Page 68 of Mafia King's Broken Vow

“Tonight.” I keep my face blank while my chest pounds.

I walk away, but I feel him behind me like a shadow, watching. Wanting.

The psychologist in me knows what this is: an accelerated intimacy created by pressure, fear, confinement. A textbook case of transference and misdirected desire.

But the woman in me?

She doesn’t care about diagnoses.

She only knows that this is the most awake she’s ever felt, and that at midnight, she’s going to walk willingly into whatever waits for her in the dark.

I return to my room and open my laptop, pretending case notes might hold my focus. They don’t. I skim a security briefing, read the same paragraph five times. Nothing sticks.

My mind’s already elsewhere.

Every touch replays on a loop. The way his hand guided my hip. The heat of his chest pressed to my back. The roughness in his voice when he said,“Like this.”

My body aches with tension I can’t categorize, let alone release. It’s not clinical. It’s not rational. It’s want, stripped bare.

Tonight, something breaks. I can feel it coming like a storm, inevitable and unstoppable. And I know exactly what it means—ethics abandoned, lines erased, a choice I’ll never be able to justify if anyone asks. Especially not to myself.

But still, I count down the hours like a woman waiting for impact. For collision. For ruin.

Because the truth is, I don’t want to resist him anymore.

And tonight…I won’t.

17

UNARMED

YAKOV

Seven minutes past midnight. Three minutes until she might appear.

I should be calculating odds, but all I can think about is whether she’ll show. Whether she wants this as much as the heat in her eyes suggested.

Smart money says she’ll stay away. The ethical Dr. Agapova, with her professional boundaries and moral certitudes, choosing safety over the dangerous pull she’s been fighting for weeks.

Twelve minutes past midnight.

Three soft knocks.

My pulse kicks, a reaction I haven’t felt in years. When I open the door, she’s there in jeans and a simple blouse, hair cascading down her back, trying to look composed, but I notice her hands trembling. The flush on her cheeks. The way her eyes dart to my mouth before snapping back up.

“You came.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Her voice is quiet, steady despite the nerves flickering beneath the surface.

“I thought you might do the smart thing and stay in your room.” I step aside, letting her enter, then lock the door behindher with deliberate finality. “But we both know you stopped making smart choices weeks ago.”

“That obvious?”

A low chuckle escapes me.

“It’s the way you look at me. Imagining me stripping you bare and fucking you against the wall.”

Color floods her face, but she doesn’t deny it.