Page 47

47

OBI

I ’d only barely fallen asleep when the nightmares ripped me from unconsciousness. I’d dreamed of death and loss and all the things I feared finally coming to fruition. As much as I tried to avoid it, I could only watch as everything fell apart, like sand dripping through my fingers.

Leona . I could feel her, awake, waiting.

I needed to go to her.

Heart still thundering, pulse racing, I padded to the kitchen to find her seated at the island, her head on the countertop, pillowed by her arm. The dim light barely illuminated her form.

As if she, too, could sense me, she lifted her head, and turned.

“Leona,” I said finally. The sound was loud and soft at the same time.

“Obi.”

The two of us stared at one another. I remained frozen in place. Just as Ryuji accused, my skin did itch to touch her.

But the rift between us felt so impossibly large in that moment, the chasm couldn’t possibly be closed. My brothers and Caspian had tried to convince me my plans were wrong, yet wasn’t it worth securing the army we needed? Setting up the dominos that would fall as word spread of their engagement?

The mistrust in her eyes was like a dagger to my chest. The words she’d thrown at me earlier echoed in my ears. She was hurt.

Could I be right and wrong at the same time? And if that were true, whose responsibility was it to bridge the gap?

Usually, she was the one who spoke first, who pushed forward in conversation. But it was clear she was not going to cross the barren stretch of silence between us unless I did first.

“Nightmare?” I asked carefully.

She regarded me. “No.”

I blinked. Then why was she out here? Byrne and the other women hadn’t left yet. She should be in there, with them. She should be sleeping.

“You?” she asked.

“Always.”

She sighed and turned back to the counter. “I won’t ask you to tell me about them. I’ve learned my lesson that you don’t want to talk to me.”

My heart clenched. She didn’t trust me. Her patience had run out. “Leona?—”

“It’s fine. I’ll go back to my room in a minute.”

I didn’t want her to leave. Yet I didn’t know how to ask her to stay.

If she didn’t have nightmares… “Why are you out here?”

She picked at something on the counter. “I have no clue.”

“Tell me the truth.”

It felt like the answer to that question would slot together the chaos swirling through my brain like a hurricane.

“I don’t think I will.”

My breath rushed out of me. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t feel like talking about it.”

“Leona,” I grumbled.

She matched my tone. “Obi.”

Frustration took root in my shoulders. “I can see what you’re doing.”

“And what is that?”

“Trying to teach me a lesson.”

She eyed me. “Is it working?”

“Slightly.” My lips pressed together.

She smiled softly. “Does it matter what I’m doing? When the outcome will be the same?”

My jaw clenched. I was not an idiot. She was playing the same game I played, tossing my thoughts back at me. But despite that knowledge, the frustration grew. I wanted to know. No, I needed to know.

“Why are you out here?” I asked again. Why, after everything that happened? Why hadn’t she run in the opposite direction as I pushed her farther and farther away?

“It doesn’t matter.”

I stepped closer. “It does.”

“I disagree,” she said with a shrug. I huffed. “Frustrating, isn’t it?”

“Incredibly.” She was normally so open. Her emotions would play across her face like a map to her feelings. But now, she kept everything locked behind a mask of passivity and I couldn’t read anything going through her mind. She was toying with me.

“Why are you out here?” she asked.

Nightmares. Hope. Dread. I opened my mouth and then closed it without a response. How was I supposed to explain?

Her playful smile turned sour. “That’s exactly it. Right there.”

“What?”

“Why I cannot trust you,” she whispered. “You ask for openness, yet you give none. You demand obedience and trust, yet you think I’m not owed the same.”

My mouth went dry. “I…”

She placed her hands on the counter and pushed to stand. “I’m going to bed.”

She walked away from me. She stopped fighting.

It took all of ten steps before I couldn’t contain myself.

I once wondered if she would cross the chasm I’d created between us. I realized now that I had to be the one to walk across.

“Wait.” I followed her, grabbing her arm, and spinning her back into my chest. “Wait.”

“What game are we playing here, Obi?” She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She looked out the window at the burgeoning sunlight just barely cresting over the horizon. “I’m tired of this. You won’t change, so what’s the point?”

My hand slid down the bare skin of her arm, and the itch subsided. My words felt stuck in my throat, not a physical hindrance like Ciel often faced, but an emotional one. A confrontation of vulnerability that went against everything I’d ever known.

She tugged her arm. She could walk out of my grip if she wanted, but she stayed within reach. Her frown said she was moments away from turning away forever. If that happened, all of this would be lost.

