Chapter Text
Epilogue II
Irisa
Ten Years Later
“What are you looking at?”
Silva looks away from the window, narrowing a skeptical glare to the rustling trees before those stormy gray eyes meet mine.
I huff, swinging my leg to nudge his shin under the table.
I mumble, “I don’t believe in ghosts, but the way you were looking outside makes me think otherwise.”
I believe what I see, but I’m not closed-minded on possibilities. When Silva looked at the window for longer than a passing glance, it hit something unnerving in me to question it.
Maybe I’m paranoid. I haven’t had the best experience in isolated places, and part of me still blames Mammon and Sunflower Home. Nothing about that place screamed happiness; it was a makeshift house of horror and disrespected religion.
Silva had been exposing me with trips to isolated areas, but the itch underneath my skin can’t be scratched despite the exposure.
“There is no such thing as ghosts,” he scolds evasively.
I counter rather absurdly, “I don’t believe in Santa, but he brings me presents.”
That is if Santa is a tall, burly, attractive man wearing only red pants. On every important date, holiday or not, he always has gifts for me.
He grunts, eyeing the window again. “I bring you more than presents.”
When Silva offered me the choice of picking one of his many properties as our home, I hadn’t thought out the implications in his words. When I moved out of the place that he bought me, he told me that we were going to get married.
He didn’t propose or ask; it was a simple command with those fierce gray eyes daring me to challenge him.
If he thought I was going to let him become my husband that easily, then he was correct. I still made him court me; no woman would turn down a big, powerful, handsome man pursuing them with too much vigor.
He’s rather frightening when he smothered me with his affection.
He knew showering me with expensive gifts wouldn’t work. From the very beginning, he had been spoiling me beyond what’s appropriate for whatever we were back then.
In hindsight, it could be called courting when he moved me into a massive home after the landlord died.
So, Silva took a different approach. He went for affection, and it worked like a charm to a girl who had abandonment issues.
He promised that he would never leave me, and I took the promise willingly despite Silva being a deceitful man.
That’s rich coming from a natural liar.
Silva’s keeping his promise.
“I can live without you. I’ll grieve and move on, but I’ll remember you. You’re my wife; you’ll always have me, in life and death. You’re not replaceable. You’ve tried to kill me; I came back for you. I’ve never imagined living without you.”
To some, Silva’s a tyrant. To me, he’s akin to the desire to live.
Earlier in our relationship, I had doubts that I could understand what being in love felt like. Silva had made it abundantly clear that his feelings are not infatuation, nor am I a passing fancy.
He was in love. Over ten years, he had taught me love in the senses of platonic, familial, and romantic. He’s my friend, family, and husband. I thought being the powerhouse mafia boss is the most he could accomplish.
“When you die, I’ll die with you even if it’s not my time.”
For a mafia boss, that’s as romantic as it can get with wedding vows.
“I’m not leaving you.”
At times, I’d think a stalker’s soul had inhibited Silva because that sounded strangely like a declaration of obsession.
“I—”
Blinking in surprise, the chair in front of me is empty. I look around quickly, scanning the cabin for signs of Silva. I didn’t notice he had left me sitting here and staring into space like an idiot.
I swear if he’s trying to pull a stunt and scare me with this ghastly danger lurking in the woods, then I will get angry.
Anger that he will kiss away. I can’t be mad when he kisses like a starved man.
Part of me is expecting a surprise gift when I leave the table. I slip into the hallway, the back of my shirt fluttering on my thighs as I stroll to embrace the warm heat.
It’s not cold, but the cabin is higher up on the mountain. The temperature is lower than the town, and I have Silva’s big, muscled arms to keep me warm.
Or he spreads my legs on the bed and fucks me until delirium slurs my words.
I might as well forgo underwear around him, so my panties don’t need to drop when he crooks a mischievous grin.
I call his name, but I don’t hear a response. The cabin isn’t that spacious; he prefers this place to feel more intimate than a massive mansion.
Our home is a mansion, and he can’t convince me otherwise.
I peer into the spare bedroom and don’t see him. A click from the backdoor pops just as I finish checking the cabin for him, thinking his massive body can’t be hidden anywhere.
I hurry to the sound, a smile spreading on my face as his name sits on my tongue. It goes back down my throat at the sight of him.
Silva closes the door softly behind him, but it’s the loudest echo that matches with a vindictive heartbeat. He stands with exuding antagonism, sin inscribing across the scarred inks and embodying raw provocation.
His dominance tips to the ragged edges of volatile sensuality when he speaks in that velvety baritone.
“Little wife,” he warns.
“Yes, dear husband?” I question back, blinking innocently with a worried gasp.
“How did she know about this cabin?” Silva commands, expectant of an answer as he turns the lock behind him without looking.
I stand my ground, desire rolling anxiously in my stomach. He shamelessly trails his gaze over my body to my eyes.
My heart thumps heavily against my ribs. A strident, almost imperceptible, shudder claws down my back—it’s an admission of guilt, and he latches onto it with a hostile glare.
