Chapter Nine

A Monster Within

Rafe

I stand outside the Hernandez house where my wife has installed herself, my arms crossed as I lean back against my Lotus. The same car I drove her home from our wedding, not that such things seem to matter to her right now.

Willow has been playing with power, and as much as I know she wants to make a stand of her independence and for her brother, her fucking-with-me-or-fuck-off attitude will get her killed. And I can't have that, because a body already occupies the space in my trunk, and I don't have room for another.

I sigh and slide my hand across my face. That's not true. I love her. I also want to kill her. Just a little bit. Spank her, fuck her … I never did get the chance to make love to her with the hellraising that's happened in my own house.

Willow is making me fight a war on an extra front I don't need right now, and I have no fucking idea what to do about her. So, I do what any lovelorn bastard does. I stand out the front of her home and stalk her. I mean, call her, not … you get the idea. I flip my phone over and press the green button. The call goes straight to her voicemail. I smile darkly. You want to play with me, Willow? You might not like the answer I give you.

So, I call her. Again and again and again.

Finally, a door rattles up above and she storms to the uncovered balcony of the top floor. Her hair hangs wild about her, the raven-black strands whipping in the wind as she glares at me through slitted eyes. Righteous anger curls off her in waves. That oh-so-fuckable mouth of hers is a red slash on a pale landscape as she leans far too forward over the banister and yells at me.

"Go away, Rafe!"

I wave the hand holding my phone. "Hi!"

She stares at me. "What do you want?"

I shrug and fold my arms. I thought the answer to that was obvious, but who knows what the girl is thinking. After a moment I break our standoff and crook my finger.

Come on down here and play, raven girl.

She shakes her head. "Like hell. You have to go that way if you want in." She points down at ground level to the heavy oak double doors with their black steel struts. Two men walk around the side of the house carrying semiautomatics openly.

I cup my hands around my mouth. "No, I don't."

She stares as though I've gone mad. Perhaps I have. Dom certainly seems to think so. Luca just handed me his freshly sharpened knife. I didn't take that, but I did appreciate the offer, and the support.

Still smiling like a loon, I walk around to the back of my sports car and flip the boot up. Inside is the poorly wrapped body of Tommy Canaveri. Smaller than he was in life, the diminutive gift has more tape than an express parcel. Mind, the gaps annoy my OCD. I lift the package that drips blood everywhere, the drops filling the boot with the familiar stench of a body in its first stages of decomposition.

Whoever cleaned up needs a lesson in manners. Her gift bled all over my floor.

And so I brought it back.

"Rafe, stop!" she shrieks from above me, then disappears though I can still hear her grumbles and she yells to the wind. "For fuck's sake."

Ah, she's coming down to see me. How nice.

Her guards don't have a clue what to do with me as I cross the road, trailing goop, and flip the body between them. Opening my phone, I press "call" again. But I'm not calling Willow this time.

"Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?"

"I have a dead body on my front porch. Let me get you the address." I hold the phone and my gun out to the man who drops his, stammering the street address into the phone.

His eyes dart between my handgun and my face, but it's not me who he needs to worry about today. I'm only here for one person, and it's not him. Though he should probably be concerned about acquiring a pair of silver bracelets shortly and a cute little cell.

Behind me, the familiar sound of my Lotus revving breaks their attention as Dom completes his part of my plan, and tears away down the street. If all things stay equal, he'll erase the CCTV footage before the cops arrive.

"Would you mind?" I asked politely. "I have slippery hands and can't get that inside for her. Unless, of course, you want the police to find a nice dead body on your mistress's front doorstep your first day on the job. Not the best impression to make, perhaps? Have you got a friend inside their local unit yet?"

The horrified looks that cross their faces tells me they don't.

Rule one: be prepared. I don't need to be a Boy Scout to know that one.

Willow's two men are so intent on the job I gave them to fill their empty hours—they can thank me later—that they don't see me disappear between the building next to hers, and slip into the shadows as the first police car drifts around the corner of the block and pulls up, bullhorn blaring, sirens flashing, guns cocking.

But I'm at the back of the house by the time all that happens, and according to no one at all was I part of this scene. I do, however, have another part of my plan to enact.

