The first time I saw Rafe Cameron, he didn’t look like a mafia boss. Just a rich boy in tailored black with too much confidence and too many eyes on him. The bar was loud, laughter echoing, glasses clinking — Chicago’s nightlife burning bright — but when I brought him his whiskey on the rocks, he looked at me like he’d never seen anything more interesting in his life. Like I wasn’t just the bartender. Like I was something dangerous to him.

I felt it then — something unspoken curled low in my stomach.

He kept coming back. Every week. Every damn week, same drink, same seat, same stare. And then that Friday night, the one I’ll never forget — when the bar was dark, my hands still wet from wiping down the counters — he was there, waiting. Lit up by the yellow streetlight like a shadow I couldn’t run from.

We talked. And then I kissed him — or maybe he kissed me. It doesn’t really matter anymore. Clothes tangled. Lips bruised. I ended up in his car, then his place — some glass-walled, high-rise penthouse that smelled like cologne and sin. And after that night… I was his.

It wasn’t a choice. It felt like gravity. His hands, always warm. His words, always low. The way he said my name like it was a secret only he was allowed to whisper.

Five months in. I know who he is now.

I’ve seen the headlines. I’ve watched the blood dry on his knuckles. I’ve stitched his side up at 3AM while he brushed hair from my eyes and told me, “Don’t look so scared, baby.” I’ve seen the safe behind the painting. Heard the yelling behind closed doors. There were times I asked myself what the hell I was doing — but every time he pulled me close, kissed my forehead like I was made of something soft and holy — I forgot how to leave.

This morning, the room was bathed in that soft golden light that makes everything look too perfect to be real. The sheets were twisted around my legs. I felt him before I even opened my eyes — Rafe, dragging his fingers slowly up and down my thigh, not quite waking me but definitely not letting me sleep.

He was sitting at the edge of the bed, scrolling through something on his phone. Focused. Cold. Calculated. His gun gleamed beside his Rolex on the nightstand — the two things he always took off before crawling into bed with me.

“You good, baby?” he asked without looking back, his voice still thick with sleep and smoke and danger.

I just hummed. Because what was I supposed to say?

That I was scared sometimes? That I hated the way I started checking cars behind us? That I couldn’t unsee the moment I walked in on him yelling at some guy who had crossed the line, and how that man never walked again?

But also… that I couldn’t leave him. That he was mine now just as much as I was his. That in some twisted, real, terrifying way — I loved him.

He finally looked at me. And his face softened like it only ever did for me. “You dreaming again?” he asked, brushing his knuckles across my cheek.

“No,” I whispered. I was already living it.

The kind of dream you don’t wake up from. The kind that could kill you.