공유

Chapter 20

작가: Adhara Pepple
last update 게시일: 2026-09-12 02:17:00

Alessandro showed up unannounced the next afternoon with a paper bag of pastries from the place near the harbor Nicoletta swore by, which was such an ordinary, domestic thing for him to do that Blair nearly laughed out loud at the sight of him standing on her porch holding it.

"You brought me sfince."

"My mother insisted. Apparently I don't feed you enough." He handed over the bag like it embarrassed him slightly to be caught doing something this soft. "I told her that was an insane thing to sa
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  • After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don   Chapter 38

    Nicoletta didn't lay anything out on the table this ninth session — no knife, no gun, nothing but her own two hands and an expression Blair had learned to be wary of."No warm-up today?" Blair began some warm up stretches with an air of false nonchalance."Today isn't a lesson. Today is a test." Nicoletta rolled her sleeves without further explanation. "Everything I've taught you, together, without warning for which piece you'll need. That's how it actually happens, cara. Nobody announces which skill you're about to require."* * *It went badly for the first ten minutes in ways Blair didn't have the breath to catalogue — a grab she should have turned into the wrist twist and instead just panicked through, a mock blade she forgot to track because she was still thinking about her footing, Nicoletta's voice cutting through it all, relentless, correcting faster than Blair could absorb."You're defaulting to one skill at a time. The world won't wait for you to finish one before starting t

  • After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don   Chapter 37

    They drove out past the salt flats this time, to a stretch of scrubland with nothing behind the target but rock and empty sky, and Nicoletta loaded the magazine herself before handing it over."Live, this time.""I noticed." Blair tried not to grimace as a flicker of unease moved through her body.Nicoletta moved to stand behind her watching Blair's expression with barely hidden amusement. Even with how understanding she seemed to be, there was always a bit of amusement in her expression whenever Blair showed her unease around the gun."Good. I'd rather you be aware of it than brave about it." She positioned Blair's stance with two efficient taps, shoulder, hip, entirely businesslike. "Both hands. Breathe out as you squeeze, not before."The first shot went wide enough to embarrass her, the recoil kicking up through her wrists harder than she'd braced for, the sound of it slamming through her chest like something physical.For one disorienting second she wasn't standing in scrubland a

  • After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don   Chapter 36

    There was a gun on the table this time, not a knife, and Blair's whole body went cold looking at it in a way four weeks of bruises never once had."No.""You haven't heard the lesson yet.""I don't need to hear it. I know what those do." Her voice had gone somewhere she didn't fully recognize, old and thin. In her first life, a gun had only ever meant one thing — the sound of one, once, through a wall, and a silence after that had never fully left her. "I'm not touching it."Nicoletta studied her for a long moment, none of her usual brisk impatience in it at all."Something happened to you. Long before this life, I think." Not a question. She set the gun down flat, unloaded, well out of reach. "You don't have to tell me what. But fear like that doesn't come from nowhere, and I won't pretend it does just to get through a lesson.""It doesn't matter where it came from.""It matters entirely. It's the difference between teaching you a tool and forcing you to relive something." Something

  • After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don   Chapter 35

    Lorenzo listened to the whole report without writing a single note, which Blair had learned by now meant he already believed every word of it."Drugs, moving alongside whatever else that warehouse handles." He said it flatly, already three steps past the observation itself. "Renato's diversified. That is not incidental — men who use on the job are men who will talk for a fix. It is a weakness in his own operation, if we're patient enough to find the right one.""Good work," Alessandro said, and meant it, something warm crossing his face before he had fully suppressed it in front of his uncle.Lorenzo caught the look anyway. Blair watched him catch it."A word, Alessandro. Alone."* * *She waited in the hall, close enough to hear more than either of them probably intended."She is useful. I'll grant you that," Lorenzo said, low. "But that is not the same as safe. Everyone in that room saw your face just now. If I noticed, others will.""Meaning what.""Meaning a don who is soft for on

  • After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don   Chapter 34

    Marco parked with the warehouse in view and the engine off, and didn't say a word for the first twenty minutes beyond confirming she had her seatbelt on."You do this often?" Blair asked eventually, mostly to fill the silence."Often enough not to need to talk through it." He didn't look away from the loading doors while he said it. "Watch the doors, not the men. Men move. Patterns don't."She watched. For a long while there was nothing to see — a single bulb over the entrance, a chained gate, the ordinary stillness of a building that wanted to look abandoned.Then a van pulled in, and three men unloaded crates fast enough that Blair's old instincts, the ones that had spent a lifetime reading bodies instead of faces, caught something before her conscious mind did."That one." She nodded toward the youngest of them, sweating despite the cool night, hands trembling around a crate he was gripping too hard. "He's not nervous. He's sick. Look at his pupils.""Sick how?""I used to see it c

  • After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don   Chapter 33

    There was a knife laid out on the garden table when Blair arrived for the sixth session, plain-handled and unremarkable, sitting next to two glasses of water like it belonged there as ordinarily as the pitcher."We're past hands now?""Hands buy you time. This buys you an ending." Nicoletta picked it up without any of the reverence Blair had half expected, turning it once in her palm, entirely matter-of-fact. "I'd rather you never need it. I'd rather you know how, regardless.""That's not ominous at all.""Good. Ominous gets people killed. Calm keeps them alive." She held it out, handle first. "Take it the way I'm holding it, not the way it looks in films. Thumb along the spine."Blair took it. It felt heavier than its size suggested, or maybe that was only the weight of understanding exactly what it was for.* * *She lost the disarm drill nine times out of ten for the first hour, Nicoletta plucking it out of her grip with a small twist that looked almost gentle and left Blair's wris

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