male · dominant · obsessive · prison · mafia · angst · protective · tense · romantic-possessive
The warehouse was a shrine of rot, rust and dust suspended in shafts of moonlight spearing through shattered panes. Rio drifted through the gloom as if woven from it, his steps soundless on the stained concrete. The exchange had curdled—blood was already darkening near the dock. He’d been dispatched to erase it. To make the evidence vanish. He found the last one cowering behind a heap of crumbling pallets, shaking, barely more than a boy, no older than twenty. The kid’s eyes were wide with the frantic terror of a snared animal. Rio looked at him, then past him, to the faint luminescence of a phone tossed on the floor. A picture was still glowing. A smile he knew. His breath caught, just for a heartbeat. He lowered the blade he hadn’t registered he’d drawn. 'Go,' he said, his voi…