Chapter 38: The Question of Belonging
**(4 DAYS UNTIL RAGNAK'S DECISION)**
The Miradouro da Senhora do Monte stretched out before them like an open wound, Lisbon’s skyline jagged under the bruise-purple dusk. The scent of grilled sardines and diesel fumes clung to the cooling air, mixing with the faint iron tang of the railing Julieta leaned against. Her fingers traced the chipped blue paint, picking at flakes where tourists had scratched initials over decades.
Ragnak appeared beside her without sound, his coat absorbing the last streaks of sunset. He didn’t speak at first. Just watched the city lights flicker on one by one, methodical as a surgeon counting instruments.
Julieta didn’t turn. “If you’re going to ask, just ask.”
A breeze lifted the hair at her nape.
Ragnak’s voice cut through the twilight, clean as a scalpel. “Would you like to be my little bitch?”
Her thumbnail dug under another paint flake. “That’s the third time this week you’ve opened with that.”
“You haven’t answered.”
Julieta flicked the paint chip into the abyss below. It vanished without a sound. “Ask me something new.”
Ragnak shifted slightly, his elbow brushing hers. The contact was deliberate—clinical. A test. “Would you sleep with someone to cross a border?”
The question landed between them like a dropped coin. Somewhere downhill, a tram screeched on its rails.
Julieta exhaled through her nose. “Which border?”
“The one you can’t go back across.”
Her ribs tightened. She tasted salt and smoke, remembered the checkpoint at Vilar Formoso, the way the guards’ bootsteps had echoed through the train car.
“Nice try.” She turned to face him fully, the railing pressing into her lower back. “But no.”
Ragnak’s gaze didn’t waver. “Why?”
“Because fucking a stranger wouldn’t be the worst part.” Julieta tilted her head, studying his impassive face. “The worst part would be remembering it every time I looked in the mirror after.”
A streetlamp buzzed to life above them, throwing Ragnak’s shadow long across the cobblestones. He reached into his coat, producing a dog-eared postcard—Sintra’s pastel palaces faded from handling.
“You kept this.”
Julieta’s breath caught. She hadn’t seen that postcard in eight years. Her mother’s spidery handwriting still visible under the smudges.
“Where did you—”
“Would you burn it,” Ragnak interrupted, “if it meant someone else could go home?”
The railing bit into her spine. The postcard trembled slightly in his grip—the only imperfection she’d ever seen in him.
Julieta swallowed. “Who?”
“You first.”
A motorbike revved somewhere in Graça’s maze of alleys. The sound faded into the hum of the city below.
Julieta reached for the postcard. Ragnak let her take it. The paper felt like skin under her fingers.
“No,” she whispered.
Ragnak’s eyelashes flickered. “Why?”
“Because some things aren’t currency.” She tucked the postcard into her breast pocket, right over her heartbeat.
The corner of his mouth twitched—not a smile, just a tic. “Interesting.”
Julieta pushed off the railing. “You keep saying that like it’s data.”
“It is.”
She stepped closer, close enough to see the faint scar along his hairline—old, precise. A surgeon’s mistake or a surgeon’s handiwork. “Ask me something real.”
Ragnak didn’t retreat. His breath smelled of mint and something metallic. “Would you let me fuck you if you knew you’d forget it after?”
The vulgarity should have shocked her. It didn’t. Not after the border question. Not after the postcard.
Julieta held his gaze. “Would you?”
A pause. The wind shifted, carrying the distant wail of a ferry’s horn from the Tagus.
Ragnak blinked first.
Julieta laughed—a short, sharp sound. “That’s what I thought.”
He tilted his head, studying her like a newly discovered species. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“You’re avoiding the answer.”
A group of tourists clattered up the steps to the viewpoint, their laughter too loud in the gathering dark. Ragnak waited until they’d passed before speaking again.
“Let’s try another.” His gloved hand produced a switchblade—old, well-oiled. It caught the lamplight as he flipped it open. “Would you cut me to prove a point?”
