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Chapter 10: Dagger and Diamonds
Last Updated:
2025-04-18 13:56:06
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Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 11: Hollow Graves
The grass felt different beneath my shoes. Softer, like it knew how to hold grief without letting it spill over.I never liked cemeteries. Not because they were haunted, but because they weren’t. Because they were quiet and polite and still, while everything in me stayed loud.The silence didn't match the chaos I kept inside.I followed the narrow path through stone and memory. Most of the headstones had names I didn’t recognize, but that didn’t make them strangers. Death made siblings out of all of us eventually.When I reached her grave, I hesitated.It had been too long since I visited.Too long pretending she was still alive in some parallel world, still stirring soup at dawn, still humming love songs like lullabies, still calling my name like it meant something soft.Angela R. Cruz1974–2013.Beloved wife, mother, dreamer.The letters had faded a little more since last time. The marble was cracked in the corner, like the earth had tried to remember her too hard and broken somethi
Last Updated : 2025-04-19Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 12: The Betrayer
There are moments when the air holds its breath. Like even the sky is waiting to see what you'll do.That was the kind of moment I walked into.The hallway was dim, quiet. Not the calm kind. More like the sharp, waiting kind, like right before lightning strikes.I was coming from the study, the warning note from the grave still folded in my jacket pocket. Matteo hadn’t said much after reading it. He didn’t need to. The silence he left me with was heavier than any answer.I turned the corner toward the west wing. I wasn’t even sure why I was going there. Maybe to think. Maybe to escape the thoughts already crawling under my skin.I didn’t see him at first.Lorenzo.He was standing near the window, back turned, one hand resting on the sill, the other holding something small. Something that caught the light.I paused.The instinct to walk away came too late.He turned.Not slow. Not fast. Just intentional.Our eyes met. His face didn’t shift. Not a single twitch of guilt. Not even curios
Last Updated : 2025-04-19Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 13: Veins of Ice
The halls were quieter after death.Not the still kind, but the haunted kind. Every step I took echoed too much, like the house was trying to remember where Lorenzo fell.He died in front of me.Matteo killed him in front of me.And now we were back in this silence, walking like nothing had cracked the air hours ago.I sat at the edge of Matteo’s study couch, hands wrapped around a cup of untouched tea. The porcelain felt too delicate for what I’d seen. For what I’d become a part of.Across from me, Matteo poured whiskey. No ice. Just amber and silence.“Why him?” I asked.My voice wasn’t sharp. Just tired.He didn’t look up as he answered. “Because I didn’t think it’d be him.”He took a slow sip, then leaned back, eyes fixed on nothing in particular.“I grew up with Lorenzo. He was two years older. Taught me how to fake a smile during meetings, how to cheat at cards, how to aim a gun without blinking.”He set the glass down.“When my father died, I was sixteen. The day after the fune
Last Updated : 2025-04-19Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 14: Broken Mirrors
The house was quieter after grief. Not the haunted kind this time, but something softer. Like a sigh that never quite made it out of someone’s lungs.We stayed in Matteo’s study longer than necessary. Neither of us moved when the clock ticked past midnight. The fire burned low, and shadows crept up the walls, but it didn’t feel dangerous anymore. Just… honest.I traced the rim of the porcelain cup in my hands, lukewarm now, and leaned back into the couch. My body ached, not from injury, but from emotion. Like every tendon had stretched too far from feeling too much.Across from me, Matteo sat with his elbows on his knees, head bowed, fingers laced. He looked tired. Not physically, but the kind of tired you don’t sleep off.“How do you live with it?” I asked.He didn’t look up right away. When he did, his voice was quiet. “You don’t. You just learn how to keep breathing through it.”There was a pause. Not the awkward kind, but the meaningful kind.“You know what’s strange?” I asked, tr
Last Updated : 2025-04-20Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 15: The Snake’s Tongue
e silence between us the next morning wasn’t harsh. It was... still. Like the ocean before a storm. The kind of quiet that made you think everything might be fine until you realized you were just in the eye of it.I hadn’t spoken much since we left Cavite. Matteo didn’t push. Maybe he understood I needed time. Or maybe he was afraid of what I’d say if he forced me to look at him.I sat by the window in his Manila penthouse, legs curled under me, hands wrapped around a cup of tea I hadn’t touched. Below, the city never stopped moving. Lights, cars, people. Like none of them knew that my world had just cracked open.My father.The word tasted unfamiliar now.I grew up thinking of him as a quiet man. Faint laughter in my mother’s stories. A hand on my head in memories I wasn’t sure were real. A photograph on our altar, framed in dust and silence. But last night, he became someone else. Someone who made deals with men like the Valerios. Someone who signed his name beside blood.I didn’t h
Last Updated : 2025-04-20Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 16: Crossfire Love