“Who, Norine?” I ask lightly, “I thought Ivo was keeping an eye on her.”
The closer he gets, the more I realize that I still can’t lie to him. Ever since he found me in witness protection and carried me off, I hadn’t uttered a lie to him.
I withheld the truth, so it’s lying-adjacent. It’s only a lie when I say it, and Silva knows I’ll use that loophole when the desirable itch to lie rises.
Childhood habits are hard to change, but I’m trying, and he’s accepting of that.
Silva comes to stand in front of me, displaying the gorgeous spirals of ink on his muscled body and tempting me to touch him.
“I’m filthy,” he voices, imposing. “Come clean me.”
I smear a dot of splattered blood on his hot skin, wiping the sticky crimson over his grooved abs while shivers of lust rage between my legs.
Peering through my lashes, I joke with a teasing smile, “Can I wash your shirt on the washboard?”
He’s all sharp angles and perverse morals, wrapping corruption around him as an insignia of solace to lure me into the comfort of his arms that’s been stained with streaking blood.
I wrap my arms around his strong waist and tighten the grip. The button-up shirt I took from his massive body absorbs the blood, transferring the cooling moisture onto my skin as I prop my chin on his chest.
“Don’t use excuses to grope,” he chides, wiping the smile off my face.
“That’s true,” I agree, nodding along, “You don’t mind me doing it anyway.”
He has never stopped me from skimming a finger over his burly arms, running a tongue down his tight abs, or even attempted to stop my fingers from inching around his neck.
The amount of unfathomable trust he has in me is undeniably comforting. I’m not a bad person; I’ve done reprehensible things in the past, hurt him, and destroyed the chance of having normalcy.
Whether I was born with war in my soul and cultivated evil in my heart from experience, I was never allowed to have normalcy.
Not from my parents, Mammon, Norine, and certainly not from Silva.
“Ask me, Irisa; I can give up the mafia for you.”
He vowed to me that his allegiance belongs to me. With one word, I can make him leave that dangerous domain. Silva will give me the world, but that is only if I ask.
He picked up on my habit of simply doing things without consultation. I didn’t have anyone to run my plans by, so that point is useless.
I’m selfish but never greedy.
“Answer me,” Silva snaps curtly.
His big, powerful hand swiftly smacks my ass. I yelp from the stinging pain, the throbbing pulses hotly to form his handprint under my silk panties.
The cabin is too warm for pants, but truthfully, I just like having his hand stroke my legs mindlessly.
Silva accuses with a glare, “You were going to let a stranger see your panties.”
My nails run down his back naughtily; his heart jerks between thumps. His lips twist into a frown, darkening the tension in his alarmingly composed gaze.
“I didn’t know we were having guests.” I shrug, sensing his hand flexing and clamping his fingers on my ass.
He reckons, “We weren’t, and no one will come.”
I swallow thickly and scrutinize a drop of blood trickling down his inked chest. My finger traces the blood, smearing it over the new tattoo where he had my name engraved over the bullet scar I gave him.
It’s confusing for me, but it made my heart flutter when he got it.
“That sounds ominous considering we’re in the middle of nowhere,” I mutter, enthralled by the delicate strokes in the ink.
His chest rumbles deeply, shocking me out of my trance. “The only sound you’re making is screaming.”
My arms leave his waist and angle back to stare at him. “Why?”
He says, so unreservedly detached, “You made me kill someone.”
My teeth catch my bottom lip, nipping softly to carefully examine my words. His heady scent flushes into my lungs with trailing cooper as memories of that awful woman resurfaces.
“She was trying to take you from me,” I recall, instantly pulling a sneer on my face. “That woman, whatever her name is with a squirrel tattoo.”
I’m not involved with Silva’s business, but it wasn’t hard to notice the faint fragrance of rancidness on occasions when he returned from work.
I have trust in my husband; he is faithful.
One evening, we were having dinner at an upscale restaurant when that woman came, invited herself to our private table, and ran her tongue on business strategies as if I was invisible.
I knew it was that woman the moment I smelled her horrid perfume. So, when Silva left the table to answer a call with Ivo staring at the woman like a hawk, I casually let it slip that Silva would be at the cabin alone.
She wanted to lie in bed with Silva, and I wanted her to sleep as nature’s compost.
“I know,” I say promptly, “You said to tell you if I want someone dead.”
“Yet, you didn’t,” he says, but it’s not harsh, “Now, I’m dirtied.”
I back away slowly. His arms flex, shaping habitual strength to keep me close before letting them fall to his sides.
“Where’s the fun without playing dirty?” I whisper daringly.
A light blush kisses my cheeks, similar to the way he’d kiss me in the morning. I shuffle my bare feet, squirming under his inquisitive gaze that easily transcends to iniquity as a depraved shade of gray dominates.
“Is that how you want to play, little wife?” he asks, a cruel smirk spreads the streaked blood on his cheek.
They’re red strings—tugging, unraveling, splintering the façade of a man I’ve come to love for a monster that I’ve come to depend on.
He lunges at me, and my squealing laughter echoes throughout the cabin.