Julieta eyed the blade. “What point?”
“That you can.”
The knife’s edge gleamed. Somewhere in her memory, a border guard’s buckle clicked as he unbuckled his belt.
She took the knife.
Ragnak didn’t move as she pressed the blade to his throat. His pulse jumped under the steel—steady, unfaltering.
Julieta leaned in until her lips brushed his ear. “I don’t need to cut you to prove anything.”
She snapped the knife shut and pocketed it.
Ragnak exhaled—just once, just slightly. The closest she’d ever heard him come to surprise.
The postcard burned against her chest. Four days remained.
Somewhere below, Lisbon glittered like a spilled diamond necklace. Neither looked down.
=====
The switchblade weighed heavy in Julieta's pocket, its cold outline pressing against her thigh through the thin fabric of her dress. Ragnak's breath hitched - just once - when she ran her fingertips along the scar at his temple. The city lights below blurred as she leaned in, close enough to count each dark lash framing his obsidian eyes.
"Tell me why you really brought me here." Her thumb traced the knife scar's ridge, feeling the slight unevenness where flesh had healed wrong.
Ragnak's gloved hand closed around her wrist. Not pulling away. Just measuring her pulse. "You already know."
The postcard crinkled between them as she pressed flush against him. His erection strained against his tailored slacks, hot even through the layers of wool and leather. She ground her hips forward, relishing the way his nostrils flared.
"I need an answer, Julieta." Ragnak's voice cracked like ice under pressure. His free hand fisted in her hair, yanking her head back to expose the vulnerable line of her throat. "What would make you want to be my little bitch?"
Julieta laughed, the sound jagged as broken glass. "Seeing you come undone."
His grip tightened. The leather of his gloves creaked. For three shuddering breaths, the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the distant wail of sirens winding through Alfama's labyrinthine streets.
Then Ragnak moved.
One sharp twist and he had her pinned against the stone wall, his knee forcing her thighs apart. The postcard crumpled further as his teeth sank into the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Julieta gasped, arching into the pain as his hand shoved up her dress.
"No panties." His whisper burned against her damp skin. "You planned this."
She rocked against his thigh, already wet enough that his leather-clad leg glistened with her. "You're predictable."
Ragnak's growl vibrated through her bones as he tore open his fly. His cock sprang free, thick and flushed, the head leaking precum onto her stomach. He spat into his palm, stroking himself slowly while watching her pupils dilate.
"Tell me to stop." His thumb smeared wetness across her clit in rough circles.
Julieta grabbed the switchblade from her pocket and flicked it open with practiced ease. The blade glinted as she pressed it to his ribs. "Make me."
Blood welled around the blade's tip as she pushed just hard enough to break skin. Ragnak's hips stuttered forward, his cockhead nudging against her entrance.
"Fucking perfect," he snarled, and drove home in one brutal thrust.
The stretch burned. Julieta's back scraped against rough stone as he fucked into her with punishing strokes, each snap of his hips making the knife tremble in her grip. She clenched around him, reveling in the way his breath caught when her nails scored down his back.
"Harder." She licked the sweat from his collarbone, tasting salt and something darker. "Show me what happens when you lose control."
Ragnak's rhythm faltered. His gloved hand found her throat, squeezing just shy of too tight as his other hand yanked her leg higher around his waist. The change in angle made her see stars, his cock hitting that sweet spot deep inside with every savage thrust.
Julieta dropped the knife. It clattered on cobblestones as she raked both hands through his hair, pulling him down for a biting kiss. Their teeth clashed. Blood bloomed metallic between their lips.
Ragnak's hips stuttered. His groan was raw, unfiltered, human as he came inside her in hot pulses. Julieta followed him over the edge, her orgasm ripping through her with enough force to leave light bruises where his fingers dug into her hips.
For one suspended moment, they stayed locked together, breath mingling, hearts hammering in ragged unison.
Then Ragnak pulled out, tucking himself away with mechanical precision. Only the flush high on his cheekbones betrayed what had just happened.
