Share

RULES

Penulis: Kammy
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-09 00:23:16

BLOOD AND VOWS

---

CHAPTER FIVE

RULES OF THE HOUSE

“You can cage a lion, but you can’t stop it from remembering the hunt.”

---

Emilia woke before the sun.

The room was still wrapped in shadows, the heavy curtains drawn tight. She lay still for a moment, listening. No footsteps. No voices. Just the faint hum of the security system and the echo of her heartbeat.

Alessio’s chair was empty. He hadn’t come back after their quiet standoff the night before. That didn’t surprise her. He didn’t seem like the type to sleep much—or need to.

She sat up slowly, her mind already ticking. New life. New territory. New rules.

Time to learn them.

---

The estate’s east wing was off-limits.

She’d heard it in the hallway whispers. She’d seen the locked doors. A whole section of the mansion sealed like a crime scene.

So of course, that’s where she went first.

The hallway was quiet. Guards stationed far enough away to be out of sight, but close enough to intervene if she pushed too hard.

She tested a door. Locked.

Another. Same.

The third had a keypad.

Interesting.

She stared at it, wondering what kind of secrets Alessio kept behind steel and silence. Family archives? Weapons? Enemies?

“Looking for something?”

She turned.

Alessio stood ten feet away, dressed in black slacks and a charcoal shirt, sleeves rolled, jaw set. Calm, but alert. Like he’d been watching the whole time.

“I was exploring,” she said coolly.

“You were trespassing.”

She crossed her arms. “Didn’t know curiosity was illegal.”

“In this house,” he said, stepping closer, “everything has a consequence.”

They were inches apart now. His voice dropped.

“I don’t care if you hate me. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re untouchable.”

Emilia didn’t flinch. “I don’t make mistakes. I make moves.”

He stared at her, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. Then he stepped back.

“Let’s get something straight,” he said. “You’re here because it keeps two families from going to war. You’re not my partner. You’re not my queen. You’re leverage. And if you try to play me—”

“I won’t have to,” she cut in. “You’re already losing pieces.”

A long silence.

Then he chuckled—low and humorless.

“You think you know how this works?”

“I grew up in it.”

“You grew up behind gates, under guard, protected by your father’s last name. This—” he gestured around them, “—isn’t protection. It’s survival. Day to day. Quiet and brutal.”

She met his gaze. “Then teach me.”

---

They moved into a rhythm after that.

Not soft. Not warm. But something close to manageable.

He spent his mornings in the underground garage, training with his men. She spent hers in the library or garden, learning the layout, noting who watched her, who underestimated her.

They didn’t eat together. They didn’t speak unless necessary. But the air between them shifted.

One morning, she found a knife missing from her nightstand.

She searched everywhere. Nothing.

The next night, it reappeared—sharpened.

A message, again.

---

By the end of the week, Emilia knew more than most would’ve guessed.

She knew the names of every man in Alessio’s inner circle. She knew which guards were loyal and which were just well-paid. She knew that the Moretti family ran three shipping fronts, two casinos, and one underground network no one dared name aloud.

And she knew this: Alessio was being watched.

Not just by her.

By someone inside.

---

The first time they sat across from each other at dinner, it wasn’t planned.

She entered the dining room out of routine. He was already there, shirt sleeves rolled, collar unbuttoned, tie loose around his neck.

She froze. He looked up.

“Didn’t realize this seat was claimed,” she said.

He motioned to the chair opposite. “It’s not. Sit.”

She did.

For a while, they ate in silence.

Then, quietly: “You don’t ask questions,” he said.

“I get more answers without them.”

He studied her. “That’s dangerous.”

“So am I.”

---

He leaned back in his chair.

“I’ve known a lot of women. Most wanted the crown, the money, the blood. You want something else.”

“I want control.”

“And what happens when you get it?”

“I stop answering to men like you.”

Something dark crossed his expression. “Then you’re in the wrong house.”

“No,” she said, finishing her wine. “I’m exactly where I need to be.”

---

That night, he didn’t sleep in the chair.

He slept on the couch near the fireplace.

Close enough to watch her.

Far enough to remind her of the distance between survival and trust.

---

Lanjutkan membaca buku ini secara gratis
Pindai kode untuk mengunduh Aplikasi

Bab terbaru

  • BLOOD AND VOWS   THE ENDING WE CHOSE (PART 2)

    CHAPTER FIFTYTHE ENDING WE CHOSE (PART II)“The best stories don’t end when the violence stops. They end when the ones who survived finally allow themselves to live.”The days stretched longer now. In Palermo, summer was creeping in with the scent of sea salt and lemons, and Bianca had come to love how the sun hit the café windows just before 7 a.m. The light wasn’t sharp. It was golden, like honey dripping over the stone floors and warm wood tables. The walls inside were whitewashed, the old beams above exposed. On the left, near the counter, a faded frame held a single photograph: Emilia on the hood of a car, laughing, middle finger up, cigarette in her teeth. Below it, a small brass plaque read: “She chose us. So we could choose something else.”The café, Rina’s, had grown into something none of them planned. At first, it was just a front—a quiet place where four survivors could anchor themselves after tearing open the bones of the past. But then neighbors started coming. First ou

