bar while Raphael sits in an armchair on the other side of it. His eyes are trained on a bland bit of wall behind my head, a poker chip spinning between his swollen fingers.
The lounge is too pristine for all this blood. Too bright, too quiet. I can practically hear the sins dripping off his body—some his, some not—and staining the carpet at his feet red.
I rest my sweaty palms on the bar and swallow.
“Want me to call someone? Your brother?” His lips tilt into a humorless smirk, and I remember the sight of Gabe’s bloodied, naked body and the menacing glare he shot me through the windshield. I shiver. “The other brother, I mean.”
He shakes his head once.
Well, then.
I shuffle from one slipper-clad foot to the other and stare at him for a few ticks of the grandfather clock on the mantle. I skim over his ruffled black hair and open collar. He popped off the stitches that held his gentlemanly persona together the moment we boarded the yacht—his collar pin and cufflinks. As they bounced over the swim platform, I managed to catch them before they disappeared into the Pacific. Now, as I glance down at the diamond dice cufflink next to my trembling hand, I wonder how they ever fooled anybody.
Is this what a breakdown looks like? I wouldn’t know. Despite the fact that, by the end, my mother would stand naked in front of the record player in the hallway, crying along to Whitney Houston’s most heart-wrenching ballads, or that my father would smash his head repeatedly into the bathroom mirror, their demise was slow. More of the crumble I expected, rather than a sudden crack I didn’t see coming. When I look up from the cufflink and back to Raphael, I’m startled to find he’s staring right at me. A half-lidded gaze, blackened by the type of recklessness that makes your survival instinct kick in. The type that’d make you cross the road if you saw it in the eye of a stranger, or jump back out of an Uber if it greeted you in the rearview mirror.
I turn to the liquor wall. Not because his expression scares me, but because I know it shouldn’t heat the space between my thighs. I’m sick.
I reach for the First Aid kit and a bottle of Smuggler’s Club whiskey.
“Vodka.”
My shoulders pull taut. “Since when did you start drinking vodka?”
“Since you said you wouldn’t kiss me if I drank whiskey.”
A hot tide carries dizziness to my head and warmth to my stomach. The sensation only intensifies when I turn around and find no humor in his eyes.
Stepping out from behind the bar, I cross the lounge and into his orbit, my heart beating a little faster with every step. His eyes track me, hardening when my legs come into view.
“Put some clothes on, Penelope. My men are onboard and I don’t want to kill anyone else today.” He drops back in the armchair, running a busted hand through his hair with a careless sweep. “Those fucking thighs,” he mutters at the bland bit of wall again.
Kill. So Blake’s dead. Christ, I thought maybe he just gave him a little concussion, or something. What could he have done that was so bad?
Still in shock from waking up to the sound of Blake’s body bouncing off the hood of Raphael’s car, I don’t have it in me to argue about how if a man sexualizes pajama shorts and a tank top then that’s his own fucking problem. Numb everywhere but my center, I pick up the throw slung over the arm of a sofa and wrap it around myself. I have every intention of placing the liquor and First Aid kit on the coffee table and scurrying back to the safety of the bar, but Raphael’s arm shoots out, wraps around the backs of my legs, and pulls me onto his thigh.
My pulse slows to a syrup-like rhythm, too sticky to beat properly. My vision dims at the heat of his body seeping through the blanket and soaking into my own. He’s hard and warm and danger rolls off him like a sonic wave.
He tightens his grip on my waist, and my eyes fall down to his arm. His jacket came off not long after his cufflinks did, and now his sleeves are rolled up to reveal inked forearms covered in blood, too. The King of Diamonds stares back at me expectantly.
I turn away and grab the First Aid kit. Nonchalance isn’t the easiest expression to wear, not when a heartbeat thuds against my shoulder, and hot, heavy breath tickles my throat. My feeble poker face is immediately undermined by the tremble in my fingers as I pry open the white and red box.
Blankly, I stare at the foreign objects inside. “Hold on; I need to Google this.”
A bloody grip on my hip keeps me from jumping up. “The clear liquid is saline solution. Soak a cotton pad in it.” He spreads a large, busted paw over the curve of my thigh, sending a fever-like chill through me. “Then clean up my hands.”
I can barely concentrate on the task; I’m too busy blistering under his stare and pretending like his hand on my thigh doesn’t affect me at all.
I pause with the cotton pad hovering over his knuckles. “This might hurt.”
His laugh is rusty and my ears grow hot. “I think I’ll survive.”
His gaze continues to press on my cheek as I wipe down his wounds with clumsy dabs and a scrunched-up nose. When the tension grows so thick it slows my movements, I say, “For a man who prides himself on not having busted knuckles, you sure know your way around a First Aid kit.”
This time, his laugh is softer. “I’m from a family of thugs. Patched up more than a few bullet wounds in my time.”
He lifts his right hand to inspect my handiwork, and once he deems it satisfactory, he slides it up my leg and places it on my lower stomach. The feeling of his busted pinky finger resting on my pubic bone makes me want to rub my thighs together. My next breath comes out shaky and ragged. He moves his left hand so I can work on it.
“Well, now you’re a thug too,” I mutter, soaking more cotton in saline. “What did Blake do?”
“Pissed me off.”
I swallow. “So you killed him.”
His palm presses harder into my stomach, and his chin comes to rest on my shoulder.
“He was eyeing something up that doesn’t belong to him.”
His deep voice is bottomless, and for a brief second, I close my eyes and fall into it. Is he talking about me? Blake was close enough to the car to bounce off the hood and wake me up. That, plus his creepy behavior toward me in general, makes it plausible he was ‘eyeing’ me up, but the way Raphael says it makes my spine go rigid. Because his words come with a heavy insinuation tacked onto the end. It belonged to me instead.
Panic and annoyance fill me in equal parts. Just because I have a constant feral urge to rip all his clothes off with my teeth, it doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly tossed all my beliefs about men out the window. No man has ever made me as…dizzy as Raphael Visconti does, but that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly his.
He’s an anomaly, not the exception.
I drop the cotton pad with a soggy plop and twist around to look at him. Christ, he’s close. So close my nose grazes against his. I push the breathlessness away and harden my stare.
“I don’t belong to you, either.”
A humorless smirk stretches his lips. “I don’t want you, Penelope.” Before his omission has time to sting, he brings his hand to my jaw and grips me there. “But I’m going to take you anyway, and then I’m going to ruin you.”
I blink. “What?”
“It’s only fair,” he says, tone devoid of emotion.
An awful sense of dread creeps over the planes of my shoulders and squeezes the nape of my neck. “Why?” I breathe.
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Because it’s only a matter of time before you ruin me.”
I don’t have a comeback, but it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have gotten it out by the time hot hands come down on my hips, lift me up, and carry me out of the room.
