Page 36 of Beautiful Savage
Like the truth neither of us is ready for.
14 - Gunner
Day twenty-seven. Six days since she confronted me about Hallstein. Six days of maintaining careful distance while I planned tonight, while the need to claim her publicly burned through my veins like poison I craved.
Saturday morning. Nine AM. The security office reeks of stale coffee and electronics. Two monitors cycle through La Sirena's cameras. Kitchen, hallway, loading dock. The endless surveillance I've maintained since Jorge Delgado pulled me from the rain nine years ago.
The timestamp catches my eye. 8:42 AM, back corridor. I pause the feed, rewind.
There. Daphne walking past the staff coat hooks, barefoot like she does most mornings now. Those fucking bare feet on my clean concrete, like she owns the place. Like she owns me. Jeans and t-shirt, hair in that loose knot that makes my fingers itch to pull it free, heading from the laundry room toward the apartment stairs.
Someone passes her going the opposite direction. One of the new hires, Eric, I think Logan called him. Started three months ago, brought in from that Doral security firm. As they pass, his head turns. His mouth moves. One word. The audio captures it clearly.
"Baby."
Not the word itself. It's the tone that makes my blood turn to ice. Suggestive, possessive, the kind of tone that makes me want to break fingers one by one.
Daphne doesn't react. Keeps walking. Maybe doesn't even register it consciously. Eric continues toward the staff entrance like he hasn't just signed his own transfer papers.
I replay it. Four times. Memorizing his face, the exact inflection, the way his eyes track her ass for a beat too long. By the fourth replay, rage has crystallized into decision.
My phone is in my hand before I've finished the thought. Logan answers on the second ring.
"Eric. The new hire from Doral. Move him to the Hialeah warehouse. Night collections. Effective Monday."
"Understood."
No questions. Logan knows this voice, the one that handles Delgado family business without explanation. The call ends. Sixty seconds from footage to consequence.
I close the feed, but something fundamental has shifted. Nine years of iron control, and I've just acted on pure possessive instinct in under a minute. The discipline isn't breaking. It's transforming into something darker, reshaping itself around her. That decision I made five nights ago while watching her sleep, about keeping her forever, is already making my choices for me.
She'll never know. Eric will spend his nights collecting debts in Hialeah, wondering what he did to get demoted from the family's crown jewel. The corridor will stay safe for her barefoot mornings. My protection invisible, like the cage I'm building around her without asking permission.
Four-thirty PM. The apartment thrums with air conditioning fighting Miami's wet heat. The box waits on the bed where I left it while she was downstairs. Courier delivery this morning, no sender name, though she'll know I ordered it.
She's in the bathroom now, the shower just ended, humming something French that makes my chest ache. The box lies open. Tissue paper pushed aside, gold silk catching afternoon light likeliquid money. The gown is heavy silk that will cling to every curve, the back cut low enough to make my mouth go dry. Three-inch heels in matching gold leather that will bring her mouth closer to mine.
I sit at the desk, laptop open to territory reports I've read three times without absorbing a word. My focus keeps drifting to the sounds from the bathroom. Drawers opening, the whisper of fabric against skin, her voice soft and content. The domesticity of it fucks with my head. My captive humming while she prepares for a night where I'll parade her as mine.
I stand, cross to the closet. Pull out the suit. Charcoal wool, custom-tailored three years ago by that Bal Harbour tailor who outfits all the Delgado men and knows not to ask questions. The only suit I own because one is all a man like me needs. White shirt, pristine from the dry cleaner who handles the family's clothes. Dark tie. Italian leather shoes I polished last night while she slept, thinking about how tonight changes everything.
The bathroom door opens. She's by the bed in her robe, fingers working through her dark hair with bobby pins, each movement precise and practiced. I take the bathroom, shave with care. Tonight demands perfection, no stubble, nothing rough except what I am underneath. The suit goes on like armor. Shirt crisp against my skin, pants fitted perfectly, jacket transforming me into something that belongs in La Sirena's world of beautiful criminals.
When I emerge, she returns to the bathroom. Through the cracked door, I glimpse her hands twisting her hair into something elegant at the nape of her neck. A chignon, the ballet style that will leave her throat exposed to every eye in that room. To my mouth, if I let myself.
She steps out.
The breath leaves my lungs. The gold silk transforms her into something mythical, dangerous. It pours from her shoulders tothe floor like melted sunlight, the back cut so low I can see the dimples at the base of her spine. Her hair pulled back in that sleek chignon reveals the delicate line of her neck. Minimal makeup. She doesn't need more when she looks like every man's ruin.
My hand grips the back of the chair hard enough to crack wood. Something primal roars to life in my chest. Mine, mine, fucking mine. She's ethereal and untouchable and wearing silk I chose, and the contradiction makes my blood burn so hot I'm surprised the suit doesn't combust.
She crosses to the desk on bare feet, those fucking feet I've been protecting, and picks up the heels. Sits on the bed's edge to put them on, and I watch her calves flex, imagine those legs wrapped around my waist. The added height brings her to 5'7", closer to my mouth, closer to everything I want to do to her.
She stands, looks at me, waiting.
I offer my arm. She takes it.
No words between us. We both understand what tonight is. The public claim I've been building toward since I carried her back from that alley, since I decided she's never leaving. Three hundred of Miami's criminal elite about to witness me stake my claim, while underneath runs the darker truth. The permanent keeping she doesn't know about, the cage that's already locked.