  • BLOOD AND VOWS   THE ENDING WE CHOSE (PART 1)

    CHAPTER FOURTY-NINETHE ENDING WE CHOSE (PART I)“There is no silence without someone choosing not to speak.”The sun over Vienna didn’t rise—it revealed. The way light slips between ancient stones, over copper gutters, across rooftops that had watched two world wars and thousands of quiet betrayals, always listening, never intervening. Alessio stood on the roof of the holding house, coat zipped to his throat, hands in his pockets. Below him, the city woke without knowing what had almost happened. People poured coffee. Children cried. Streetcars hummed. Life, utterly unbothered.Behind him, the door creaked.Bianca stepped onto the roof, scarf loose around her neck, eyes red but dry. Neither of them had slept. After the Austrian vault fell, the shockwave wasn’t physical. No explosion. No electromagnetic pulse. No headline. But something lifted—something buried so deep in the collective mind that when it left, the world took a breath it didn’t know it had been holding. The other vaults

  • BLOOD AND VOWS   WE ARCHIVE

    ---CHAPTER FOURTY EIGHT WE ARE THE ARCHIVE“They thought they built vaults to hold memory. But memory always needed bodies.”The air in the vault turned warm, like breath exhaled through old lungs. The stone beneath Alessio’s boots wasn’t just floor anymore—it pulsed, faintly, rhythmically, like something ancient had aligned itself with the beat of his heart. He holstered his weapon slowly. Matteo was gone—reduced to ash that didn’t smoke, didn’t drift. It just settled, like dust from a burned history book. No scream. No warning. Just the end of a man who wasn’t a man anymore.Bianca dropped to one knee beside the shattered remains of the chair. She reached down, brushed her fingertips over the remains. They were warm. Alive, somehow. Not residue from a life lost—but fragments of memory still being held.Sofia scanned the open floor beneath them. The section where Matteo had sat was no longer solid. A perfect circle of stone had retracted, revealing not a staircase or tunnel—but a v

  • BLOOD AND VOWS   ALL THAT WE BURIED

    CHAPTER FOURTY-SEVEN ALL THAT WE BURIED “The deeper you dig into the past, the more it starts digging back.” The mountains rose like broken teeth from the Austrian horizon, white-capped and indifferent. They held no memory of blood, no record of names. Snow covered every ruin eventually. But buried beneath the southern slope of what the locals called Todesspitze—Death Peak—was a structure that predated the Cold War, the Reich, the Empire before it. No markers. No flags. Just the hum beneath the ground, faint and rhythmic, like a second heartbeat waiting to be acknowledged. Alessio sat in the rear of the modified transport van as they climbed the narrow mountain path. A three-man team from Sofia’s personal network drove ahead in a decoy vehicle. They didn’t know the mission. Just that the people inside the main van carried something older than bullets and more dangerous than explosives: memory that refused to stay buried. Bianca sat across from him, gloves on, eyes locked on t

  • BLOOD AND VOWS   THE ONES WHO WATCHED IT HAPPEN

    CHAPTER FORTY-SIX THE ONES WHO WATCHED IT HAPPEN “The worst kind of witness isn’t the one who speaks after the crime. It’s the one who knew it was coming and stayed silent.” The room was colder than when they left it. That was the first thing Bianca noticed. No change in temperature on paper. No obvious shift in the thermostat. But the air had changed. Heavier. Stiller. As if the oxygen had stopped circulating the moment they found the body in the Istanbul vault. As if the vault had not sealed, but exhaled something that still lingered in their lungs. Back inside the house, their boots left faint imprints on the marble that hadn’t been there before. The dust was disturbed—not by footsteps that came in through a door, but by something that had been there already. The kind of presence that doesn’t enter from outside, but simply waits for the right silence to step forward. Sofia noticed first. Her hand twitched toward the weapon at her side. Alessio simply stopped walking. No or

  • BLOOD AND VOWS   WHAT THE SILENCE COVERED

    --- CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE WHAT THE SILENCE COVERED “Not everything buried was meant to be found. Some things were buried to keep the living from becoming worse than the dead.” The plane touched down in Istanbul just after midnight. No official manifest. No customs. No one waiting. Alessio, Bianca, Sofia, and Rosa stepped onto the tarmac wearing plain black coats, faces clean, no weapons in hand—but every one of them carried the weight of the last vault under their skin. Tomaso stayed behind to lock down the estate. Someone had to keep the fire lit in case they didn’t come back. The van waiting at the edge of the runway had no plates. A driver sat in the front seat, face hidden beneath a gray cap, no words spoken. When Alessio opened the side door, he found a folder waiting on the seat. Inside—coordinates, a skeletal map of the Old City, and a list of known “anomalies.” That was the word used. Not threats. Not traps. Anomalies. As if they weren’t heading into danger, but into som

Bab Lainnya
Jelajahi dan baca novel bagus secara gratis
Akses gratis ke berbagai novel bagus di aplikasi GoodNovel. Unduh buku yang kamu suka dan baca di mana saja & kapan saja.
Baca buku gratis di Aplikasi
Pindai kode untuk membaca di Aplikasi
DMCA.com Protection Status