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“I am your life, Riley.” His grasp becomes firmer, so much so that I fear my jaw might snap under his fingertips. He fists the sponge between my legs so more water trickles down my thighs and then crushes his body into mine. “I tried to give you the best. I tried to keep you happy, and I couldn't let you go because you ignited a part of me that I thought I’d buried years ago.”
“You're scaring me,” I tell him when the tension in his muscles turns rigid.
“You’ve been scaring me since the day I first set eyes on you,” he confesses. “You’ve stripped me down and made me weak, and you were going to finish me by taking away my family.”
“Rafe, we can fix this,” I promise him. I don’t know how right now. But maybe if I can get him to believe it, I can get out of this basement.
“How? How do you piece a heart back together, Riley?”
He steps back from me and drops the sponge to the floor. My skin crawls for him to touch it again, and I feel the emptiness grow inside me like he’s the only one who can fill the void. He’s the only one who can cure my hurt, despite being the creator of it.
Rafe’s eyes roll over my body, his nostrils flailing before he pushes his soaking wet hand through his hair, then turns his back on me and leaves.
I call out his name, begging for him to come back to me, but he doesn’t.
I don’t know if I’ve become sick in the head or if what I feel for Rafe is simple, pure, undiluted love that holds no bounds. Because I want to believe my own lie. I want to fix this.
I’ll show him that I mean what I say. I’ll take his torture and torment and love him through the pain he causes me. Because Rafe has made it very clear that he won’t let me go, and now I have to focus on survival.
Gabriel looks up at me from the paper he’s decorated with scribbles and smudges of crayon, and
his big, innocent blue eyes riddle my conscience with guilt.
“I miss her too,” I admit, picking up the yellow crayon and drawing a sun in the corner of the page the same way Riley always does when she colors with him.
“Would you like me to take Gabriel for some fresh air, Mr Verretti? We could try out the new swing set,” Natalia, the new live-in nanny, suggests. She’s professional, and Gabriel seems to like her. But she isn’t Riley.
I miss seeing Riley sit and watch our son with such contentment. I miss the looks she would give me every time he did something cute, and most of all, I miss the sounds of them giggling together.
“Yes, I think Gabriel would like that very much.” I stretch up from the tiny table I'm sitting at with him and let Natalia take over. I know that Riley will be able to hear them playing on the swings through the air vents in the wine cellar. It will torture her to hear someone else stealing all her precious moments. The same way she was prepared to steal all of mine.
I kiss Gabriel’s forehead and give him a guilty smile before I leave him with his nanny and head for my office.
“Miss Riley has been asking for you, boss,” Nico tells me as I pass him in the hall. It’s been over a week since I last gave her any of my attention. It’s killing me to be apart from her, but I find that being away from her helps me to forget her treachery. I’ve made sure she has been treated well, despite what she deserves. The cellar has been better secured so she can roam free down there now, and Sylvia provides her with decent meals, which she seems to be eating.
I just can’t face her.
“She can wait until I’m ready,” I bite back at Nico impatiently. My cell starts to vibrate as I open my office door, and when I see Gioele’s name, I immediately accept his call.
“Raphael.” There’s an urgency in his voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Danato…”
“What’s he done now?” I sigh. I don’t have the energy to deal with his bull shit on top of everything else I’ve got going on.
“He’s dead. The Souls stormed a crack house in Pueblo, and he was shot in the process.”
“Fuck!” I rage, picking up the first thing I can get my hand on and launching the chair angrily across the room.
“I need them taken care of, Gioele. I can’t sit here waiting for them to make a move on me.”
“I understand that, Rafe, but you can’t be rash about this. The Dirty Souls are a big club. They have other Charters. We can’t just go to war with these men. You’ll need to hire manpower.”
“Then hire, and if the Souls want to find me, maybe we should let them.” An idea suddenly comes to mind, one inspired by my own feeling of helplessness.
“That’s suicide, Rafe. They’ve killed your brother and your nephew. They’re mad at you about having the girl. The Souls don’t want to negotiate. They want you dead.”