“I feel your presence like a magnet calling to me, even in my dreams.”

She frowned as she tried to understand.

I took a deep, steadying breath. “I was there, that night of your father’s murder.”

Her eyes went wide. “What?”

The words spilled out of me, uncontrollable, unstoppable.

“I saw you, so beautiful, and bright and free, dancing with your friends without a care in the world.” I searched her face, my hand still gripping her fingers. She didn’t pull away. “I watched as Volpe signaled the time had come. I saw him and your father disappear upstairs. I watched you follow, and I did nothing.”

She shook her head. “Obi, what?—”

“I heard the gunshot. I saw you run down the stairs, and everything in my life shifted at that very moment. You, blazing red, on the run for your life.” My voice trailed to a whisper. I wanted to choke back the words because they were revealing the truth I’d buried, but they flowed unhindered. “I followed you. I should have left. The only reason I was there was to determine whether we should take a contract from Volpe or your father, but after I saw you…I could not look away.”

“You followed us?” She tried to make sense of it, tried to remember if she had seen me. But of course, she hadn’t. I’d made sure that she hadn’t.

I nodded. “I needed to know who you were, whether my interest was fleeting or meaningful. The two of you stood out to me. It felt…” I struggled to find the word. “…right. When I thought of you and Caspian joining the four of us, it felt right. Whole. After more than half a lifetime of emptiness, I could not give that up.”

“So then what?” Her surprise turned to indignation. “You just watched as we almost died? You did nothing?”

“I was the one who shot the SUV on that airport tarmac,” I confessed, recalling how I’d seen her distraught over Caspian’s body and been unable to let them die. That was the moment I chose to intervene, and I’d made a move toward our future.

“You saved our lives.” She dropped my hand, and her fingers tangled in the fabric of my shirt. One of her palms pressed over my heart. My hands tentatively raised to her waist, drawing her ever closer as I constantly dreamed of doing. “It was you the whole time.”

“I bought out the contract on your names. I sent Wynn to you, and I orchestrated everything because I saw you and could not let go.” I gripped her harder. “I am not altruistic, Leona. Do not mistake me. I wanted to know how you and Caspian could further my goals of owning New York, of expanding internationally to change the landscape of worldwide criminal organizations forever. I wanted the power that could come from your name and your connections. I knew I could use you. But another part of me…”

“What?” she murmured, urging me to continue.

“Another part of me was simply justifying the fact that you were mine , and I’d do everything in my power to bring you to me.”

Her pupils blew wide, and her mouth parted. “What are you saying?”

I slid a hand to the back of her neck. “I will never let go of what I want to build to keep my family safe. At the same time, I will never be able to untangle you from my subconscious, no matter how hard I try. I cannot fight the dissonance in my head that says those two things cannot coexist.”

“Why can’t they?” she whispered. Our breaths mingled in our proximity. “Why not?”

I released my grip on her. “I can only protect those I love when I am in the greatest position of power, and I can only gain power when I divorce my desires and emotions from my reality. That is the truth I’ve lived with for fifteen years.”

As I said the words, they rang like the most ingrained and rightful belief I had ever held. That was how I had committed myself to violence to protect my brothers and sisters. That was how I had climbed the ranks of the vigilante group that ran my town. That was how I survived with the Camorra, and how I had ultimately left them to form the Shadows. With every drop of blood my hands spilled, I told myself the same thing, over and over.

Above all else, do what needs to be done. Distractions are death.

Leona kept her hands on my chest. My pulse raced under her touch. “Does that have to be true?”

“Yes. It is how I’ve survived. Any time I try to pursue one separately from the other, I fail. People get hurt. I have to choose.”

“Why did you even agree to this partnership if you thought you couldn’t have both?” she asked, tone desperate. “I thought you wanted both.”

“When Volpe beat us at Ryuji’s club, I realized I’d made an error. I’d already become distracted by you, and because of that, we failed that night.” I shook my head. “I truly believe the six of us can take New York and go even further. But only if I stay focused, only if I do what I must do to gain the power we need.”

Her breath whooshed out of her. “You thought it was your fault. Your mistake.”

“It was. I was too concerned with Volpe’s insults toward us to realize he’d been setting a trap the whole time.”

A small laugh escaped her lips. “I think we all made mistakes that night.”

“I am our leader. I am the one who shoulders this burden. This is why I must resist. I must be the one who pushes us toward our goals.”

Once we achieved our success, and we were safe in power, maybe then I could allow myself to hope.

“Well? Are you happy where we are?” she asked, the words so soft it was like they barely left her lips.

