Page 19 of Mafia King's Broken Vow

A simple question. An attempt to distract. She pretends it’s neutral.

It isn’t.

I move closer, enough that she has to tilt her chin to keep her eyes on mine. I like that. Not the dominance—though that matters—but the fact that she still holds my gaze. No flinch. No recoil. She meets the discomfort head-on.

“I’m a man who studies patterns,” I breathe. “Yours, included.”

Her pen freezes. Good. I’ve got her attention now. The way she shifts in her seat, thighs pressing together, she’s already imagining what I could do to her. The thought makes my mouth water.

“Such as?” she asks.

I let my gaze devour her, starting at her throat, that vulnerable stretch of skin that flushes when she’s aroused, down to where her jacket pulls tight across her breasts with each shallow breath.

“You dressed for war today. Your suit. Your hair. The absence of softness. After our last session, you felt vulnerable. Today, you came for control.”

A beat.

“Is that what this is to you? War?”

“All connection is warfare, Doctor,” I murmur. “Even therapy.”

I slide onto the arm of her chair, uninvited. She goes rigid, just like when I moved the chair closer in our first session. But I remember what came after the rigidity, the softening, the unconscious sway toward me. Her body knows what her mind won’t admit. It remembers my proximity, craves it even as she fights it. I’m close enough to see the pulse fluttering at her throat, to catch the hitch in her breath.

She affects me more than I expect. Heat pools low in my gut, and I have to shift slightly to hide my body’s reaction. Christ, when did I start behaving like some untried boy instead of a man who’s mastered control?

“Fuck,” I breathe, the curse slipping out before I can catch it.

She looks up sharply. “Excuse me?”

I’ve never lost my composure like this. Never let profanity slip in a professional setting. But she’s undoing me, thread by thread.

“You’re in my space,” she says quietly.

“Your space?” I let my knee brush against her arm, watch the goosebumps rise. “Everything here is my cage, Doctor. You’re the one who chose to step inside.”

She doesn’t move.

Frozen. Like a rabbit that’s spotted the wolf. But rabbits run, and she’s still here, pulse visible at her throat, waiting to see if I’ll pounce. The predator in me purrs at her stillness. At her submission disguised as professionalism.

“You press for weakness,” I say. “I parry. You dig. I distract. Then we switch roles. You deflect. I press. You call this therapy. I call it strategy.”

“Therapy isn’t a power struggle.”

“Everything is,” I say simply. “Especially when one of us is in a cage.”

She straightens a little. Her voice holds.

“Is that what you want from these sessions? To be free?”

I laugh. Not a performance. Real, quiet laughter.

“What I want stopped mattering the moment the Bratva decided I wasn’t worth killing. Now I’m a curiosity. A case study. Something to be managed.”

She closes her notebook. I don’t miss the signal; it’s intentional. She wants me to see that I have her full attention now.

“And you believe I’m here to manage you?” she asks. “To make you compliant?”

“You’re here,” I say, leaning just close enough to test her limits, “because someone thinks you can make sense of what I did. Maybe even fix it. But I don’t think you believe that.”