This isnotlike the others.
It’s darker, bigger. A converted two-container space—richer in every sense. There’s a massive steel-framed bed bolted to the floor. Black sheets. Restraint hooks welded into the headboard and footboard. A punching bag swings slightly in the corner like it was recently abused. The walls are covered in knives, sticks, tactical gear. And one shelf—just one—holds five battered notebooks and a single photograph face-down.
I don’t know what I expected. Something barren. Angry. Brutal, maybe. But this?
This feels like anest.A predator’s den. A war zone dressed in velvet.
Rafe sets me down on the bed—carefully, like I might break now that we’re alone—and stands over me like a storm deciding whether or not to hit land.
“This is…” I try, licking my lips, trying to find words through the drug haze. “Homey.”
He stares.
“Rafe,” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. He just reaches into his pocket, pulls out a roll of black tape, and tosses it onto the bed beside me. “Next time,” he says, voice low and sharp and steady, “you want to forget? You come tome.”
I stare down at the tape. It’s just sitting there. Matte black, curling at the edge like it’s waiting for my mouth.
My chest pulls tight, muscles locking in a slow, sick cramp that has nothing to do with the drug and everything to do withhim—the man who threw me over his shoulder like I was a misbehaving pet and dragged me into a room I shouldn’t be in. My knees ache from the hard edge of the mattress. My thighs still tremble from Kai’s poison. But my eyes? They’re locked on the goddamn tape.
Then something flickers across the far wall, and I look up. There’s a monitor in the corner—no, a screen, huge, built into the wall like it belongs to someone who needs to seeeverything.
The image is flickering through grainy black-and-white surveillance feeds. Containers. Hallways. The rink. A brief glimpse of Misha dragging Corso by the collar. Another of Kai shoving Luca down into that chair in his container. For a second I think I see myself—hours ago, stumbling down the walkway, high and hollow.
“Jesus Christ,” I whisper, watching the loop.
Rafe’s standing in front of it, one hand braced against the wall, the other reaching for a switch.
And then—the screen blinks. The hallway disappears. The cameras go dark and Nathan’s face explodes across the screen like a fucking ghost.
I flinch so hard I almost fall off the bed.
Every part of me curls in, instinctive and raw, because I’ve seen that still. That fucking frame. The way his mouth is parted, lips wet, his fingers curled in my hair, the exact second before he whispered“You’re my best mistake.”It’s from the tape.
And Rafe knows it. He’s not even looking at me—just watching Nathan’s face like he wants to rip through the screen and tear out his eyes. “This what you trying to forgetagain, Jules?” he asks, voice low and guttural, thick with disgust and something far more dangerous underneath.
“Ye—No—fuck,” I croak, throat closing around the word. “Yes. No. I don’t—I don’t know.”
Rafe turns, slowly. He walks toward me like the embodiment of judgment,leaving Nathan’s face burning behind him like a goddamn funeral pyre.
“You keep crawling to everyone else when you spiral,” he says, stalking closer, “but then I find you on the floor, shaking, crying, soaked in someone else’s drugs withhisfucking voice echoing in your mouth.”
I can’t speak. Ican’t. My throat is tight and my head is spinning again and Ihatethat he saw me like that. I wish I had the guts to tell him to shut up, but instead I say something worse. “I don’t know how to forget him,” I whisper.
Rafe’s mouth twitches. “Then stop trying,” he says, low and brutal. “Start replacing.” And his eyes flick down—to the tape. To me. To the space between. “Unless you want me to remind you whatminefeels like again.”
Rafe doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t move toward the tape. Doesn’t bark an order. Doesn’t rip the high from my bloodstream with his hands like I’m used to.
He just steps around me, calm as fucking death, and drags the heavy chair across the room like it’s nothing. Metal groaning on metal. His throne. That’s what it looks like. He sits. Legs spread. Hands braced on his knees. The monitor behind him still glowing withhisface—Nathan’s stupid fucking half-smirk, frozen in time, immortalized in betrayal.
And then—like he planned this—Rafe reaches behind himself. Grabs a remote. Clicks it once and the video starts playing.
My sex tape.
There I am. On-screen. Younger. Softer. High off adrenaline and worship. Twisting in silk sheets and smiling like I’m being seen. Reallyseen. Nathan’s voice low in the background, telling me I’m perfect, I’m his, he’ll never leave me.
He fucking left me.
