28.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Rafael

I jerk awake to the sound of my phone ringing. I fumble for it on the nightstand then squint as the screen practically blinds me. Unknown number.

At 2 a.m.? What the fuck?

Something makes me twist to my other side, looking for Dominic. He’s not there.

Panic has me yanking upright and answering the call. “Hello?”

“Mmmm. Hello, sweetheart.”

I freeze.

“I’ve missed you, Rafael.”

A strange sound breaks from me. Denial. Revulsion. A sadness I can’t describe.

“Are you still at Dominic’s apartment?”

My voice comes back. “What the fuck—”

“Language, sweetheart.”

“Dominic!” I shout as I launch out of the bed. Ice in my veins, I fling open the bedroom door and race out into the hallway. There’s a light on in the kitchen. I run toward it, not hearing any of the words coming through the phone.

I slam into someone huge as they step into the hallway. I’m naked and barefoot, and I bounce off them and fall on my ass. The phone goes flying from my hand.

I scramble up, ready to fight, but the intruder is backing away with their hands up. Jesus, it’s Rocco. What the fuck?

“Where’s Dominic?” I shout.

“He left,” Rocco says.

“He’s here,” comes dully from the phone.

I scramble for it, fumbling it to my ear. I shout, “What the fuck are you—”

“Calm down, sweetheart. We listen , remember? We obey . It’s better that way. It’s safer. It means no pain.”

I shudder so hard I almost drop the phone again.

“I don’t believe you,” I gasp. “You don’t have him—you’re lying!”

“Dominic, say something.” Silence. Then a pained cry.

“Don’t hurt him!”

“Don’t call me a liar, sweetheart, or I’ll have to punish him in your place.”

“Don’t, please don’t, I’m sorry.” The words spill out so automatically that it feels like I spoke them just yesterday instead of almost twenty years ago. My stomach twists.

“That’s better, Rafael. Now come and get him. Alone. We’re at his family estate.”

The call disconnects.

I drop the phone. I bend over, planting my hands on my knees as bile slides up my throat.

Rocco steps toward me. “Rafael—”

A switch flips inside me. I yank upright and shove him, sending him staggering back into the living room.

I lunge for him and shove him again. “Why isn’t Dominic here? Why are you here? What’s—”

“Hey! Back the fuck off before I—”

I’m aware of being out of control, but I can’t get the control back. I go after Rocco again because he’s there to go after.

He’s a big guy, bigger even than Dominic, and when he clotheslines me, I hit the fucking floor.

“Fuck!” he shouts. “I didn’t mean to—” He starts to crouch then backs off as I start getting up. “Goddamn it, are you okay?”

Rocco offers his hand, but I don’t want it. I get up on my own. I’m calmer now, like he hit my reset button. I can think.

“Tell me what happened.”

Rocco looks startled by my switch in mood, but he recovers quickly enough. He doesn’t react to my nudity.

“Look,” he starts, his hands up in surrender. “I’m not happy either. Dominic came to get me an hour ago. He’d heard from the Collector—”

Panic swamps me again, along with anger.

“A meeting had been set,” Rocco goes on. “He said he had to go get cash—”

“Why the fuck didn’t he wake me up? Why the fuck didn’t you go with him?”

“He wouldn’t let me , Rafael!”

“So you follow him—”

“You think I don’t fucking know that? He wanted me to stay with you ! He made me swear. I called Noah—”

I grip my hair, wanting to tear it out. “Why the hell didn’t he wake me up?”

“He wanted you out of it. He wanted to secure the Collector on his own—”

“That’s such bullshit!”

Rocco’s phone buzzes on the island counter. He races to it and answers.

“Yeah?” Then, “Shit. Rafael just got called.” Then, “Are you fucking kidding me? You really think I’m going to be able to stop him without killing him? Yes. Okay.” He cuts the call. “Fuck!”

“Was that Noah?” My heart’s racing so fast that I’m dizzy. I stagger to the opening of the hallway, grabbing at the wall.

“Yes. The Collector seems to have Dominic on the pool patio. There are high walls. Noah and Dante arrived after Dominic had been taken, and they can’t see him to safely approach.”

“ Fuck .” I find my phone on the floor and snatch it up.

I hurry back to the bedroom. I don’t bother shutting the door, but Rocco doesn’t follow me anyway. I scramble into my clothes and boots. I stash my phone and my knives and grab my gun, then I charge back down the hallway, nearly colliding with Rocco again.

As I race for the door, Rocco is on my heels. We leave the apartment through the service door. He grabs my jacket when I start making a wrong turn and leads the way to the elevator. Everything screeches to a jittery halt as we ride down.

“You can’t come,” I tell him. “He said alone.”

“I’ll stay back. I’ll find Noah and Dante. You have a car?”

“My bike.”

His eyes squeeze shut briefly. He’s not happy. “Don’t get too far ahead of me. I need to be able to see you.”

“That’s your problem.”

“Christ, Rafael—”

The elevator doors slide open and I run through the parking garage to my bike.

