Every Mafia's Favorite Girl

Chapter 43: "I Want More"

Surprise flickered across Aren’s features.

"What do you want to hear?"

Caio hesitated, choosing his words carefully.

"Were you... trained from a very young age?"

Even before she answered, his mind had already constructed its own explanation.

She was eighteen years old, yet her combat ability bordered on monstrous. Not to mention reflexes sharpened beyond human instinct.

She had to come from something truly horrific. Perhaps some clandestine military program or mercenary operation that took children and molded them into weapons before they were old enough to understand what death meant.

The thought alone made his stomach twist.

To his complete shock, Aren brightened immediately at the question.

"Yes!" she said cheerfully. "I was raised at the headquarters of the organization I worked for. The Operative Head said he found me in a cot in a ruined village."

Caio stared at her.

Something inside his chest tightened at her words.

"You..." his voice roughened. "You’ve been living with mercenaries since you were... a baby?"

Aren nodded earnestly.

"Yes. The Operative Head took me in, and then my brothers raised me."

Caio frowned.

"Your brothers?"

"Ah! My squad, like I told you!"

The smile that spread across her face was so open and genuine that it nearly disoriented him.

"My brothers taught me how to fight, how to kill, and how to use weapons," she went on proudly. "And there were the aunties in the medic department who patched us up whenever we came back injured."

Her eyes practically glowed with every memory.

"The uncles in the workshop forged our blades and customized our gear. And the kitchen staff always snuck me extra rations whenever I finished difficult training blocks."

A soft laugh escaped her.

"The logistics officers used to let me ride in the equipment trucks, and the tactical planners would quiz me on maps using candies as markers."

Caio listened in complete silence.

Every word lodged somewhere deep beneath his skin.

She wasn’t traumatized while speaking about the people of her past.

She loved them.

Every person she mentioned lived inside her memories with such warmth and affection that it almost hurt to hear.

Then her voice softened.

The brightness faded.

"But sometimes," she whispered, "...some of them never returned from missions."

Her fingers continued moving against his wounds, though her focus had drifted somewhere far away.

"Afterward, I didn’t get to see them again. I wonder... lately I wonder if they go to other worlds too."

She looked down.

"Like me."

Silence settled heavily between them.

Caio looked at Aren and felt something inside himself crack in a way violence never could.

He wanted to pull her against him.

Wanted to wrap his arms around her waist and bury her against his chest. Wanted to smooth a hand through her hair until that distant sadness vanished from her expression.

He wanted to say something comforting.

Something gentle.

Something human.

But the words refused to come.

Instead, he sat frozen beneath the weight of an unfamiliar helplessness.

His fingers tightened against the silk sheets while frustration and emotion tangled together inside his chest.

At last, forcing himself to move, he reached up and gently pushed against her forearm, guiding her hand away from his face.

"You can leave now."

His voice came out quieter than intended.

Aren blinked at him in confusion, but he avoided her eyes completely, fixed instead on the floor.

"Get some rest," he added quietly. "You’ve had a long day. Just leave everything. I’ll take care of the rest of the wounds myself later."

Aren’s lips pulled into a disappointed pout.

She opened her mouth, ready to ask for permission to continue, but then she noticed the way he refused to look at her.

It was the same way he had avoided her gaze that night. Right here, on this very bed.

Understanding settled quietly across her face.

’He wants to be alone... again.’

Slowly, Aren rose from the bed.

"All right," she murmured.

She crossed the room and made her way toward the door. Just as her fingers brushed the handle, however, something made her pause.

Slowly, Aren turned back.

Caio still sat exactly where she had left him, shoulders tense beneath the dim bedroom lighting.

She clasped her hands behind her back, fingers twisting together nervously.

"Don Caio."

He looked up immediately.

"Do you still have nightmares these days?"

Caio froze.

For a split second, his carefully maintained composure cracked clean apart.

Because he still woke some nights unable to breathe.

Still heard screaming in the silence before sleep.

Still woke reaching for weapons that were no longer there.

