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Chapter 23- In My Arms
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2025-12-07 06:26:37
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A Sinful Devotion CHAPTER 29— THE QUIET WE CHOOSE
The date is Nicholas’s idea. He doesn’t call it that. He just says, “Come with me tonight,” like it’s an order softened by hope. Like he’s bracing for rejection even as he pretends he isn’t. Rafe hesitates only a moment. “Okay,” he says. And something fragile and dangerous blooms behind Nicholas’s ribs. They leave the café just before sunset. Rafe locks the door carefully, double-checks the sign, straightens the chairs like the place might collapse if he doesn’t. Nicholas watches from the curb, hands in his coat pockets, memorizing the way Rafe exists when he thinks no one important is watching. He’s wrong. Every version of Rafe is important. They don’t go anywhere loud. Nicholas would never. He chooses a quiet restaurant tucked between a bookstore and a florist — warm lights, low music, too soft for violence. The kind of place that feels like a promise instead of a threat. Rafe looks around when they sit. “This place is… nice,” he says. Nicholas nods. “It doesn’t bleed
A Sinful Devotion CHAPTER SEVEN — THE WAY I GUARD YOU
Nick's POV I know the moment he’s recognized.It’s instinct — the same one that kept me alive in rooms filled with men who smiled while sharpening knives. The same instinct that taught me how to read betrayal in the tilt of a head, the pause before a breath.The bell above the café door rings.Rafe looks up from the counter, smiles softly, and says, “Good afternoon.”The man who walks in freezes.Just for a fraction of a second.But it’s enough.His eyes lock on Rafe’s face like he’s staring at a ghost.And I feel it.That cold, crawling certainty sliding down my spine.Someone remembers him.---THE MAN FROM THE PASTHis name is Luca Santori.Former logistics runner for a splinter syndicate we burned to the ground three years ago. Not high-ranking, not brilliant — but observant. The kind of man who survived by remembering faces, debts, and blood.I killed his boss.Rafe killed his escape route.And Luca watched it all happen.Now he’s standing in my café — our café — with recognitio
A Sinful Devotion CHAPTER 27-THE LIFE THAT HAUNTS ME
Rafe's POV I stop sleeping properly after Nicholas tells me my name. Not the one on my café name tag. Not the one the hospital gave me when they couldn’t find fingerprints or records or family. But the one that belongs to me. Rafael Vega. It doesn’t feel like a stranger’s name. That’s the worst part. It settles into my chest like something that’s always lived there, curling tight around my lungs, heavy and familiar. When I repeat it silently, my heart reacts before my mind can catch up — a stutter, a pull, a sharp ache that makes me press my fist against my sternum like I can physically hold myself together. Rafael Vega. I whisper it into the dark the first night. The dreams come immediately. --- THE FIRST DREAM — BLOOD AND PROMISES I’m kneeling. Not weak — never weak — but controlled. Intentional. There’s blood on the floor, streaked in dark arcs like spilled ink. Someone groans behind me. Someone else is praying. I don’t turn. I already know who matters. He stand
A Sinful Devotion CHAPTER 26— THE MAN I DREAM ABOUT
Rafe's POV The man with the dark eyes comes back the next day. I notice him before the bell over the café door rings — before I hear his footsteps, before I smell the faint trace of smoke and something sharper, metallic, like rain on steel. It’s stupid. But my body knows him. My hands still as I’m wiping down the counter, my pulse skipping in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with recognition. I look up. There he is. Same coat. Same posture. Same impossible stillness, like the room has shifted to accommodate him instead of the other way around. Nicholas. I don’t know why his name comes to me so easily. I told myself last night that it didn’t mean anything. That I was reading too much into a stranger who looked at me like I mattered more than the rest of the world combined. People look at people all the time. But not like that. His gaze locks onto mine the second our eyes meet. Something tightens in my chest. He doesn’t smile. He never does.
A Sinful Devotion CHAPTER 25— THE TRUTH DOESN’T STAY BURIED
Nick's POV The city had changed in a year. Or maybe I had. The streets felt narrower. Meaner. Every shadow looked like it was hiding something from me — a secret, a lie, a body that never stayed where it was buried. Rafe was alive. That fact sat inside my chest like a live wire, humming constantly, daring me to touch it again. Every breath I took scraped against it. Every thought circled back to the same impossible image: Rafael Vega. Standing behind a café counter. Alive. I hadn’t gone back to the café. Not yet. If I walked in again without answers, I would tear the place apart with my bare hands just to prove he was real. And I couldn’t afford that — not when he looked at me like I was just another stranger passing through his life. So I did what I had always done best. I hunted. --- THE FIRST LIE The black car moved silently through the city as dusk bled into night. I sat in the backseat, jacket discarded, sleeves rolled up, staring at nothing while everything burn
A Sinful Devotion Chapter 24 - Alive
Nicholas didn’t remember standing. He didn’t remember walking. He didn’t remember pushing the café door open or stepping into the cold afternoon light. All he remembered was the way his heart had stopped beating the moment he looked into Rafe’s face. Alive. Breathing. Smiling politely at strangers. Rafe. He kept walking. The street blurred around him—cars passing, voices rising and falling, the world continuing as if his entire life had not just shattered and reformed in a single breath. His chest felt tight. His hands were trembling. Nicholas Rhodes never trembled. But he was trembling now. Because the one thing he had mourned, buried, burned for— The one person whose death had hollowed him out— The man whose blood he still dreamed about— Was alive. Alive and unaware. Alive and serving coffee. Alive and looking at him with blank innocence. Nicholas stopped at the end of the street, bracing one hand against a lamppost as the realization hit him all at once. He wh
