"I don't growl."
"You do. You’re like a very large, very irritable bear who hasn't had his morning coffee." I dab a fresh piece of gauze with antiseptic. "Now, hold still. This is going to sting."
He doesn't flinch as the medicine hits the raw, pink edges of the wound. He just watches me. His green eyes are dark, focused on my face with an intensity that makes my pulse do a frantic little dance at the base of my throat. He's looking at me like I’m the only thing in the room. Like I’m not a spy. Like I’m just Gia.
"There's been something on my mind for a while now," he says suddenly, his voice dropping an octave.
I pause, the gauze hovering over his skin. "Just one thing? I figured your mind was a crowded place, Rafael."
He doesn't bite at the sass. He reaches out with his good hand, his fingers grazing my wrist, anchoring me in place. "The wedding. The one five years ago. I know about Arcuri."
The name hits me like a physical blow. I look down at his shoulder, focusing on the scar. My breath hitches, and for a second, the room feels ten degrees colder. I could lie. I’m good at it. I could tell him it was a long time ago and it doesn't matter.
But I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of carrying a dead man’s ghost on my back while I'm trying to survive a living one.
"I was nineteen," I whisper. The words feel like glass in my throat.
Rafael goes perfectly still. He doesn't interrupt. He doesn't push. He just waits, his hand resting heavy and warm against my thigh.
"His name was Cosimo Arcuri," I say, and even naming him feels like letting poison into the room. "He was twenty years older than me. Minimum. Old money, old violence. My father didn't just sign a marriage certificate; he signed a bill of sale. The contract had clauses about my 'conduct' and my 'movements' that read more like ownership documents than engagement terms."
I look up at Rafael, my vision blurring. "He started hitting me during our engagement. Just small things at first. Bruises where people wouldn't see."
Rafael’s grip on my leg tightens, his knuckles going white. The air in the room suddenly feels charged, heavy with his silent, simmering fury.
"The wedding happened," I continue, my voice gaining a jagged, hollow edge. "We were at the celebration. The long table, the white flowers, the champagne. I was sitting right beside him, feeling the weight of his hand on my leg, knowing that in two hours, I’d be alone with him in a house I couldn't leave."
I close my eyes, and I’m back there. The smell of his heavy cologne. The way my wedding dress felt like a shroud.
"Then the gunfire started. It was an ambush—some long-running territory dispute that had nothing to do with me. The world exploded into noise and glass. One second he was leaningin to whisper something cruel in my ear, and the next... he was dead. Right there at the table. Right next to me. Everyone scrambled. Guests threw themselves over balconies, guards dragged my father toward the exits, and the help vanished into the kitchens. In three seconds, that grand ballroom became a graveyard of overturned chairs and broken crystal.”
I take a ragged breath, the phantom scent of gunpowder filling my nose.
"I survived a firefight I had no part in creating, at a wedding I had not chosen. I sat there in my white lace, covered in the blood of a man who had been hurting me. And the worst part, Rafael? The part I can't say out loud? I wasn't scared. I wasrelieved. The room was empty, Rafael. Just me, the smoke, and his body. I sat there for what felt like ten minutes in that horrific, ringing silence before the first responders finally cleared the doors and all I felt was the weight of the world lifting off my chest because he couldn't touch me anymore."
I look at him then, my lower lip trembling. "I never processed it. Not the relief, not the guilt. I just... shut down. For five years, I didn't want any man to touch me. I refused every proposal my father threw at me until I finally managed to disappear to Paris."
The silence that follows is absolute. The only sound is the rain and the steady, rhythmic beep of my own heart in my ears. I wait for the judgment. I wait for him to tell me I’m broken.
Instead, he reaches out. He cups my face with his good hand, his thumb catching a tear I didn't even know I’d shed.
"He’s dead, Gia," Rafael says. His voice is low, firm, like he’s anchoring me to the present. "He can't touch you. Your father can't give you to anyone else. You’re here. You’re with me."
"I'm with a man who took a bullet for me," I whisper, leaning into his palm. "And I don't know how to be... okay."
"You don't have to be okay," he murmurs. "You just have to be here."
He pulls me forward, his hand sliding into my hair, guiding my head to his chest—the side that isn't wounded. I can hear his heart. It’s a slow, powerful thrumming, a solid, living thing. I breathe in the scent of him mixed with the faint metallic tang of the antiseptic.
The weight I’ve been carrying, the silver veil of Cosimo’s blood, finally starts to lift.
I pull back just enough to look at him. His eyes are burning, a dark, predatory green that isn't about violence anymore. It’s about hunger. It’s about the fact that I just stripped my soul bare for him, and he’s ready to claim every inch of what’s left.
"Rafael, your shoulder," I murmur, my hand resting on his bicep. "You shouldn't... the doctor said?—"
"Fuck the doctor," he growls.
He leans in, his mouth ghosting over mine, his breath hot. "I don't care if the stitches tear, Gia. I don't care if I bleed out on these sheets. I want you. Do you want me too?"
