4
Rafael
The girl’s friend nudged her, hissing something in her ear, and they turned and made their way into the restaurant behind them. “Come on. She isn’t here,” Enzo said, making his way to the SUV. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she looked over her shoulder to watch me while her friend dragged her into the illusion of safety the restaurant offered them.
Did she understand the danger she was in? Or was she too young and innocent to comprehend that she’d stumbled into the path of a nightmare?
“Rafe!” Enzo barked, demanding I get in gear. Only the knowledge that his woman was missing prevented me from ripping out his throat. I suddenly had an inkling of understanding for what that might be like.
I turned to Santiago, nodding to him and gesturing across the street. “Follow her. I want her name,” I growled. Santiago looked like he might argue, given his place was to protect me at all times, but one stern glare telling him I meant business sent him scurrying across the street to do as I’d ordered.
“You can’t touch her, Rafe,” Enzo warned. “Matteo won’t tolerate it, and we both know she’s young. Too young for the way you looked at her.”
I was silent as I climbed into the passenger side of the SUV, staring at the restaurant until it faded from view when Enzo pulled out of the lot and made his way back towardIndulgence.The sharp ring of my phone filled the silence that echoed between us, and I answered with disinterest. “Yeah? Got it.” I ended the call and looked at Enzo, relaying the information from Calix. “They found your Sadie. A block away fromIndulgencein a coffee shop eating a scone. They have eyes on her, but Matteo told Calix you’d want to deal with her yourself.” He sighed in what I had to guess was relief that she was alive and well, even if he might kill her himself for the worry she’d caused.
He turned his attention back to me once he knew she wasn’t in any real danger, likely suspecting that the same couldn’t be said for myprincesa.“Please tell me you understand that you can’t take that girl, Rafe,” Enzo murmured. My jaw tensed as I prepared for the fight I suspected was coming. I was no pedophile, but nothing would stop me from taking what was mine when she came of age.
“Do you often tell one another not to claim your women? Why is it you think I will tolerate your interference?” I asked, violence ringing in my blood as I turned to face him, silently warning him that he should back off if he knew what was good for him.
“It’s different. She’s too young.”
“I’ll discuss it with Matteo, and we’ll work out an arrangement. I’ve no interest in rape, Enzo. Particularly raping a girl who has not yet become a woman. But we monsters can be patient, can we not?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and daring him to deny the truth. Matteo waited twelve years to make Ivory his once more. Ryker stalked Calla for four years before he plucked her from her mundane life. Lino waited close to a lifetime.
Good things came to those who planned.
"Isa," I said finally, after my phone dinged with a text. "Her friend calls her Isa."
Strolling through the Bellandi estate, I ignored the sputtering man at my back in favor of making a beeline to Matteo’s office. I cared little for the woman and children playing in the yard, that I could see through the windows. There would be time for Matteo to introduce me to his family later.
All that I cared for in that moment was the pulsing need to establish my rules for Isabel Adamik in the sixteen months that would pass before I could claim her as mine in a permanent fashion. “You can’t just barge in there. He’s on the phone!” the man protested at my spine. I smirked at him over my shoulder, taking the doorknob in hand and turning it. Matteo’s furious eyes met mine as he glanced up from his desk, heaving out a sigh of frustration before he nodded to the man over my shoulder with a resigned expression on his face.
“I’ll call you back,” Matteo grunted, ending the call with the press of a button as I moved into the room. Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I took the seat opposite him at the desk and made myself comfortable as the man at my back closed the door behind him and left us in privacy. “Enzo mentioned you’d developed a disinterest in knocking,” Matteo drawled, his lips curving up despite his desire to seem irritated.
“To knock is to ask permission,” I said, glancing down at my nails thoughtfully. I’d missed a spot of blood under the edge of my thumb when I’d washed my hands clean of the punishment I’d dealt Enzo’s man, for his failure of letting Sadie escape.
An old-fashioned beating seemed so rudimentary considering my own methods, but I’d never complain about the ability to act on the violence that simmered in my blood.
“And the great Rafael Ibarra asks permission of no one, not even his lifelong friends, apparently,” Matteo noted, raising a brow at me. Enzo had undoubtedly warned Matteo of my interest in thealmostseventeen-year-old girl who’d consumed my every thought since I’d seen her the day before.
Punishing Enzo’s man had been the only thing to offer me even a moment of respite from her haunting face in my head.
“I’ve done nothing,” I said, matching his eyebrow raise as we stared one another down.
“Yet,” he added, daring me to contradict him.
“I won’t touch her until she’s eighteen,” I answered, shrugging my shoulders as if it was inconsequential to me, when the thought of waiting so long felt like an agonizing torment to rival the worst of my methods.
Matteo sighed, leaning back in his chair as he studied me. “How intent are you on this?”
“How intent were you on Ivory when she stumbled back into your path?” I returned, clenching my fingers around the arms of my chair. His gaze fell to the tense movement, studying it as he considered his next words carefully. Matteo Bellandi needed my men for his war. Without them, he would have a much more difficult time triumphing over the allies Tiernan Murphy had amassed, simply because they wanted to keep selling people as bodies to fuck, and that couldn’t continue under Matteo’s reign.
He sighed, hanging his head. “You won’t touch her until she’s graduated from high school,” he said, laying down the first of his terms. His jaw tensed with the knowledge that his wife would likely refuse to tolerate his concession, but there was nothing he could do without being a hypocrite.
He hadn’t done much better in his pursuit of Ivory, and that had worked out well for him.
Eventually.
I nodded, considering the words with a purse to my lips. While I didn’t like the demand, it was one I’d contemplated myself. Her May birthday wouldn’t be too far off from graduation as it stood, and it seemed like a small sacrifice, considering everything I would put her through when I stole her away from everything she knew.