I round the corner at the back of the house, finding the one man I know is on my wife's payroll there, sitting on a wrought-iron chair, cleaning his gun. A gun that's in pieces before him. How fortunate.

"Diego." I smile without humor, my facade of a crazy, pleasant potential ex dropping to reveal who I am inside. Soulless. A void.

"Gallo. She won't come down to see you." Diego frowns as the sirens become louder. "What the fuck did you do?"

"Returned a present. Buyer's remorse and all. I didn't like the packaging." I scratch my temple with my gun. "It leaked."

His eyes widen. "You motherfucker—"

"Enjoy your cell," I call softly, shaking off the few drops of Tommy's blood that cling to my fingers.

"Rafe, I swear to fucking God…" Willow barrels from the house, a nice shiny serrated knife in her hand, and swipes at me. With intent to kill. The blade swishes through the air where my throat was a moment before.

Now I know who killed Tommy.

Nice to have confirmation. My wife is no stranger to death but I seem to have unleashed a remorseless little killer when I taught her how to carve the life from a man before my father's death.

Catching her wrist, I use her momentum to keep spinning her around until my front presses to her back. Breath whooshes from her as I clap a hand over her mouth in the appreciation of enduring silence, twisting her wrist, and carrying her into the shadows in three steps.

Like we were never there at all.

"Your neighbors must hate you," I murmur in her ear, flicking my tongue out to taste her. "Fuck, you're delicious when you're murderous."

"Fuck … you," she spits, but it only hits the sandstone wall I smash the side of her face into, flattening both our bodies together as the knife clatters to the ground.

Her pert little bottom grinds into my cock that hardens on command, her warmth a blanket that binds us together as I inhale her scent, nuzzling in her neck as she shudders against me. As much as I want her, my rage takes center stage.

"I looked after you. I fucking loved you, and you ran from me, Willow. Why, please?" I lick her neck and suck on the tender skin, marking her gently, though I crave to sink my teeth into the little hellion and rip her apart.

She'd live whatever life she wanted, unless she told me she was fucking someone else. Then I might kill everyone in sight.

"I needed air." She gasps around my hand, biting down on my middle finger hard enough to draw blood.

I swear softly, closing my hand around her throat instead and squeezing. Willow stills. "Remember how this one goes, sweetheart?" I rasp in her ear. "Let's see what else you remember." I grip the side of her dress, gathering the material in my fingers as it slides up her thighs.

Willow pants, her palms pressed to the sandstone, and shakes her head. "No."

Like her a second before, I froze. "No?"

"Not like this, Rafe. Please."

The plaintive little note in her voice, the warble at the end destroys me. My heart threatens to explode out of my chest, the pressure growing as I release her and step back.

"If that's what you want," I say neutrally. My brain screams to drag her home, lay her out on my bed, and remind her who we are together. But that's not what she wants, and I won't force her anymore.

"It's what I want," she says softly, her back turned to me. Her hair hangs over her face, concealing her eyes but leaving the back of her neck exposed.

I step forward and press a tender kiss to the hollow of her shoulder, grazing my palms along her bare arms. "When you want to come home, our door is open. It will never be locked to you, Willow. Never. I promise."

A wretched sob breaks free from her as Diego skitters into sight at the end of the dark alleyway between the two buildings.

"Go," she whispers, waving him down when he aims his reassembled gun. "Go, Rafe." She turns to me, her eyes swimming with tears that cascade over her cheeks in dirty streaks. "Don't come back."

I swallow hard, kneeling to pick up her knife and hand it back to her without standing. "Remember," I say softly.

The pain in her face is too much to bear.

Diego lets me go, swearing under his breath in Italian. By the time I hit the back alley, Dom is on his way to collect me, but I ignore the car that pulls up beside me.

I need a long fucking walk to take the edge off leaving my wife alone in a house with men who do not love her or respect her the way I and mine do. A long walk to plan what the fuck comes next, because I have no idea. Willow holds all the cards. Once I thought I might enjoy the power exchange but this hollowness inside me is unbearable.

And so I walk, letting icy shards of wind pierce my chest and peel my heart from its cavity, exposing all the pain and grief that runs through me fresh and raw.

A walk where my face is as wet as hers.