The sound of that nail hitting the tray is echoing inside my skull. He’s skinning a man like a piece of fruit. This is the man whokissed my neck. This is the hand that held my zipper. He’s a monster. A beautiful, methodical monster, and I am the one who gave him the reason to do this.
"That’s three," Rafael says, his voice flat. "Do you want to go for four, or are we going to talk about the phone call you made from the east boundary?"
"It wasn't... it wasn't for the O'Rourkes..." Fredo gasps, his head lolling. "My sister... she’s sick... I needed the money..."
"Money is a reason," Rafael says, leaning in until he’s inches from Fredo’s ruined face. "But it isn't an excuse. You sold my men for a payout. You put my wife’s life at risk. Do you know what I do to people who threaten what is mine?"
Rafael reaches for a thin, serrated blade on the table beside him. He doesn't go for a vital organ. He goes for the thigh. He drives the blade in, slow and deep, and then he turns it.
The sound of the blade grating against bone makes my stomach turn over. I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting. The gore is everywhere—on Rafael’s hands, on his face, pooling around the drain in the center of the floor.
"One more time," Rafael whispers, his hand steady on the hilt of the knife. "Who gave you the contact? Who told you the window was twelve minutes?"
Fredo’s eyes roll back in his head. "The... the g... the master of the Ghost..."
My heart stops.
Rafael freezes. The stillness in the room becomes absolute. He pulls the knife out with a wetschlickand stands up slowly. He turns his head, his nostrils flaring as he catches a scent that doesn't belong in this chamber of horrors.
He looks toward the door.
He looks directly at me.
The green of his eyes is gone, replaced by a dark, predatory void. His face is splattered with Fredo’s blood. He looks like a demon climbed out of the earth in an Italian suit.
He doesn't say a word. He just stands there, the bloody knife in his hand, watching me.
His eyes... oh God, his eyes. He looks right through me. He knows. He has to know. The predator has caught the scent of the rat and I have nowhere left to run.
I can't move. I can't breathe. I am staring at the man I’m falling for, and all I can see is the blood of the men I’ve already killed on his hands.
But underneath the terror, something else is waking up, a traitorous, liquid heat pooling in my core, sliding down my thighs shamelessly. It’s sick, it’s twisted, but seeing him like this is doing something to my body that logic can’t touch. My pulse isn't just racing from fear; it’s thrumming with a dark, desperate need to be claimed by that monster.
"Gia," he says, and my name sounds like a death sentence.
A death sentence I suddenly want to earn.
Oh shit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RAFAEL
"Clean this up, Bruno. If he breathes again before I’m back, put him under."
My voice sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a fucking well. I don't look back at the mess in the chair. Fredo is a fucking memory now, a leaking sack of meat that used to be a man I trusted. I drop the serrated blade onto the tray, the metallic clink ringing off the concrete walls like a death knell.
Then I turn back to look at her.
Gia is standing in the doorway, her face the color of bleached bone. She’s staring at the blood on the floor, at the drain, at the pliers still gripped in my red-stained hand.
She looks like a goddamn porcelain doll dropped in a slaughterhouse.
I wrap my red-stained fingers around her bicep and haul her out into the corridor, kicking the heavy steel door shut behind us.
The silence of the hallway is sudden and heavy. I let go of her, but I don't step back.
"You shouldn't be down here, Gia," I growl, taking a step toward her.
