22.

TWENTY-TWO

Rafael

I’m wearing a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I’ve washed the blood off my face. I need to go downstairs and face the shitstorm, but I’m stalling. I’m standing in front of my kitchen cabinet staring at the pasta canister.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket. I pull it out, expecting to see Noah’s name flashing on the screen, but that’s not what I find.

My heart skips. Shit.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Don’t take anything,” Dominic says.

I huff. How the hell did he know?

He asks, “Have you already taken something?”

“No.”

“Good. Are you cleaned up?”

“Yes.”

“Then walk to the elevator. Stay on the phone.”

I don’t move. “I know you’re angry with me.”

“Very.”

My heart skips again. He has a right to be angry with me. I don’t know how to face him right now.

He says, “You need to get down here.”

“I know.”

“Come on, Angel, move your feet.”

I take a stuttering breath. It fucks me up when he calls me that. I hate it. I love it. I’m so confused by it. Sometimes I think he does it to hurt me. Sometimes I think he does it to say, I understand .

When I start walking, he must hear it because he says, “That’s it. Good. Don’t stop.”

I push the button to go down. The doors slide open and I step inside. When the doors close, I lose the signal and the calls drops, but I still have the phone at my ear when they open again. I lower it when I see Dominic waiting for me.

He looks just like he did earlier this morning when we left his apartment. He’s wearing his tailored black suit. His hair is perfect. His face is perfect.

But his jaw is hard and his dark eyes are angry. When the doors start to close because I’m taking too long, he slaps a hand on them and glares harder. God, he’s angry.

But he’s here all the same.

He came for me today, despite our argument, despite my lies. He saved my life, and Noah’s. He chose me. He claimed me.

I step out of the elevator to face him. He lets go of the door and it closes.

I want him to grab me and slam me into the wall. I want him to punish me.

He does punish me, but not in the way I want. He doesn’t touch me. He even puts his hands in his pockets. He jerks his chin down the hallway.

As he leads the way, I watch his gaze catch on the erotic photographs hung on the walls. Maybe he’s never noticed them before, but something about them grabs his attention now.

He stops at one of them. It’s a subtle picture, the only one that’s not actually sexual. It’s part of a throat and jaw and cheek, a picture taken as the man is looking away.

It’s Dante. The way Dominic scowls at it tells me he knows it.

It’s an old picture, one I don’t think Dante knows I took. I don’t know what to say about it. I can’t say it means nothing, but it doesn’t mean what Dominic probably thinks.

But this isn’t the moment to address it. We walk on, entering the open space of the sex club.

Dante and Noah are sitting on one of the red couches. They stop talking as Dominic and I approach. Dante gets up. Like Dominic, he’s dressed for the office in a three-piece suit. He glares at me.

“You can’t do shit that way, Rafael. You almost got yourself killed. You almost got Noah killed.”

Before I can say anything, Dominic squares up to him. “Back the fuck off, Adesso.”

“He’s out of control.”

“You can let me worry about that. Back off.”

Dante looks from Dominic to me then back to Dominic. He’s confused by our relationship. He’s confused by my submission. I never gave it to him. I never felt like I could.

“Sit down,” Noah says. “All of you.”

We do, gathering around the small table. Dominic and I sit on a couch together across from Noah and Dante.

I’m so fucking glad we’re meeting down here and not in my apartment. I don’t want to have this conversation there. I don’t want it echoing where I live. This is bad enough.

Noah gets us started, explaining to Dante and Dominic that the man I killed, Anton Silva, had been a suspect in several child murder cases but that the police could never tie him to the abductions of those children.

Dante guesses the truth immediately. “So you suspected he was buying from the Collector.”

Noah replies, even though he and I never discussed it directly, “Yes.”

Dominic asks, “You’re talking about the man who was selling boys to the Society?”

Noah’s eyes flick to me then to Dominic. “Not just to the Society, but yes. We had already learned a few months ago that he was still in the city and still in business.”

Dominic frowns and looks at me. “You said something about how it had already been months. Is this what you meant? That you’ve been looking for the Collector?”

Noah saves me, as usual. “When shit went down with your father,” he says to Dominic, “we captured Giovanni Fiero because we knew he had ties to the Society. Before Rafael and Dante killed him, they learned that the Collector is still active. But it wasn’t enough. We couldn’t get anywhere with that information.”

Dominic looks at me again. He wants me to be the one answering the questions. I know I owe him that after he risked his business and his life to intervene with Moretti.

Dominic directs his words at me. “So when you saw a chance to get more information— maybe get more information, since you didn’t know for sure until you were cutting this guy up whether he could even supply that information—you said to hell with the consequences.”

“Yeah.” I mean, what else can I say?

“What am I missing here, Rafael? That was a stupid fucking risk and I know you’re not stupid, so—” Dominic cuts himself off. He closes his eyes. He’s just figured it out. “He’s the one who sold you to the Society.”

That’s the extent of what I’m able to acknowledge right now, but I somehow manage to say, “Yes.”

I can feel Dominic’s eyes on me. I’ve lied to him enough by now that he probably senses that I’m leaving something out. I expect him to push.

He doesn’t. Instead he asks, “So what did you learn from Silva?”

That brings my eyes to him. Dominic looks at me steadily. I know he’s still pissed. I know he’s also got his own shit he’s dealing with.

But the way he’s looking at me says that he’s with me, that he understands. So I take a deep breath and manage to tell him, Dante, and Noah what I learned. I tell them about the pizzeria and what Silva told me to say there.

Dante goes completely still, utterly cold. Noah looks sick. Dominic’s eyes are burning with rage.

For a minute, no one says anything. It’s Noah, of course, who breaks the silence and gets us working.

“Someone will need to go in and pose as a buyer.”

Dante suggests, “Or we could capture someone from there.”

“But who?” Noah pushes back. “We have no way of knowing who’s involved. And this sounds like coded communication. The pizzeria is just a meeting point. The people working there and passing messages might not even know what those messages mean.”

“Then they should get educated,” Dante grits out.

“Noah’s right,” I say. “We should at least try to arrange something. If that doesn’t work, we can capture someone as a Plan B.”

“I should do it,” Dominic says.

I stare at him. “What? Why? I should do it.”

“Absolutely not. This is way too hot for you, and you might be recognized. I’m the least likely to raise suspicion.”

“Doesn’t mean you won’t,” Dante points out. “You’re connected to this shit too.”

“But not like you three. And most people know us to be enemies. Besides, the only other option is to bring someone else in on this, and it would have to be someone high profile like me to be believable. Even if we could find and trust such a person, we would lose time. Before shit leaks from Moretti’s crew regarding Silva’s murder, we need to move. And I mean tonight.”

Noah says, “I agree, but do you really think you can do this? You’re gonna have to be convincing, like you actually want to buy a child.”

Any disgust Dominic might feel is masked with anger. “I’ve been lying all my life,” he says. “I can do it.”