Chapter 34
1364 Words
✨What Rafe Found in the Dark.✨
Nasir Pov
Night had settled over the city in the way it always did — heavy, glittering, indifferent. From the window of his office, the skyline burned gold and white, towers rising like monuments to men who believed themselves untouchable.
He had not taken his jacket off.
He had not sat down.
Since leaving Flora asleep in his bed, something inside him had refused to settle. The unease had followed him down the hall, pacing the length of the room, whispering that peace never lasted.
"Rafe."
Nasir answered on the first ring. “Talk.”
There was a pause on the other end. Too long.
Rafe never paused.
“Where are you?” Rafe asked quietly.
“My office.”
“Good. Lock the door.”
Nasir’s jaw tightened. He did it without question.
The click sounded too loud in the silence.
“Tell me,” Nasir said.
Another breath.
Then Rafe spoke, and with six words the world tilted off its axis.
“He sold her, Nas.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Nasir did not move. Did not blink.
“Say it again.”
Rafe exhaled. “Trump. Her father. He didn’t just plan to marry her off. He already did. On paper.”
The word father landed wrong in his chest.
Sold her.
Nasir closed his eyes once, slowly. “To who.”
There it was again — that pause. Heavy. Careful.
“A man named Victor Hale.”
The name meant nothing.
Rafe continued anyway, voice low, precise, the way he spoke when delivering bad news to men who still believed they had choices.
“Runs weapons through the eastern ports. Launders money through shipping companies. Has connections in three syndicates and enough bodies behind him that nobody counts anymore.”
Nasir’s hand tightened on the edge of the desk until the wood creaked.
“And,” Rafe added quietly, “he likes them young. Quiet. Easy to break.”
The word break did something violent inside Nasir’s chest.
For a moment, there was only the sound of his own breathing.
Flora’s face rose unbidden in his mind.
The way she laughed when she tried not to.
The way she apologized for things that were not her fault.
The way she flinched sometimes when a voice grew too sharp.
“Spineless son of a b***h,” Nasir said softly.
Rafe said nothing.
Nasir turned away from the window, pacing now, slow and dangerous. “How much.”
“What?”
“How much did he sell his daughter for.”
“Two hundred thousand,” Rafe said. “And protection. Hale promised him a business deal and a cut of future shipments.”
Two hundred thousand.
For a life.
For her life.
Nasir’s vision went red at the edges.
“Is it done,” he asked.
“Yes. Contract signed three months ago. Wedding scheduled in six weeks.”
Six weeks.
Nasir stopped walking.
“She ran before they could collect her,” Rafe went on. “That’s why Trump’s men were looking for her. Not to bring her home. To deliver her.”
The word deliver made something in Nasir snap.
His fist came down on the desk hard enough to rattle the lamp.
“Where is Trump.”
“Still in the old town. Laying low.”
“Good,” Nasir said quietly. “He won’t be for long.”
There was silence between them now — the kind men shared when violence had already been decided.
Rafe cleared his throat. “There’s more.”
Nasir closed his eyes again. “Of course there is.”
“Hale’s people have started asking questions. About a girl matching her description. One of them was on Mercer Street tonight.”
The lamppost.
The shadow.
The watcher.
Nasir’s blood went cold.
“She saw him,” he said.
Rafe inhaled sharply. “What.”
“She didn’t know what she was seeing,” Nasir said. “But she felt it.”
God.
She had been laughing in his bed while men were hunting her.
“Nas,” Rafe said carefully, “we need to move her. Now.”
“I know.”
“She can’t go back to that boarding house.”
“She’s not going back anywhere,” Nasir said. “She’s staying with me.”
Rafe hesitated. “You sure that’s safe.”
“No,” Nasir said honestly. “But it’s safer than leaving her alone.”
He dragged a hand down his face.
Sold.
Engaged.
Delivered.
And she had been lying in his arms talking about dumplings and music and nothing at all, unaware that her life had already been signed away.
“She doesn’t know,” Nasir said.
“No,” Rafe agreed. “And if you’re smart, she never will. Not yet.”
Nasir leaned against the desk, suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
“She trusts me,” he said quietly.
Rafe’s voice softened. “I know.”
“And I brought her into this,” Nasir continued. “I put her in my car. In my bed. In my life.”
“You didn’t bring the danger,” Rafe said. “You just walked into it.”
Nasir stared at the dark floor.
“She was going to give herself to me tonight,” he said suddenly.
Rafe went still.
“Not because she wanted to,” Nasir continued, voice tight. “Because she thought that was all she had to offer me.”
Silence.
Then, quietly, “Jesus.”
“I almost let her,” Nasir admitted. “And she’s someone else’s property on paper.”
Property.
The word made him want to burn cities down.
“Nas,” Rafe said, “what are you going to do.”
Nasir straightened.
The softness vanished.
The man who answered was not the one Flora laughed with.
“I’m going to erase the contract.”
Rafe exhaled. “Hale won’t let it go.”
“I’m not asking him.”
“And Trump.”
Nasir smiled without humor. “Trump is already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
Rafe said nothing — which was agreement.
“I want eyes on Hale,” Nasir continued. “Every move. Every meeting. Every man he sends.”
“Already started.”
“And double my security on Flora.”
“I’ll put two men on the building and one shadowing her when she leaves.”
“No,” Nasir said. “She doesn’t leave.”
There was a beat.
“She won’t understand,” Rafe said.
“I’ll make her understand,” Nasir replied. “Without telling her why.”
He ended the call without goodbye.
Nasir stood there longer than necessary, steadying himself. This wasn’t just business anymore. This wasn’t a threat to his operations or his name.
This was a threat to her.
And that changed the rules.
For a long moment, he stood alone in the office, the city glittering behind him, and tried to breathe past the fury burning his ribs open.
Flora.
Engaged.
Sold.
Hunted.
His hands trembled once.
He stilled them.
When he left the office the bedroom door was half open.
He paused there, watching her sleep.
Curled on her side.
Hair across her face.
One hand fisted in his pillow as if she might lose it.
So small.
So unguarded.
So completely unaware that men were deciding her fate in rooms like his.
He sat on the edge of the bed and brushed his knuckles gently along her cheek.
She stirred, murmured his name in her sleep.
His chest ached.
“I won’t let them touch you,” he whispered.
Not Hale.
Not Trump.
Not anyone.
He lay beside her carefully, drawing her into his arms without waking her.
She sighed and tucked herself closer, trusting, warm, real.
The weight of it nearly crushed him.
And somewhere, in another part of the night, men who thought they owned her were beginning to realize that the girl they had sold now belonged to something far more dangerous than love.
She belonged to Nasir.
- Writer
