Accidentally Yours (Merffy Kizzmet) novel Chapter 223

Chapter 223

He corrected by inches. An angle. A breath. The difference between brute force and leverage, between clumsy shove and invisible theft.

街

“You want their balance, not their bones,” he’d murmur, palm light against her shoulder to show where she was lying to herself. “Bones break loud. Balance breaks quiet.”

“Bones make good music,” she’d mutter, and he’d smile like someone told him a secret.

He was curious about her–hungry for the architecture of her mind more than the spectacle of her violence. He asked questions between sets like puzzle pieces.

“What’s your favorite problem to solve?”

“The kind that thinks it’s unsolvable.”

“What makes you stop?”

“Tattooing. And Enzo.”

“Who taught you to be mean?”

“A woman with a cane and a kitchen that smelled like smoke and oranges.”

He watched the way she absorbed instruction and turned it into something slippery and personal. If Dom trained her like a street fight, Rafael trained her like a thesis.

By week five she was never not sore. Her joints sang when she sat. Her back complained when she stood. She started to understand why old men groaned getting out of chairs and why they smiled while doing it. Pain was proof of forward motion.

Forward’s good. Forward means don’t look back. Easy math.

Every time she faltered, there was either a barked “Again,” or the memory of Enzo’s ring sliding against her jaw grounding, reminding. He wasn’t always there, but his presence lingered like muscle memory; the feel of command and comfort in one touch.

At night, he stretched her out like a ritual; calves, hamstrings, hips. He kissed the hurts he hadn’t made, and sometimes his mouth drifted. Sometimes she laced her fingers through his hair to take him right where she wanted him. He’d make a sound that was all heat and gratitude, the kind that made her forget what silence used to mean.

She sent him sinful little texts from the gym bathroom mirror: space buns and bloodlust don’t miss me too much, or guess what I choked out today (hint: ego, twice).

He replied hours later, mid–meeting, with six words that made her grin at her reflection.

Don’t start fires you can’t finish

She was fine. She told herself that often enough that it started to stick.

Fine–ish. Functioning counts, right?

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Chapter 223

The afternoon the ground shifted started like any other: resistance bands anchored to a steel column older than the building, shoulders smoked from pad work, sweat slick at her spine, hair wound into two red knots that made half the gym lose their train of thought.

“Keep the band alive,” Rafael said, standing just behind her shoulder. “If it goes slack, you start over.”

“Cruel,” she panted, fighting the pull.

“Efficient.”

He adjusted her stance, thumb brushing the crest of her hip just long enough to make her tuck. Precise. Unintrusive. Professional. She appreciated that.

“Good,” he murmured. “Hold.” A beat. “Breathe in your back.”

She did. The band trembled, then steadied. Arms shook. Jaw clenched. She thought about the look on Enzo’s face when she told him in a bathtub she wanted forever and how he’d looked wrecked and relieved in the same heartbeat. The band got easier. Funny.

“Enough,” Rafael said finally. “Reset.”

She let the tension go, arms fizzing. He tossed her a towel without looking; she caught it one–handed and scrubbed her face, mouth dry, heart an even drum.

He capped his water, tone casual.

“Reset your hands–Lucian grip. More efficient for counterbalance.”

The towel froze midair.

Lucian.

The name struck like static–familiar but out of place.

He kept talking, unaware he’d just pulled a thread loose.

“Helps you anchor without losing leverage. Try it again.”

Lucian.

Her father’s voice rose from memory: You’ll meet Lucian Rinaldi. He’ll give you the tour himself.

At the time it had meant nothing—a name, a face, a day she’d spent trying not to cry.

Now the edges sharpened. The marble halls. The smell of polish and perfume. The way that man had looked at her like he could already see her future carved in obedience.

It wasn’t revelation, exactly. More like recognition surfacing through dust–a name buried under fear, finally free to breathe.

Breathe. It’s just a name. Just a-

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10:48 Thu, Oct 16

Chapter 223

Nope. Her brain blue–screened mid–sentence.

Lucian.

A

Her mind rifled through old rooms until a face emerged–young–twenty, clean jaw, eyes too calm for their age. Gold watch. White shirt. That polite kind of beauty that made monsters easy to miss.

He’d shaken her hand like a promise and said he’d be seeing her very soon.

She’d been nine.

She remembered the cologne before she remembered the fear–something citrus and iron, like blood scrubbed clean. The smell followed her out of that building and into every nightmare that came after.

Of course it would come back like this. Mid–rep. Mid–breath. No warning, no mercy.

She forced herself to move.

“Like this?”

“Better,” Rafael said absently, nodding. “Good.”

The moment passed. The world settled. But something cold had started to hum beneath her ribs.

Under the shower’s roar, she let her face do what it wanted for thirty seconds. Mouth tight. Eyes flat. Then she scrubbed herself back into the person the world understood–smirk + steel + lipstick in the gym bag next to the wraps, because balance.

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