“Don’t wreck!” I hear as I cram my helmet on, swing my leg over, and bring the bike to roaring life.

The tires squeal as I peel out, nearly smashing into the barricade arm. It lifts just in time and I go racing through the city, desperate to reach the very man that I swore would never be able to crook his finger at me again.

***

I don’t wreck until I get to Dominic’s estate. The property gate is open, and I go flying through onto the gravel drive. The huge house looms ahead, a dark shape in the darker night. Faint starlight catches on a vehicle parked in front. As I race closer, I recognize Dominic’s Audi.

I’m so fucking angry with him.

At first, I was only terrified, thinking about what was happening to him. But a thirty-minute ride gave me time to think about why it was happening.

He got a message in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. He slipped away without waking me. He put himself in this danger.

Thank god he at least told Rocco, who had the sense to tell Noah. He and Dante are somewhere on the grounds.

When my phone wouldn’t stop vibrating inside my jacket, I stopped and talked to Noah for a minute.

Apparently, the Collector couldn’t get into the house. Dominic plugged the security holes after the last attack.

With the Collector holding Dominic within the high-walled pool patio and there being men posted at both entrances to it, there’s no choice but for me to go in there.

Not that I was considering anything else. Even Noah barely tried to argue with me. The thing we don’t know is how many men the Collector has on the property or where his getaway vehicle is.

Frankly, I don’t give a shit about that right now. I just need to see Dominic alive and unharmed. I need it right fucking now , and that’s why I come in so damn hot that when I hit the brakes, my bike slides on the gravel. I try to save it, but I’m not that focused.

The bike tips, sweeping out from under me, sending me tumbling across the gravel while the bike smashes through the bushes into the front of the house.

I roll to my feet, rip off my helmet, and draw my gun. Not hurt beyond bruises that I barely feel, I race around the side of the house. My only hope is speed and the likelihood that I’m meant to be taken alive.

As the walled patio comes into view, along with a guard whose rifle is trained on me, I hear, “Halt!” but I fire.

The rifle kicks out a spray of bullets, but they sweep in a high arc as the man falls and goes still.

The patio gate stands open. I bolt through, daring to hope I’ll get lucky a second time—

A gunshot cracks. Stone chips blast from the wall near me—a warning that I ignore. But it’s too dark and I can’t identify all the figures quickly enough. They’re scattered around the patio, with Dominic bound in a chair at the far edge of the pool and someone behind him with a gun.

It’s hopeless. There are too many factors, too many men. I yield, just as I knew I would have to. Just as I did with Noah when Moretti threatened him. It’s what you do for people you love, whether you’ve spoken those words to them or not.

Though it’s dark, I know, I just know that the man behind Dominic is not the Collector. He’s a guard, a thug, but his gun pressed to the back of Dominic’s head is lethal all the same. Dominic muffled shouts are furious, his body language straining and desperate in the chair at the pool’s edge.

I’m already putting my hands up, already yielding my gun before it’s ripped from my hand.

The guard who took it circles me, keeping his gun raised as he unzips my jacket. His caution is unnecessary. I can’t do anything with Dominic under threat. My eyes are roaming wildly, hunting for the real danger as the guard walks behind me and yanks my jacket down, stripping it away, along with most of my knives. His quick pat down robs me of all but the one in my boot, but the hope that leaves me with is impossibly small.

There’s a gun at Dominic’s head and one at mine, and I can’t locate—

“On your knees, Rafael.”

An awful, involuntary sound breaks from my throat at the familiar voice and the familiar command. I shudder so hard that when there’s a kick to back on my knee, I collapse all the way onto my face.

Then he emerges from the shadows.

I hear his footsteps. I feel his presence as he crouches over me. He hasn’t even touched me, not yet, but my body reacts as though he has. I start sweating. I start shaking. My heart is pounding so hard that the blood is racing through my body in an endless loop of terror and anticipation.

I know what’s coming.

On the other side of the pool, Dominic is shouting against his gag. When a gun cocks near me, Dominic’s muffled shouts cut off.

“Why did you have to start hunting me, sweetheart? I was content to check in on you from time to time, to slip into your club and watch you, to leave again and let you be. But now … well. You’ve forced my hand.”

When his fingers brush the back of my neck, a weird, toxic mix of feelings rushes through me. Horror. An awful, unwanted longing. An awful, unwanted arousal. My body remembers what it’s supposed to do, how it’s required to respond.

“ Don’t .”

“Don’t what, sweetheart? Touch you? You knew coming here that I would. You knew, coming here, that I would own you again. You came to trade yourself, to give yourself to me.”

I’m shaking so hard I can barely speak, because he’s right, he’s right, he’s right, but somehow I manage, “Just let Dominic go. I’ll whatever you want.”

A muffled shout comes from across the pool again, but it can’t reach me here. No one can—except him.

His fingers curl lightly in my hair. “You’ll do whatever I want regardless.”

