Page 27 of The Ache That Stayed

I was lost yet again in those big brown eyes that pulled me into the depths of a grave I’d dug myself, dark and endless, impossible to climb out of.

She looked at me like she was seeing a ghost that refused to stay buried. Because I was supposed to stay gone before I became the kind of man who would burn a life down just to stand in the ashes beside her.

But here I was.

In her kitchen.

Bleeding on her floor.

Breathing her air like I had a right to it.

Sean was wrong about one thing. She wasn’t my weakness. She was the line I would kill to never let anyone else cross. Even if that meant becoming the danger she needed protection from.

The corners of my lips lifted.

“Hi, Volpi.”

CHAPTER 8

Roxanne

Grey eyes locked into mine.

Not startled. Not defensive. Not even angry.

Soft.

Soft in a way that made my stomach twist because nothing about him had ever been soft. Even when the blade at his throat threatened to carve through skin.

My pulse tripped. Betrayed me.

“Santino. Fucking. Rossi.” I spat.

Words left my mouth like venom, each word cutting sharper than the knife. The sound of his name on my tongue felt like poison. Like a relapse.

“In the flesh,” he said smugly, like he hadn’t detonated something inside me just by existing in my kitchen.

The deep tenor of his voice hit my skin like a whip, sharp and visceral, scraping across memory, muscle and nerve. My fingers tightened around the knife, fearing it might slip because my body wouldn’t have registered him as a threat even if my mind did.

“I told Marcello,” I said, pressing the knife harder, feeling the resistance of skin, “if I ever saw you again, I’d stab you in the neck.”

A slow, devious smile curled at his lips. Then he did something that made my pulse spike.

He tilted his head, baring his throat further, offering me the vein that pulsed so close, so easy, like a deliberate offering. As though he trusted me to decide whether he deserved to live.

Ink coiled around his neck, a black serpent curling at the base of his throat, just beneath where the blade rested.

One slice and years of rage could spill out with his blood, washing the floor in red absolution.

The vein there throbbed—

“Go ahead,” he murmured, voice rough. “You know you want to.”

I bared my teeth and drove the blade deeper. The tip split open skin, and blood welled instantly—dark, thick, sliding down the curve of his throat. It followed the inked snake’s body, pooling at the serpent’s mouth like it was drinking him alive.

His jaw tightened. But he didn’t flinch.

Rage flooded me hotter. I wanted him to react. I needed him to react. To break. To bleed in a way that matched what he’d left behind in me. To feel something close to what I had felt the day he walked out like he’d never been there.