Page 50 of Vega

“We were there. We didn’t come to the repast.”

I tried to remember every unfamiliar face inside the church. There had been too many people standing along the walls and too many moments when I couldn’t see anything beyond Kash’s casket.

The voice continued. “We also gave his mother the money for the funeral. Cartiers take care of their own. Kash was a good dude. He was loyal and never brought unnecessary trouble to our door. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

“No, he didn’t.” My voice barely made it through the grief.

“We’re going to find out who killed him. We’ll do anything and everything necessary to find whoever did this. And when we do, we’ll handle it.”

Fresh tears blurred the building in front of me. I had spent days listening to detectives tell me they were following leads, waiting on evidence, and doing everything they could. Their words had sounded empty. This man sounded more certain.

My tears fell harder.

“You need to be strong for a few more hours,” he told me. “Go back inside. Stay with his mother. Get through today. Tomorrow, we got you.”

The call ended before I could ask anything else.

A text appeared seconds later with an address and a time.

I locked the phone and returned it to my purse.

I stood outside until I could breathe without sobbing, then smoothed my dress and walked back toward the building.

VEGARRO “VEGA” MORETTI

I sat in the security office downstairs, watching Sonnet through the cameras as she dragged the small writing desk as far as the chain would let her move it.

She had tested the length of the chain enough times to know exactly where the metal stopped her. Now, she worked within those limits, pushing the desk from beneath the window and against the opposite wall. She stepped back, then tilted her head, studying the space.

She looked weaker than she had four days ago. Her cheekbones were sharper, her movements were slower, and the oversized shirt I had brought her hung on her body like she was shrinking inside it. She slept more now, but not peacefully. Half the time, she woke up crying. The other half, she stared at nothing.

She had already removed the vent cover, examined the duct, and put everything back exactly as she found it. She tested the window every hour, pulling the bars as though she expected the lock to develop a sudden weakness.

She had also started timing me. She was calculating how long I stayed away, how much time passed between meals, and whether my pattern remained consistent.

She was a smart girl.

The eggs, turkey sausage, toast, and fruit I had brought that morning remained on the breakfast tray.

I was trying to protect her, and she was making that harder than it needed to be. If she would cooperate, eat, stop trying to escape, and accept that Roman was the real threat, I could loosen the control. But I didn’t trust her.

If I unchained her, she would run the first chance she got, without understanding that Roman’s people were waiting for exactly that. I hated the chain. I hated the way it turned me into another man she feared.

I had handled men twice her size who accepted defeat faster. But Sonnet hadn’t accepted anything. I should’ve been annoyed by her disobedience. Instead, I watched her lift the mattress and inspect the bed frame, and an unwilling smile touched my mouth.

I had never been this enamored with a woman. Attraction had always been simple for me. I saw a woman I wanted, made my interest clear, and decided whether whatever followed was worth repeating. I didn’t obsess.

Sonnet had changed that without kissing me, without touching me unless she was trying to cause injury. Every moment with her already felt intimate.

She had seen the violent part of me first. She didn’t know the version of me that laughed with my cousins, sat through family dinners, or let my mother send me home with food I hadn’t asked for.

Keeping her alive meant keeping her trapped. Giving her freedom meant allowing Roman’s people another chance to get to her. Every day she remained inside that room, I became another reason for her to fear men.

I hated that she was afraid of me. Fear had always been useful. It made people listen. But I didn’t want Sonnet to fear me. It didn’t satisfy the lethal part of me. I wanted her to understand that the worst thing I had done to her was also the reason she was still breathing.

I knew that sounded like the kind of lie captors told themselves. But it didn’t stop the possessiveness I was starting to feel. I had taken her and locked her inside my property. Those things gave me control over her circumstances, not ownership of the woman. But she felt like mine. The feeling came from somewhere in my body that wasn’t being reasonable. Now, the thought of another man touching her, frightening her, or deciding what happened to her made violence erupt inside me.

I wanted her. I wanted the mouth that kept telling me no. I wanted the mind that searched every corner of the room for a way to defeat me. I wanted to remove her glasses, watch her eyes struggle to focus on my face, and feel her body soften because she chose to trust the hands she had once tried to bite.