Page 19 of Devil Among Men

“Tomorrow,” she echoes, already reaching for her phone, already three steps ahead into a plan I can only hope keeps her safe enough for both of us to see whatever comes next.

I watch her cross the room toward the window, phone in hand, rehearsing under her breath the exact tone she’ll need tomorrow to coax a frightened woman into trusting her again. Whatever fear I still carry about the danger she’s stepping into, I recognize now that it’s mine to manage, not hers to shrink around. She built a career learning how to survive men far more dangerous than a nervous bookkeeper. It’s long past time I let her prove it.

10

PORTIA

Rafael can’t manage much distance yet, so Concetta helps us set up a blanket at the edge of the olive grove instead, close enough to the B&B that he doesn’t have to push himself, far enough that it feels like its own small world, separate from everything else.

“This is ridiculous,” he says, easing himself down carefully beside me, one hand pressed briefly against his side. “A grown man needing help walking a hundred feet.”

“You got shot, Rafael. Let yourself off the hook.” I hand him a glass of wine, pouring my own after. “Besides, I like it here. It’s quiet.”

The sun’s already dropping low over the trees, gold light filtering through silver-green leaves in a way that makes the whole grove look like a painting nobody would believe was real if they hadn’t seen it themselves. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks twice and goes quiet again. Otherwise, it’s just wind blowing through the branches and the two of us, finally still after weeks of nothing but chaos.

Concetta left us a small spread before disappearing back inside, giving us privacy she clearly understood we needed after everything the past few weeks put us through: crusty bread, a wedge of pecorino, olives picked from these very trees, a simplicity that somehow feels more romantic than anything the villa’s kitchen ever produced. I break off a piece of bread, watching Rafael carefully as he shifts to find a comfortable position, still favoring his uninjured side out of habit.

“I keep thinking about how different this feels,” I say, watching the light shift across his face. “A month ago I would have laughed if someone told me I’d end up here, sitting in an olive grove with a mafia soldier who’s basically my whole world now.”

“Basically?”

“Entirely, if you want honesty.” I lean into his shoulder, careful of his wound. “I love you, Rafael. I don’t think I’ve said that plainly enough since the fire.”

“You said it in the room. When I was bleeding all over Concetta’s sheets.”

“That was fear talking. This is choice.” I meet his eyes directly, wanting him to understand the difference. “Fear made me say it because I thought I might lose you before I got the chance to express it properly. This is different. I’ve had time to think, time to sit with everything you told me, everything we’ve survived since. And I’m choosing this. All of it. The danger, the uncertainty, whatever’s still coming for us. I choose you.”

His eyes go raw and unguarded, more open than I’ve seen them even in our most vulnerable moments.

“I don’t deserve you,” he says quietly.

“Probably not.” I smile, softening the words. “But I’m not interested in what you deserve. I’m interested in what we build from here.”

He kisses me then, slow and unhurried, one hand cradling my jaw like he’s still relearning how to hold a woman he almost lost. I melt into it, weeks of tension and fear and anger finally dissolving into a kind of peace I haven’t felt once since Sicily became our whole world.

We stay there a while longer, watching the sun finally slip below the tree line. The sky bruising into shades of orange and violet neither of us comments on because we don’t want to break the quiet. I think about every version of this trip I imagined before any of it started. Back when Sicily meant vacation, meant Jayla and cheap wine and sunburns, not war and fire and a man bleeding out on a stranger’s bed. I never could have predicted this exact peace, sitting in the wreckage of everything that went wrong, and I’m not sure I’d trade it for the version of my life that never met Rafael at all.

We make it back to our room before the sun’s fully set, hands already tangled together, my back hitting the door the second it clicks shut behind us. His mouth finds mine immediately, hungry and certain, and I kiss him back with three weeks of carefully maintained restraint dissolving all at once.

“Careful,” I murmur against his lips, my palm flat against his chest, mindful of the bandage beneath his shirt. “You were shot, Rafael. Very, very recently.”

“I remember. I was there.”

His hands find my waist and walk me backward toward the bed.

“We’ve both waited long enough for this.”

He isn’t wrong.

Now his mouth is on my throat and his hands are working the buttons of my shirt. We yank my shirt off and then I reach for his, easing it over his head, avoiding the bandage on his side.

He backs me the rest of the way to the bed.

I pull him down on me, hands mapping every inch of him.

“I need you to know,” he says, his voice thick against my ear, “that I have thought about this. About you. Every single night.”

“I know.” I pull back just enough to look at him. “Show me anyway.”