Page 32 of Tempted By the Devil

I’m inhisorbit as he sucks up all the air, including the breath in my lungs.

He smooths a hand down the front of his tie and flashes me his signature grin. “It looks like we’ll be going down together, Ms. James.”

8

RAFAEL

I knew as soonas I saw her that there was no going back.

It happened over three years ago when I was still relatively new to Newport City. I was transferred to the area to take over for the last capo who had been running the territory, Vincenzo Bellucci. As the nephew of the Don, he had been given chance after chance to succeed.

But he had fucked up one too many times and had been pulled.

I came in aware of the mess I’d been left. It was going to take years to undo Vincenzo’s failures. Early mornings, long days, late nights.

I was willing to put the work in.

I bought a penthouse on Wall Street, right in the center of Newport’s financial district. The place cost a pretty penny, but it was worth it for the location alone. For a businessman like me, I needed to be at the epicenter of where business happened.

The sun was still rising when I woke every morning. Often coming off a late night with only three or four hours of sleep, I was in a testy mood.

My staff knew to deliver things like my coffee and paper first thing in the morning. I’d often be buttoning up a crisp shirt and looping my tie when Mara, my maid, would walk into my bedroom and set both items down for me. She’d bow out as I mumbled a thank you, usually distracted by the morning news playing on the flatscreen TV.

I digested news more than most men in my line of work.

The reason being that while they were deep in the lifestyle, I was aware of how it intersected with the rest of society.

I was aware from the time I was a kid how crime organizations met business at a crossroads. I knew how real world events affected both.

I hadn’t become a billionaire businessman off the Bellucci name alone. Most of my success was my own doing.

My smarts. My instincts.

Making the right moves at the right time.

So every morning I’d get ready for another long, hard day’s work fixing the Bellucci empire in Newport City while I sipped my coffee, read the paper, and watched the local news.

Usually, it was puff pieces about upcoming events around the city or weather forecasts for the days ahead.

But, sometimes, it was field reporting for whatever breaking news happened.

The banner flashed across the screen and then the desk anchors segued into the reporter on the scene.

She appeared with a microphone in her hand, eyes bright and sultry, lips a sweet, dusky pink shade. Skin brown like rich mocha.

My hands had stilled in the middle of doing my tie. I found myself unable to look away, suddenly entranced by the exquisite woman on TV.

Junior field reporter Portia James.

She was a rookie yet she had twice as much charisma as anyone else on the channel.

That first morning she came on my screen, I watched the entire morning news program beginning to end, waiting to see if she’d reappear.

The next morning, I did the same thing.

Soon she became a part of my routine.

Coffee and paper delivered first thing to my bedroom as I got dressed for the day in my uniform of a suit and tie. TV on with the news, but for an entirely different reason than before—it was on my screen so I could see Portia James.

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