“No,” I replied. My eyes flicked to her lips. “But I can’t risk failing, so I must resist.”

She stepped out of my arms. The lack of her was void, empty, darkness. I had to stop myself from reaching for her as if her light held a gravitational pull that had ensnared me.

“Tell me why.”

She was testing me.

I closed my eyes. “After my parents died, I did everything I could to gain enough power to protect my siblings. When I was seventeen, I met a young boy who wanted to join the same vigilante group I had. He reminded me so much of my youngest brother. I used to play with him, bring him food, teach him the things I was learning in my classes. He had no one except me.” The past replayed in front of my eyes. I could almost taste the smoke in the air. “One night, I was asked to stand guard outside our leader’s house, but the boy found me and asked for food. He hadn’t eaten all day. I told him to stand in my place while I left to get some food. When I came back, my leader had been attacked. Our men fought off the attack, but the boy died, shot in the chest.”

I could still see his face. I could still feel that crushing guilt that I had caused his end.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, searching my face. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“If I hadn’t been distracted, if I had just stayed focused, that boy wouldn’t have died,” I continued. “My leader almost killed me that night. He taught me the lesson I had already learned. Distractions were death. He told me if it happened again, he would kill me, and then he’d kill all my real brothers and sisters.”

“Shit, Obi.” She shook her head. “I don’t…”

“I’m not telling you this for sympathy, but only for you to understand why I am this way.” I looked at my hands, picturing how much blood they carried. “I’ve never told anyone. Not even Ryu.”

It felt terrifying—and freeing—to speak of my past. Leona listened, even as my shadows curled around us.

“Obi, what do you want?” she whispered, searching my face. “Answer me straight. Do you want me to marry Cas?”

“Yes, and overwhelmingly, no ,” I replied. The realization sank into my veins. Seeing that ring caused a bomb to go off inside my chest. The possibility that she’d be lost to me forever felt unacceptable. Yet inevitable.

“Talk to me,” she pleaded. “Please.”

“I cannot stand how much I want you. Yet I cannot let go of the fear that I will ruin everything.”

“You want me?” she breathed.

I stepped forward to press our bodies flush again. “ I want you . So wholly and completely, I fear I will lose everything else I care about.” I allowed one of my hands to rest at the base of her throat. “I want you so fiercely that my nightmares are about losing you , Leona. I want your headstrong willfulness. I want your strength. I want your brilliance and your bloodthirstiness. I want your body, and I want your soul. But I cannot ask you to give me what I cannot give you.”

“What do you mean?”

“My soul is so dark and stained, I’m certain I no longer have one. It’s disappeared, withered away. All that remains is a desiccated husk of the man I should have been, the man I gave up on being.” I shook my head. “You deserve better than that.”

“I don’t want that man.” She gripped my arms. “I want this one. This genius of a man and this weapon of a man. I want him, all of him, the body, and what remains of the soul.”

She wanted me, darkness and all. It’s what she’d been telling me the entire time, but I never considered it possible. My body ached to take her, bring us together until there was no separation.

Was it possible to have what I desired and still gain the power I needed?

My fingers explored her bare skin.

Would I not irreparably damage her—damage the pursuit of our goals?

“I will only hurt you,” I whispered. “Hurt all of us.”

“I can take it,” she replied. Her chest pushed against me, and desire surged through my body so strongly it made my head dizzy. Her hands cupped my cheeks, weaving through my beard. “What would be so bad about that?”

“ Everything . There are only two possibilities. You would look at me, and all you’d see would be violence. You and my brothers would turn away in disgust and resentment, just like my siblings. Or I would cause your deaths, just like that boy. Nothing would have mattered. Everything I’ve done would be purposeless. It would be dust in the wind, and I would be left with the scars, yet nothing to show for them except failure.”

“Those are not the only two possibilities. You have to choose if this—if we— are worth the risk. You must trust that I’m not going anywhere. You have to let go, Obi.”

“I do not know if I can.”

“You haven’t even tried.”

My eyes flicked up. Had I not tried? Had I not been trying since the moment I first saw her?

I’d kept her at arm’s-length. I’d thought I could walk the edge between knowing her and getting what we both wanted, without it becoming messy. I’d wanted purpose and goals and safety.

Perhaps I hadn’t truly tried. Perhaps I’d only taken the pieces of her I thought were safe. I’d only taken the pieces I wanted to use from her.

But they were not enough.

I wanted more. I wanted everything .

“It’s not me you need to be truthful with,” she said. “It’s yourself.”

