understand what it meant.
His silver hair is combed back from his forehead, and his barrel chest fills out his tailored jacket in a way that makes him look both imposing and grandfatherly. His blue eyes are on me now, though, and I know he's waiting for me to explain how we ended up here. Sal is a hard man, but he's not unreasonable with family. That's what I'm banking on today.
"The accounts are frozen," one of the directors says, a man named Patterson who handles the legitimate side of the pharmaceutical operations. His gray hair is thinning at thecrown, and his hands shake slightly as he flips through the papers in front of him. "Three of our primary operating accounts have been locked pending federal review. We can't process payroll. We can't pay suppliers. We can't move inventory."
"I understand that, but it's not like any of us could have foreseen this." There is no other explanation. Lombardi's death triggered a cascade of automatic fail-safes. Just like the one that will be triggered on Christmas Eve if Riley can't figure my shit out.
Riley—who sits in my office right now because these meetings seem to be more important to men in suits than the fact that I'm floundering behind the scenes scrambling to keep the damn place afloat.
"The unforeseeable is what you as CEO are paid to see, Mr. Ferretti." The man is livid, fuming. If he had smoke coming from his ears I wouldn’t be surprised. They hated that the Ferrettis took over this company hostilely and without any remorse. They'll hate it even more when I fire every person at this table for wasting my time.
I lean back in my chair and keep my expression neutral. There's an investigation that started the moment the banker's body surfaced in the river two days ago—no thanks to my idiot men who can't do a job right. The news coverage has been relentless, authorities investigating possible foul play. The story spread faster than I anticipated, and now every agency with jurisdiction is circling, looking for an angle.
"What triggered the freeze?" Sal asks, but his eyes are on me. I know he wants explanations but to him, this business is burnable. I'm burnable. He won’t do that to me because we're family, but he doesn't have to make this easy on me. I've seen him let his own son go to county lock up for thirty days for lesserthings to teach him a lesson. Probably a good thing, because Joel needs to learn a few things, but none of this is my doing.
Lombardi tanked me hard and now I'm fighting to keep my head up.
"The banker's accounts were flagged," Patterson says. "When they ran his financials, they found irregularities and his credentials were used for things after the time they know he was dead. They traced some payments back to our accounts, and now they're reviewing everything."
"Irregularities," Sal repeats as he looks back at me. "Rafe, you told me this was handled."
"It was," I say. "The banker kept his records separate. He knew how to move money without leaving trails."
"And yet here we are."
I don't respond. There's nothing to say. The banker's paranoia kept us insulated for years, but it also made him the single point of failure. He was paranoid about everything, including a punishment from us. When he died, he took all of his safeguards with him, and now we're scrambling to rebuild systems that should never have depended on one man.
"There's more," Patterson says, and I feel my shoulders tighten. "Some of his ledger pages are missing, and there's suspicion that the FBI has them following a raid at the home of Enzo Caruso." This time, everyone looks at me and I feel the heat of their stares.
