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Smoke and Honey

Penulis: Desmond Caramel Writes
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-07-05 05:17:10

Alessandro

The world outside the estate was quiet.

Too quiet.

Which always meant war.

Valentina hadn’t said much all day. She moved like a goddess made of smoke and bone too graceful to be real, too silent to be trusted. And I knew what that silence meant.

She was bleeding somewhere I couldn’t see.

And I had no idea where to put my hands to stop it.

I watched her from the office balcony. Her silk robe clung to her body like a second skin. The slight curve of her belly caught moonlight like it was made for worship.

My child.

My fire.

My war.

She turned, caught me staring, and instead of looking away… she came to me.

Barefoot. Calm. Dangerous.

"You're avoiding me," she said.

"I’m trying to protect you."

"Then talk to me, Alessandro. Stop shielding me like I’m porcelain. I’m steel."

I reached out, grabbed her wrist, pulled her closer.

"No," I said. "You're fire. And I’m already burned."

She didn’t pull away.

"Then burn again."

She kissed me.

God help me, she kissed me. Like war-torn maps
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  • A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   Burn it all Down

    AlessandroI no longer see rooms.I see warzones.Every corner of this house feels like a potential betrayal. Every floorboard, a secret. Every breath Valentina takes a miracle I no longer deserve to witness.I stood alone in the War Room.The walls bore no signs of Lorenzo. No photos. No nameplates. Nothing physical. But it still smelled like him. That old scent of smug legacy and violence in a tailored suit. The bastard was a phantom in every shadow.My reflection in the glass case looked like a man unhinged. I hadn’t shaved. Hadn’t eaten. I drank just enough to feel like I was still human."He wants her to choose," I muttered. My hand flexed. "Over me. Over this child."The rage was no longer loud. It was quiet. Focused. Vicious.I lit the file containing Lorenzo’s dossier on fire.Watched it curl and blacken.And when the last flame flickered out, I whispered, "So be it."Valentina's POVThe nights were darker now.Not because the power failed. Not because the estate dimmed.Becau

  • A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The House that Feared Built

    ValentinaThe days had begun to bend.Not pass. Not blur. Bend.Time in this estate didn’t move forward anymore. It curled around us like smoke, folding in on itself, pressing against my throat. I used to count time in weeks. In doctor appointments. In fetal movements. Now I counted it in incidents.Today it was the garden.The rosemary bush I’d replanted two days ago had been dug out. Not destroyed. Moved. Uprooted and placed, gently, on the stone table near the west wall. A message in roots.I didn’t scream.I stared. One hand on the child that twisted inside me like he, too, could feel the shift in the air."Something moved the rosemary," I told Alessandro when he walked in. His eyes narrowed instantly."Something, or someone?""Does it matter anymore?"He stalked past me to the garden, eyes scanning the walls, then the sky, then the trees. I watched him quietly. He wasn’t just checking for cameras.He was looking for ghosts."We need to burn the roots," he said flatly.I blinked.

  • A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Devil Who Waits

    LorenzoThere is something divine about waiting.Not the passive kind. Not the kind you do in lines or traffic or shallow graves. No, I mean the sacred waiting. The kind that breaks a man open and rebuilds him in silence.I’ve waited in shadows darker than death. In cells meant to swallow history. In chains wrapped in lies and steel. But nothing nothing has kept me from her.Valentina.The name tastes like smoke now. Like something burned and reborn. She walks like prophecy, swells like vengeance, speaks like fate in a silk dress. I watch her through the cracks in this empire. Through borrowed eyes. Rerouted cameras. Spilled confessions. Every whisper in the city bends back to her.They say she’s glowing.They say her belly is a kingdom.They say she’s winning.But winning is a phase. A costume.And I am no ghost.I am the rot in her roots.The lion she found? That was me.The lullaby? Me.The fingerprints no one finds, the alarms that fail, the blind spots in their security grid? Me.

  • A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Weight of a Throne

    Alessandro watched from the balcony as the first convoy rolled into sight: blacked out SUVs carrying men whose faces he’d never seen but whose loyalty was unquestionable. Under his command, they’d done things that would turn day into nightmares and tonight, they moved on his word.He had summoned them not to terrify the city, but to protect his future. Each one carried coded instructions, sealed under wax bearing his crest. This wasn't an act of war — it was an act of survival.He descended the marble staircase into the courtyard, the moonlight turning his footsteps into a promise. Valentina met him there, cheekbones radiant in the soft glow of the lanterns. Her gown whispered silk against stone.“They’re ready,” he said, voice low and certain. He held out the activation signal: a folded note she recognized from the council meeting.She scanned it and nodded, fear and resolve flickering in her eyes. “Let’s bury him tonight.”He laid a hand on her waist, drawing her to his side. “We bu

  • A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   What Comes After Fire

    Valentina-------------------------You don't expect peace to feel like paranoia.But when it does, it’s worse than war.It started with the mobile.It turned by itself. No breeze. No fan. No explanation.Then the baby monitor crackled. Not just static. Not just feedback. But a lullaby I never sang. In my voice. Slow. Like something from a nursery rhyme funeral.Alessandro tore the monitor apart in silence. His jaw clenched. His hands shaking. He didn’t speak for hours after.But I heard him.In the way he walked slower past the nursery door.In the way he locked every window twice.In the way he touched my stomach now like it was glass.Like he was already afraid of what could break.I caught him staring at the fireplace. Not at the fire. But at the wall above it. Where once there had been a family crest and now there was only stone."Talk to me," I said.He didn’t.So I pressed."You think it’s him."He looked at me then. Not shocked. Not scared.Just tired."I know it’s him."I nod

  • A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Crown and The Cradle

    ValentinaThe aftermath of fire is never silence.It's ash. Creaking timber. And the echo of things that almost ended you.For the first time in months, the estate was quiet. No screaming men. No hidden spies. No blood drying under the fingernails of power-hungry cowards.Just morning.And the weight of everything I had survived.Lorenzo was gone.Not dead. Not quite defeated. But buried in the kind of cell that eats time like rats eat through corpses.It should have felt like peace.But peace is not something you inherit in this world.You build it. With blade and grief and truth.And sometimes, with motherhood.I walked through the garden barefoot. The same one that had once been the battlefield of my panic. Now, the vines were growing back. The roses, carefully tended by Rosa, had begun to bloom again.So had I.The pregnancy had taken on a rhythm. Less nausea. More hunger. Less dread. More wonder.I could feel him more now. Our son.He kicked when Alessandro touched my skin. When

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