Page 41 of The Scars We Keep
Her eyes meet mine across the room.Surprise flashes first, quick and unguarded.Then caution as she reassesses the situation.Then that cool expression settles into place.The one she wears when she wants to pretend nothing gets under her skin, that she’s untouchable, unshakable.
“Lorenzo,” she says.
My name on her lips shouldn’t stir heat curling in my gut.Shouldn’t make me crave hearing her say it again, breathless and broken beneath me, but it still fucking does.
I don’t answer straight away.
I just sit here with the glass in my hand, letting my silence fill the room, spreading to every corner until it’s weighing down on both of us.Let her sense its weight andwonder what I know, what I’m thinking, what I’m about to do.
Her chin lifts slightly, defiant even now when she knows she’s walked into something she can’t talk her way out of.
That is when I notice him.Rico, one of the newer men on the inside rotation.Mid-thirties, well-built, quiet, and good with a gun.Better at following orders.Or so I thought.
He stands by the archway off the foyer, with a straight posture and his eyes fixed on Isabella.
Not on her face but lower, dragging over her body with the kind of greedy interest that belongs in a gutter, not under my roof.Starting at her legs, crawling up her thighs, pausing at the curve of her hips, then climbing higher to her tits where his gaze fucking lingers, hungry and deliberate.Up to her throat, her mouth, then back down again like he is memorizing every inch of her.It’s the look of a man imagining things he has no right to imagine.Undressing her with his eyes.Picturing her spread out beneath him.Thinking about what her mouth would feel like wrapped around his cock.Wondering how she sounds when she comes.
He is eye-fucking my wife.
In my house.
On my time.
With his blood still warm in his veins because I haven’t spilled it yet.
The disrespect is so fucking blatant and arrogant, that I can’t believe what I’m seeing for a moment.This piece of shit actually thinks he can stand there and mentally strip her down, imagine his hands where only mine belong, picture his cock inside her, and just walk away breathing.
Something inside me snaps so sharply it pierces right through my control, splitting it wide open and allowing everything I’ve been holding back to flood out.
The world narrows down to him.To the sheer fucking audacity of standing in my house, on my payroll, breathing my air, and looking at her as if she isn’t mine.As if I haven’t marked her, claimed her, fucked her so thoroughly that my scent is still on her skin, my bruises still fading on her thighs, my cum still inside her from 4 am this morning when I took what is mine.
White-hot rage floods my system.It’s possessive in a way that blurs my vision at the edges, making every instinct scream to destroy the threat in front of me.To eliminate it.To make an example so brutal that no man will ever repeat this mistake.
Isabella is fucking mine.My wife.My woman.My property in the eyes of this world and every world that matters.And no man gets to look at her that way and walk out of here unscathed.
Isabella says something, but I don’t process her words.My entire focus is on Rico, on the man who just made the last mistake of his life.
His eyes flick to mine, and I see the exact moment he realizes his mistake.I watch as the color drains from his face, as if someone pulled a plug.Observe his posture shift from casual to rigid.Watch as he comes to terms with the fact that he has just signed his own death warrant.Whatever harmless fantasy he believed he could indulge in, it was fatal.
Fear flashes across his face—that expression men have when they know death is near and nothing can be done to prevent it.
Good.He ought to be fucking scared.
The whiskey glass touches the side table with a soft clink.Crystal against wood.It’s a controlled movement—the opposite of the violence coursing through my blood, coiling tight and lethal in my chest.
I stand up from the chair slowly and every muscle in my body tightens, wound up and ready to strike.Predatory.Controlled.The way I’ve moved a hundred times before I killed someone in back alleys, warehouses, and basements where screams don’t carry.
This is who I am.Not the businessman in the suit or a fucking husband playing house.
This is me.The killer.The monster they whisper about in the dark corners of this city.The one who built his reputation on broken bones and shallow graves.The one who does not forgive, forget, or show mercy.
Rico straightens up more, which is funny because that’s not going to save him at all.Nothing will.
I walk past Isabella toward him.
She remains standing there, frozen, her scent hitting me as I pass by.That blend of perfume and something beneath that is uniquely her.The smell that sticks to my sheets, skin, and clothes.
Rico opens his mouth, maybe to say something foolish, apologize, or beg for mercy he won’t receive.