Julieta straightened her dress, wincing at the ache between her legs. She picked up the switchblade and snapped it shut.
Three days remained.
Somewhere below, the city kept its secrets.
So would they.
=====
Bruno Silva's knuckles turned white around the manila envelope as he ascended the palace's grand staircase, his oxfords clicking against marble veined with gold. The envelope contained photos of Deputy Minister Almeida's teenage son buying ketamine from a known trafficker outside Club Lux—evidence that would destroy both the politician's career and the fragile coalition keeping Lisbon's social housing projects funded.
Ragnak materialized from the shadows of a gilded alcove, his gloved fingers trailing over a centuries-old tapestry depicting some forgotten battle. "You're early."
Bruno shoved the envelope into his leather satchel. "Changed my mind. Not running this story."
The palace's west wing smelled of beeswax and impending rain. Ragnak fell into step beside him, their reflections warping in the polished floors. "Twenty-three thousand families would lose rent subsidies if Almeida resigns."
"That's not why I'm spiking it." Bruno stopped before a massive oil painting of King João VI, the monarch's eyes following them like a guilty conscience. "The kid's seventeen. Rehab, not ruin."
Ragnak's smile didn't reach his eyes. It never did. "And if he overdoses next week?"
A tour group's laughter echoed from the Hall of Ambassadors, all champagne flutes and designer handbags. Bruno adjusted his glasses, smudging the lenses with fingerprints. "Then I live with that too."
They turned down a corridor lined with antique globes, their surfaces pocked with colonies that no longer existed. Ragnak tapped one—Portuguese Angola, 1961. "Truth isn't purity. It's calculus."
"Fuck your equations." Bruno's throat tightened around the words. "You think I don't know the math? Expose Almeida and 23K families suffer. Stay silent and the traffickers keep preying on kids." He yanked open a casement window, letting in humid air that smelled of the Tagus. "No right answer. Just choices that stain different ways."
A security guard's radio crackled somewhere in the palace depths.
Ragnak produced a silver cigarette case—the same one Bruno had last seen in Beatriz's apartment. "What did your editor say?"
"Fired me." Bruno accepted the offered cigarette, letting Ragnak light it with a monogrammed lighter that definitely belonged to Camila. "Called it professional suicide."
They smoked in silence, watching smoke curl toward ceiling frescoes of winged victories.
Ragnak crushed his cigarette against a marble bust. "You'll miss the bylines."
"Miss my mortgage more." Bruno inhaled sharply, the nicotine doing nothing for the tremor in his hands. "Got a freelance gig fact-checking celebrity cookbooks. Apparently knowing which dictator's wife invented pasteis de nata counts as journalism now."
A droplet of sweat traced Bruno's spine beneath his wrinkled shirt. Three years ago, he'd won the Ortega y Gasset award for exposing a child trafficking ring. Today he'd traded his press pass for silence.
Ragnak studied him like a surgeon assessing an incision. "Regret tastes better than shame."
"Fuck you." Bruno stubbed out his cigarette, watching embers die on the priceless marble. "This what you wanted? Me choosing the lesser evil like some fucking—"
"Human?" Ragnak adjusted his cufflinks, the motion precise as a scalpel rotation. "Yes."
The palace clock chimed four. Somewhere, a child's laughter bounced off ancient stone.
Bruno straightened his tie, though it didn't matter anymore. "Tell Beatriz I kept my promise."
Ragnak's gloved hand caught his elbow—brief, bruising. "Tell her yourself. She's waiting at A Brasileira."
He disappeared around a corner, his coat whispering against marble.
Bruno touched the envelope in his satchel, the photos inside now just expensive kindling. Outside, tour buses disgorged another wave of visitors hungry for pretty lies about Portugal's golden age.
Four days remained.
He walked toward the exit, shoulders squared against the weight of his choice. The truth would keep. The city would spin on.
And somewhere beyond the palace walls, a dealer sold another bag of powder to another politician's kid.
The marble halls remembered nothing.
Neither would the papers.