Page 32 of Watch Me Burn

CATERINA

T he gun fires once. Twice. Three times.

Delgado collapses before a scream can leave my throat—a perfect hole punched between his eyes, another in his chest, a third slicing through his throat. His body hits the ground heavily, already lifeless.

Silence crashes through the room, punctuated only by the faint metallic ping of shell casings scattering across concrete.

My voice rasps out, raw and disbelieving. “You killed him.”

Aaron’s jaw tightens as he lowers the gun, knuckles white around the grip, as if he can’t believe what he’s just done.

He shakes his head, rushing over to me.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I manage, heart pounding violently, mind spinning with the reality of what just happened. Aaron Jackson just executed a man without hesitation. For me.

“You…why…you shot him. Without hesitation.”

“Would you rather I let him shoot you? Or were you hoping to finish the job yourself?”

I shake my head, the adrenaline clouding my thoughts. “I wasn’t going to kill him. Not yet anyway.”

“No? You were going to kneecap him and leave him here?” He gestures angrily. “You think they wouldn’t trace it straight back to you?”

“I had it under control,” I insist, even as the lie tastes bitter on my tongue. Delgado would’ve never stopped hunting me. Letting him leave this warehouse alive had never truly been an option.

Aaron’s arms wrap around me, hauling me upright. The sharp bite of gunpowder fades beneath the warm, rich scent of his cologne—leather, spice, and dark comfort amidst chaos.

“He was going to kill you, Caterina.”

“Why do you care?” I demand, suddenly furious. “You made your feelings perfectly clear the other night.”

Something dark flashes behind his eyes at the memory. “Everything has changed.”

“How? Tell me how.”

“Because I didn’t understand then.” He gestures toward the unconscious girl in the corner, the drugs scattered across the desk. “I didn’t realize what you were really doing.”

“And now you do? You think you understand me?”

“I know you’re not who I thought you were. And I know I just betrayed everything I stand for to protect you. Maybe neither of us is who we thought.”

Maybe neither of us is who we thought.

His words hit me like a freight train.

“You could have let me die.”

“Fuck,” he whispers, the word barely audible. His eyes dart to the bullet hole in the wall behind me—inches from where I’d been standing. Then back to Delgado’s lifeless body.

“No, I couldn’t.”

Well that’s new. He doesn’t sound angry or detached, but there is a rawness I’ve never heard from him before.

“Why?” I whisper, needing to understand.

He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” His gaze locks onto mine, searching for something beneath the surface, piercing into places no one else has ever reached.

“That’s not good enough.”

I’ve spent my life defined by others. Caterina Mortelle, the mafia princess, the prized possession of my father’s empire.

Men have desired, feared, and used me, but none of them have ever truly seen me.

The shadows I carry. The blood on my hands.

The desperate, burning need to atone for sins that aren’t mine.

A distant alarm wails, shrill and urgent, signaling security’s imminent arrival. We have minutes, maybe less.

Aaron’s head snaps toward the sound. “We need to go. Now.”

“I’m not leaving until you tell me why you saved my life.”

His eyes find mine again, raw and unguarded. “Because I can’t watch you die. Not even when everything I believe says I should.”

The silence that follows feels impossible.

“Okay,” I finally utter.

“Okay.” He nods once, looking as thrown as I feel. His eyes shift to the unconscious girl. “What about?—”

“I’ll handle it. I’ll call an anonymous tip and get her to a hospital.”

A radio crackles somewhere outside. Footsteps scrape gravel.

“You saved her and so many like her.”

My shoulder tips up. “I’m still a killer.”

“So am I,” Aaron says softly. “Both can exist at once. The killer and the savior.”

His thumb sweeps over my wrist, pressing gently where my pulse beats erratically beneath his touch. A quiet reminder that I’m alive—still human beneath all the darkness I carry.

Something cracks open inside me, fracturing walls I’ve spent a lifetime building. My world has always been defined by rigid lines—good and evil, strength and weakness, power and vulnerability. No middle ground. No mercy.

But Aaron forces me to question all of it.

He offers no absolutes, only the maddening possibility of shades of gray. The dangerous allure of contradiction. The terrifying suggestion that maybe I don’t have to choose between darkness and light. That maybe I can exist in the shadowed spaces between.

As unsettling as that is, I realize it’s exactly what I’ve always needed.

“No one’s ever,” I struggle to find the words, vulnerability foreign on my tongue. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”

His eyes soften, seeing past every barrier I’ve tried so hard to maintain. “Maybe no one ever looked past what you wanted them to see.”

A distant car door slams, voices carry through the air, shattering the intimacy of the moment. We have mere seconds before Delgado’s men—or worse, my father’s—discover the carnage we left behind.

“We need to move,” he orders, stepping back. His weapon raised, focus sharp again. “Now.”

We slip out through the back entrance, night air cool against my flushed skin. We move through the maze of warehouses silently, perfectly in sync. It hits me that this is the first time we’ve truly worked together, not as reluctant allies, but as partners.

“Stay low,” Aaron whispers, tugging me behind a shipping container as a patrol races by. His hand remains firmly locked around mine, a steady anchor in the chaos.

We finally reach my car, hidden several blocks away. I’m breathless but not from running, from the intensity burning between us.

“We shouldn’t be seen together,” I whisper, unlocking the door with trembling fingers. “Lorenzo has eyes everywhere. Especially now.”

“I know.” Aaron’s face is half-shadow in the dim streetlight.

“What happens tomorrow? When we go back to our real lives, when you remember who I am—what my family does?”

Aaron steps closer, hesitation flickering in his eyes before resolve takes its place. “I don’t know. But I know I can’t unsee what happened tonight.” He lifts a hand, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear, fingertips lingering on my skin. “I can’t unfeel what I’m feeling.”

“And what is that?” My words are barely a breath.

He answers by pulling me close, wrapping his arm possessively around my waist as his lips find mine. The kiss isn’t cruel or punishing. It’s honest, raw—charged with need, longing, and a terrifying glimmer of hope.

When we part, his gaze mirrors the conflict raging within me. Enemies by circumstance, bound together by something neither of us asked for, something neither of us can deny.

“I’ll handle the fallout,” he finally says, his voice professional again. “Make sure this doesn’t trace back to us.”

I nod, knowing this fragile truce is the closest thing to a promise we can afford. “Aaron.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he says, cutting me off before I can voice the impossible. “One day at a time.”

I slide behind the wheel and pull away, watching Aaron shrink in the rearview mirror. His silhouette growing smaller, yet somehow carving itself deeper into me.

What I feel isn’t hope. That’s too delicate, too unfamiliar for people like us.

It’s something stranger. Sharper.

Recognition.

The rare, disarming relief of being truly seen and not turned away.

I know it won’t last. It never does.

But tonight, amongst all the chaos, I felt the quiet absence of hate. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Whether he’ll wake and regret every inch of what passed between us, or if this fragile thread between us will snap under the weight of daylight.

But for now…I’m not alone in the dark.

And that’s enough.