But when he looked at Aren, at the genuine concern written so openly across her face, his voice softened despite himself.

"Not anymore."

A complete lie.

Aren studied him for a long moment.

She looked at the way he had already turned away again. At the way he refused to meet her eyes.

Eventually, she gave a small nod.

"I’m glad."

Still, she didn’t leave. Instead, she lingered by the doorway for several more seconds.

"The other night..." she began quietly.

Then stopped.

Completely.

The words dissolved halfway out of her mouth.

She had spoken before fully deciding what she wanted to say. Now, she stood frozen beside the door while the unfinished sentence lingered heavily between them.

Caio’s attention snapped back to her with frightening intensity.

"What about it?" he asked immediately.

The desperation hidden beneath his calm startled even him.

Heat flooded Aren’s face.

"I... um..." Her fingers tightened together behind her back. "I..."

She lowered her head quickly, trying to hide the blush spreading across her cheeks and down her neck.

Caio noticed it instantly. The realization shattered every coherent thought left in his head.

’Is she... blushing about it?’

’Could it be... she didn’t hate it?’

Every muscle in his body felt stretched taut as he stared at her standing by the doorway, visibly flustered and unable to finish her sentence.

"Aren," he said, his voice already roughening. "Come here for a moment."

Aren lifted her head immediately at the sound of her name.

Without the slightest hesitation, she walked straight back toward Caio.

Her nervousness, however, betrayed itself in smaller, more subtle ways.

Her footsteps had become quieter, lighter, almost cautious, and both her hands remained clasped behind her back, as though hiding them might somehow conceal how tightly her fingers were twisting together.

She stopped a few steps away from his bed. For the briefest moment, her eyes met his, before they darted away again.

"...Yes?"

Caio’s pulse stumbled violently.

Everything about her in that moment felt unfairly charming.

The faint flush coloring her cheeks, the timid set of her shoulders, the way she could not quite hold his gaze for more than a second at a time.

She looked now far less like a deadly operative capable of breaking bones with military precision and far more like a young woman standing nervously before the first person she had ever wanted in this way.

The sight left his throat unbearably dry.

Even so, he forced himself to speak.

"How did you... feel about it?" fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

Each word emerged slower than the last, dragged up from somewhere deep beneath his ribs.

"About... what I did that night."

His hand lifted uncertainly, gesturing first toward his own mouth and then toward hers.

"When I kissed you."

The instant the question left him, fear followed close behind.

Real fear.

Because no matter how desperately he wanted her, no matter how often his thoughts had circled back to that night, he would rather tear himself apart than discover he had hurt her.

Aren fell silent.

Behind her back, her fingers knotted together even tighter.

His gesture brought the memory rushing back with startling clarity — the warmth of his mouth against hers, the dizzying pressure that had bloomed inside her chest, the sensation of his heartbeat pounding against her body.

Every memory came with a realization she could no longer ignore.

She wanted more.

Far more.

After a long silence, she finally whispered the truth.

"I felt... very strange."

Her gaze lowered toward the floor. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

"But it was a good sort of strange."

Slowly, her eyes lifted back toward him.

"And... I felt like... I almost exploded."

Embarrassment struck immediately afterward, and her gaze fled again.

"But I didn’t hate it. I want... more of it."

Something dark, desperate, and intensely possessive surged through Caio.

For one dangerous second, he nearly lost control entirely. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to pull her into his lap, wrap his arms around her waist, and kiss her until neither of them remembered how breathing worked.

Instead, he remained perfectly still, forcing every muscle into a state of temporary paralysis.

When he finally spoke, his voice sounded strangely careful.

Fragile.

"Then..."

He swallowed hard.

"Would you like to do it again?"

His gaze locked completely onto hers.

"With me."

Aren looked genuinely startled as though the question itself had stolen the air from her lungs.

Several long seconds passed before she managed a shy reply.

"...If you don’t mind."

The words settled deep inside his chest like gasoline striking an open flame.

Slowly, he extended one hand toward her.

Palm open.

A silent invitation.

"I don’t mind," he said softly. "Not at all."