Tears spill from my eyes. My body is like a live wire, overreacting to the smallest things. His touch. His voice.

But I have to think. I have to stay in the present for a little longer. Then I can yield. I can give up.

Some distant part of my mind knows that’s not the plan. Somewhere in the darkness, Noah, Dante, and Rocco are waiting.

But that doesn’t feel like reality right now. I’m in a bubble with him, and it’s very, very familiar.

Once, I wanted that bubble. He washed my parents’ blood from me. He comforted me during my nightmares. Even when he punished me, I loved him for it. It created a space to exist within. Boundaries. Rules. I wanted that, then.

I loved pleasing him, how he would smile. I loved, then, how he would touch me. Even when it was scary, even when it hurt, he was there to help me.

I thought he loved me. I thought he would keep me.

He didn’t.

He sent me away when he didn’t like my voice anymore, when it started getting deeper.

Then there were other men, and I tried, always, desperately, to recreate what I’d had with him, to make them love me, to make them smile at me, to hold their gazes.

But none of it was real.

I knew that, of course. Alone, I always cried. Alone, I tried to die.

But I lived—and Noah came. And after I tried to suck his cock because I wanted him to love me too, and he took me to a therapist who tried to convince me that what I felt was twisted, I snapped. I couldn’t let her say that. I couldn’t let her destroy everything that made sense to me.

When Noah came to pick me up from her office and found her on the floor and me covered in her blood under the desk, he said, We’re gonna have to do this a little differently.

But she was right, and I knew it and I couldn’t forget, after that, how pathetic I’d made myself with all those men.

I still needed the attention. I couldn’t live without it. I still needed sex, all the time. But I learned not to think of it as love.

Until Dominic.

Maybe I’m wrong again. Maybe I’m pathetic again.

But I want him so much, I need him so much, that I’ll give myself up before I give him up.

So I say, “If you kill Dominic, I’ll fight you. Every step. Every second.”

The Collector twirls a lock of my hair around his finger. I’m still on my face on the ground. He’s still above me.

“I’m going to kill you, Rafael. You know that.”

“But you want something first.” I know he does. But my heart races all the same, because if I’m wrong …

“Get him up,” the Collector orders. “On his knees.”

Again, distantly, I hear Dominic’s muffled shout as I’m hauled into a kneeling position, sitting back on my heels. The guard is behind me to my left, his gun still at my head.

And behind me to the right, I hear whispered words. “Would you be a good boy if I let him live?”

“Y-yes.”

“How can I believe you if you don’t prove it?”

I hear his buckle. I hear his zipper.

Distantly, I also hear Dominic scream, but that feels like it’s a thousand miles away.

I’m shaking so hard that I can barely stay upright. But I’ll do this. I’ve done it a thousand times.

Across the pool, Dominic is thrashing in his bonds. His chair scrapes and shifts. The guard behind him tries to grab the chair, but one leg of it jumps over the edge of the pool. The chair falls. Bound to it, Dominic crashes through the ice into the water.

I hear bullets cracking around me as I burst up. I see, vaguely, how much taller I am than the Collector. It’s bizarre to me. It tips reality upside down.

But none of that matters. Even my glimpse of him is fleeting and unimportant. I dive into the pool, where the shattered ice bobs on the broken surface.

The icy shock tears through my body as I swim desperately in the direction I saw Dominic fall. It’s so dark I can’t see a thing.

I hunt blindly, frantic, until my kicking foot strikes something solid. I scrabble at my boot for my knife then feel around for the bonds, slicing through duct tape until Dominic can yank the gag from his mouth and kick free of the chair.

We both break the surface with a gasp. I grab at him and try to haul him to the edge. He’s doing the same to me.

Clumsy with cold, I get my elbows up on the ledge and scramble. Dominic isn’t quite out, so I grab his belt and haul him up. He falls into me, squashing me flat on the concrete.

Dominic doesn’t get up. He keeps me pinned me there, covering me with his body as he looks around for threats. I am beyond thinking that clearly, but the threats must be gone because he shouts in my face, “Goddamn it, Rafael! Why the hell did you—”

I shut him up by crushing my mouth against his. I have to know that he’s here, that he’s alive, that I’m alive—that this is actually real.

Dominic doesn’t so much yield as attack me in return, biting and dominating and practically devouring me. The relief is indescribable. He drives away the horror. He puts the past back in its place.

I wrap my arms around him. He hauls me up and rocks back onto his ass. I’m in his lap, my legs sticking out behind him. We’re soaked and freezing, but we stay there. Right now, I wouldn’t care if we froze on the spot. I don’t want to move. I don’t want him apart from me.

“Jesus Christ, get up, both of you. Get inside. You’re freezing.”

I ignore Noah as he approaches. I ignore the distant sound of a car crash then gunfire.

I won’t let go.

When Noah tugs at me, Dominic growls. Noah smacks the back of Dominic’s head then smacks mine.

“Up! Now!”

We do what he says. We let him lead us to safety. Like he always does.