4~ jealousy

Adriana’s POV

The gunshot still rang in my ears. It was a sharp and deafening sound that didn’t just echo through the club but through my entire body. My knees buckled before I could stop them sending me crashing to the floor in a gracelesd heap. But I barely felt the impact. All I could do was stare.

The body lay crumpled and lifeless. Blood seeped across the marble floor all dark and damning and the scent thick in the air. I swallowed hard as bile rise in my throat. He had a family. A wife and kids maybe. Someone who would wait for him to come home tonight. Someone who wouldn’t know that his last moments were spent groping me which he died for. .

And Rafael had killed him just like that. Like he didn’t mean anything to the world. My Rafael. Except he wasn’t mine. Not anymore.

The boy I once knew and the one who used to whisper my name like it was the most sacred thing in the world, the one who held me like I was something precious and fragile. That Rafael was gone. And in his place was this man.

He is so cold, ruthless and or so unforgiving. He also doesn’t care about anything if his actions were anything to go with.

The only kind of person who could shoot a man in cold blood and not even flinch. The kind of person people feared. The kind of person the rumors whispered about and growing louder in the streets of New York. I never cared about those crime organizations from start but I have a feeling that I should have.

The mafia had always been a dark legend in this city. A myth to some and a nightmare to others. Their influence stretched through the underworld like a disease that is untouchable and unstoppable. Like Marco used to say even though you could hear the way he is impressed and wants to be in their favor.

And Rafael was Italian through and through. He had always loved his heritage and clung to it with pride. But he didn’t have a family left to tie him to the crime world. His last relative had died years ago and he had been alone ever since.

So how? How had he become this? I didn’t have time to process it before he moved towards me lowering himself into a crouch in front of me. I flinched at the sudden nearness. Not because I thought he’d hurt me. But because I wasn’t sure I recognized him anymore.

His eyes were unreadable. all dark pools of something lethal and dangeros. A scar cut through the bottom of his lip and that is something new and foreign. He doesn’t used to have it before. My chest ached at the sight of it knowing I hadn’t been there for whatever had left its mark on him.

Rafael reached out gripping my jaw roughly with his fingers pressing hard enough to leave abruise. This wasn’t how he used to touch me before. Hell it is far from it. He used to be gentle and loving and caring and worshipping too. But I didn’t expect that after what I did to him.

I also never expected to see him again knowing his karma was already following me and now seeing him just makes it harder. His thumb pressed into my chin, tilting my face up so I had no choice but to meet his gaze. The cold emptiness there sent a shiver down my spine.

“This is what happens when you let other men touch you and their deaths are on your conscience because you caused it.” He said in a quiet husky voice that is heavy and loud at the same time.

His grip tightened making me wince a little. “From now on, no one touches you. Because if they do they’ll meet the same fate as him.”

I whimpered loudly before I could stop myself and his eyes darkened. A flicker of something unreadable passed over his face and then suddenly his lips crashed onto mine. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t tender. It was a punishment that is meant to hurt. There are no emotions in this whatsoever. .

It was a cruel and claiming and possessevi kiss that stole the breath from my lungs.

At first, I didn’t move. I didn’t reciprocate. I was still reeling and still trying to make sense of the chaos unraveling around me so suddenly that it’s giving me a whiplash. But then it hit me. The taste of him and the feel of him hit me at once.

Memories surged back with force drowning me in everything I thought I’d buried years back. The way he used to kiss me like I was his entire world. The way my body used to melt into his without hesitation. And just like that I was lost in his world again. Just like that I’m an eighteen year old highschooler.

I kissed him back with everything I had making sure all the years of longing and regret poured into the desperate way my lips moved against his. I didn’t care that there was a dead body on the floor. I didn’t care that his guards were dragging it away as if it were nothing.

For a moment it was just him and me tangled in something raw and dangerous. But just when I thought I could lose myself in it like I always do when it comes to him, Rafael ripped himself away from me roughly. If I were standing I would’ve stumbled back and hit my head somewhere because of how abrupt it was.

I barely had time to catch my breath before he was standing his expression unreadable once more. He moved back to the couch sinking into it like a king reclaiming his throne. And then he snapped his fingers. Two women appeared almost instantly like they were generated.

I recognized them. They were the high end girls and the ones reserved for the club’s elite. They weren’t like the rest of them. They didn’t strip for survival like I did today. They stripped for power and for the luxury it brings. Nothing else and nothing more.

They had nothing covering them but a few flimsy scraps of fabric around their nipples and crotch. And as they slid onto the couch, one on each side of him. draping themselves over him like he was theirs to devour and something inside me twisted.

It was a slow and burning pain all sharp and cruel in the way it spread through my chest. It settled deep, coiling like a viper ready to strike and suffocating at the same time.

It was Jealousy. Ugly and all consuming and impossible to ignore. It clawed at my ribs demandign to be let out, screaming at me to do something like rip them away from him or to drag them off his lap and remind him exactly who he once called his. But I didn’t.

Instead, I swallowed it down forcing my expression into something neutral and somehow empty. I refused to let it show and refused to let him see just how much this was tearing me apart. I had spent years learning how to endure and how to take every humiliation and swallow it whole without letting it crack my facade.

I had been trampled over too many times to count and treated like I was nothing more than an afterthought or a discared possession that could be picked up and tossed aside at a whim. But this was different. This hurt in a way I couldn’t even begin to describe. It cut deeper than anything Marco had ever done to me because Marco had never owned my heart.

Rafael had. And he was destroying it all over again.