The Mafia’s Stolen Rose

Jomiloju's POV

We stayed in the abandoned shed until morning.

Neither of us slept.

Not after the fire.

Not after the blood.

Not after the way Steve looked at me—like I was the last light left in a world already buried in ash.

I should've been afraid.

But I wasn't.

Not of him.

Only of what came next.

He paced the floor like a lion in a cage—wounded, angry, thinking a hundred moves ahead. His shoulder was still bleeding. His hands were stained. His eyes? They were burning.

Not with violence.

With guilt.

"Stop looking at me like that," I said softly.

He turned.

"Like what?"

"Like you're about to do something I'll never forgive."

Steve's POV

I couldn't keep pretending.

Not with her standing there—barefoot, bruised, and still choosing me.

This wasn't just about Koleosho anymore.

This was about me.

What I was willing to become for her.

What I'd already become.

There was no escape without a price. And the men hunting us? They wouldn't stop until one of us was dead.

I didn't care if they came for me.

But if they touched her?

No mercy.

Not this time.

I pulled open the hidden compartment in my duffel bag. Steel cuffs. Zip ties. A burner phone. Small items most wouldn't think twice about.

But she did.

Her eyes widened when she saw the cuffs.

"You're not serious," she said.

I didn't answer.

"Steve."

Still nothing.

She stepped forward, voice low. "What are you doing?"

"Keeping you alive."

Jomiloju's POV

He cuffed me to the metal pipe running along the back wall.

It didn't hurt.

Not physically.

But emotionally?

It cracked something open inside me.

"You really think I'd run after all this?" I asked.

"No," he said. "But they might take you. And if they do… I need to know they'll find nothing but bones."

The silence after that was deafening.

It wasn't punishment.

It wasn't domination.

It was desperation.

He wasn't trying to control me.

He was trying to save me from being used again.

"I don't need saving like this," I whispered.

He knelt in front of me.

"Then tell me how. Because this—this is all I know."

Steve's POV

She didn't cry.

She didn't scream.

She just looked at me like I was breaking her with every heartbeat—and she was letting me.

Because part of her understood.

The rules of the world I came from weren't written in black and white.

They were written in blood.

And love?

Love was a liability.

Until her.

I took off my shirt, wincing at the pain in my shoulder. Sat beside her. Our legs touched.

"If anything happens to me," I began.

She cut me off.

"Don't."

"You need to know"

"I don't," she snapped. "Because nothing is happening to you, Steve. Not while I'm breathing."

Jomiloju's POV

He stayed beside me, chained and silent, for what felt like hours.

When the sun hit the shed just right, the light caught the tattoo on his back.

It wasn't just art.

It was a name.

Alika.

His sister.

I'd seen the photo. She looked like she had hope before the world took it.

I leaned my head on his shoulder.

"You keep punishing yourself for things you couldn't stop."

"Someone has to."

"Why?"

"Because no one punished the people who deserved it."

I turned his face toward mine.

"You're not their weapon anymore, Steve. You're my man now. That means you don't get to bleed alone."

Steve's POV

I kissed her.

Not like the last time.

Not soft.

Not careful.

This was fire and grief and everything I never said.

She responded just as fiercely.

Her cuffed wrist clanged against the pipe as she pulled me closer, mouth urgent, heat rising.

I broke the kiss first, breathing hard.

"This isn't right," I said.

She smirked.

"Then unchain me. Let's see what right feels like."

Jomiloju's POV

He hesitated.

Not because he didn't want to.

But because he did.

He wanted me more than he wanted to protect me.

That was the scariest thing of all.

He reached for the key.

But before he could unlock me—his burner phone lit up.

An anonymous number.

He answered.

Voice cold.

"This is him."

Then he went stiff.

Stone.

Still.

"What did you say?" he demanded.

I could hear it faintly—an older male voice on the other end.

Koleosho.

"I said," the voice repeated, "either you bring the girl back to me alive, or we drop her mother's body off piece by piece."

Steve's POV

The pipe behind me bent under my grip.

Jomi's mother.

I didn't even know they had her.

I looked at Jomi.

She knew something was wrong.

"Koleosho has your mother," I said, flat and broken.

Her lips parted. "Is she alive?"

"For now."

"And he wants me?"

"Yes."

"Then take me," she said.

I stared at her like she was insane.

"No."

"Take me," she repeated. "We end this. You and me. Together."

Jomiloju's POV

The fear in Steve's eyes said everything.

Not for himself.

For me.

But I wasn't that scared girl anymore.

I was the daughter of a man who sold me.

I was the prisoner who never broke.

I was the woman who made a mafia king fall to his knees.

And I wasn't running.

Not anymore.

I leaned in.

"He wants the rose?" I whispered. "Then let him see the thorns."