She was right. It wasn’t her rejection I was afraid of. It was that I’d look in the mirror and only feel disgust and shame. It’s that I’d feel the same guilt I felt when that boy died in my place.

Leona said she’d wanted all of me. The tragedy and the strength. If she could see all of me laid bare, and still not run, I could do the same.

I brushed a stray lock of hair from her face.

“This is the truth I cannot speak aloud. I am a fool, through and through.”

I bent down and fused my lips to hers. It was darkness and it was light. As the sun rose over the city and bathed us in its soft summer glow, I was born anew. Her kiss was redemption.

My hands hooked under her thighs, lifting her, and pulling her taut against me. I carried her through the apartment, bracing her against the wall outside the door to my room. She could surely feel my erection straining against my pants just as I could feel the heat radiating from her core.

My body pinned her, my hands sliding up her thighs, a question on my lips.

“Yes,” she answered without me even needing to ask.

I carried her inside my room and kicked the door shut behind us. I carefully sat down on the bed, letting her legs straddle me on either side.

“Obi,” she breathed.

My hands traveled up her thighs, over her hips to grip her waist. Our mouths moved together greedily. The dam was broken, and desire raged as a flood. She ground down on my lap and my erection bit against the seam of my pants, begging to be free. To slide inside her and finally make us one.

She broke the kiss, breathing hard. She held my gaze as she gripped the ends of her shirt and tugged it over her head.

It felt strange to be able to touch her so freely after resisting for so long. My fingers were tentative, exploratory. She shivered when I trailed a finger up her sternum, all the way to the dip in her throat.

A woman whose darkness collided with mine. So beautiful it hurt.

“Stand,” I commanded.

Carefully, she stood from my lap and waited.

“Strip.”

She unhooked the clasp of her bra and let it drop to the floor. Then she hooked her panties between her fingers and drew them to the ground.

I sucked in a breath. The early morning sunlight bounced off her flushed skin, and I drank in the sight of her.

“Sit on my lap.”

She stepped forward, and I grabbed her waist to help her straddle me again. Wetness coated the inside of her thighs.

“Touch me,” she whispered, hands on my shoulders.

I may command her, but she commanded me just the same. I was powerless to her quietest whisper.

I groaned, sliding my fingers through her slickness. “I will watch you come on my fingers. I will draw those beautiful sounds from your lips.”

I’d dreamed of them, too, since we’d left LA. I needed to hear them again.

Her knees spread wider, opening for me to push inside her entrance. With my other hand, I collared her throat and crashed my lips to hers, swallowing the sweetest symphony of her sounds.

“Ride my fingers,” I instructed, pumping them inside her. She rolled her hips, tilting her head back, and exposing her neck. I sucked on the exposed skin as I rubbed in tight circles over her clit. “Take your pleasure from me. Take everything you need. All that I am belongs to you.”

“Obi,” she whimpered, clutching my arms for purchase as she ground down on my hand. My name on her breathless lips was ecstasy. “It feels so good. Yes. Right there. Don’t stop.”

My other hand splayed against her back, holding her firmly in place. She fit so perfectly within my grasp. She was my mirror, the only one who could ignite both my brain and my body.

Her hips jerked. Her fingers clawed into my arms.

“Come for me,” I murmured. “Let me see you fall apart.”

“ Yes, Obi.”

I watched, rapt, at the beautiful way her eyebrows knit together. At the way her mouth parted. At the euphoria shooting across her face. Her walls clenched around my fingers, her body trembling. I let her draw every ounce of pleasure she could from my fingers until she finally stopped shaking and she opened her eyes.

“You are so beautiful. So strong. As brilliant as the sun.” I pressed my cheek to hers, listening to the sounds of our heavy breaths mingling. “ Ifunanya’m,” I whispered in her ear. “ Nke’m. ”

I took her lips in a deep kiss. Agonizingly slow, achingly tender. A kiss that contained the entire breadth of my feeling for her.

A claiming kiss.

A declaration .

“Obi,” she whispered against my lips.

“ Eze nwanyin obi’m, ” I murmured, pulling back to stare at her. I brushed a hand against her cheek.

“What does that mean?”

My eyes crinkled with a soft smile. “Queen of my heart.”

That is what she was. It was what she had been from the very first time I laid eyes on her.

There was no resistance left. I would not sacrifice her, or turn away from her for our goals. She was what I wanted. She would not run from me, and I would not run from her.

She melted against my chest. “You can’t just say things like that and not expect me to collapse.”

I chuckled, brushing her hair back. “ Ifunanya’m . The only one I see with my eyes. Mine.”

“Yours,” she murmured.