The Manila air carried a strange stillness that night.I knew I shouldn’t have left the penthouse. Matteo told me to stay put. But silence had become unbearable, and the air inside felt like it belonged to someone else. I needed space. I needed the city lights to remind me I wasn’t trapped in some nightmare carved out of family legacies and bloodlines.So I walked. Just past the side streets, not far. Just enough to breathe. I didn’t notice the van. Not until it screeched to a halt and the doors flew open.Three men, faces masked. Guns. One grabbed me by the arm, another shoved something cold against my back.“Quiet,” one hissed, dragging me toward the alley.My breath caught. I froze. My mind spun, but my body couldn’t keep up. Everything blurred.But then... Gunfire.A shot cracked through the air, then another.One of the masked men collapsed beside me, blood blooming across his chest like a violent rose.“Down!” someone shouted.I dropped just as another bullet tore past my ear, s
Last Updated : 2025-04-20Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 17: The Kiss
I didn’t sleep after he kissed me.How could I? That kind of closeness doesn't just fade into nothing. It lingers, burns. It rewrites everything you thought was real.His lips still haunted the corner of my mouth, like a secret only my skin could remember.Matteo sat across the room, back turned, pretending the moment hadn’t happened. Pretending like he hadn’t just torn down the walls he built between us only to raise another.“You’ll hate me,” he’d said.That sentence played on repeat in my head like a warning I didn’t know how to obey.The silence between us stretched like an old wound. I wanted to reach for him. To pull the truth out from wherever he’d buried it. But a part of me already knew—whatever he was hiding would break me more than any bullet ever could.The rain outside barely touched the glass. It was soft, like whispers I wasn’t meant to hear. I stared at the window anyway, waiting for something—anything—to make this weight in my chest feel lighter.But the quiet shatter
Last Updated : 2025-04-25Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 21: Ghost of The Bloodline
The air inside the old, forgotten orphanage felt thick, stale with memories and dust. Every step I took seemed to echo, reminding me of the silence that had surrounded this place for years. Matteo was beside me, his presence like a weight on my shoulder, but I couldn’t bring myself to push him away. Not when I was standing on the precipice of something I hadn’t known I was ready to face."Are you sure about this?" Matteo's voice broke the silence, low and hesitant.I looked at him, seeing his concern reflected in the dark shadows under his eyes. He'd never shown this much vulnerability before, and it made me feel like I was drowning in a sea of things I couldn’t control. "I have to know, Matteo. I have to know what happened to me... who I really am."The words tasted bitter on my tongue. It felt like a betrayal to the man I thought was my father. But there was no turning back now. My entire life had been built on lies, and I was too tired to pretend anymore.Matteo sighed, his fingers
Last Updated : 2025-04-25
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Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 30: Bullet Vows Broken
Amara’s POVI didn’t sleep that night.The cut on my palm had dried into a thin, ugly line, but the ache didn’t stop there. It spread through my chest like rot, thick and impossible to escape from. Matteo’s face wouldn’t leave my head—the way his eyes hardened, how his voice cracked when he said goodbye.It played on repeat. Every blink, every breath, it was there.“You don’t understand.”“Don’t.”“I trusted you.”“I’m done with you.”I could still hear it.I sat alone on the cold floor of the safehouse, the silence so loud it nearly screamed. Outside the window, dawn hadn’t even tried to break yet. Just black sky and heavier shadows.He didn’t even let me explain.But maybe he didn’t need to.I had cut myself open for Matteo—literally—and he still walked away like none of it mattered. Maybe to him, it didn’t.I wanted to scream.I wanted to smash something.But more than anythin
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 29: Crimson Pact
Amara's POVThe night was too quiet, too calm, like the eye of the storm had passed over and now we were just waiting for it to rip everything apart. But there was no escaping. Not anymore.I stood in the dimly lit room, my fingers shaking as I stared at the blade in my hand. Lazaro’s voice echoed in my mind, his offer still ringing in my ears. I had no choice. None."Everything Rafael stole from me, I’ll give it to you," I had promised him, my voice steady despite the chaos in my heart. "In exchange for Matteo’s freedom."Lazaro had agreed, his eyes gleaming with that sick satisfaction that made my skin crawl. But there was a price. Always a price."A blood pact," he had said, his voice low, deliberate. "Sealed with loyalty."I had tried to push back, to make some kind of excuse, but Lazaro wasn’t a man who dealt in excuses. He was a man of demands, of terms I couldn’t refuse. And as much as it repulsed me, I knew I had to play
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 28: Kill her or be killed
Amara’s POV"Tell me," I said.His silence terrified me more than any gun ever pointed at my head.Matteo stood in front of me, drenched from the rain, shoulders slumped like he’d just buried someone. There was something haunted in his eyes—something I hadn’t seen before. Not even when he thought I died.He opened his mouth. Closed it. And when he finally spoke, it wasn’t what I expected."He knows you’re alive."The breath left my lungs. I stepped back, the walls of the safehouse suddenly too close, too tight."Rafael?"He nodded once. "He showed me a picture. Said he’s known for a while. He’s just been waiting.""Waiting for what?"Matteo didn’t answer right away. He looked down at his hands, like they were covered in blood."He gave me a choice."His voice cracked. My heart did too."What kind of choice?"He looked at me then. Really looked. And I knew. I knew before he said it. I felt it like a scream in my bones."He wants me to kill you," Matteo said. "Seven days. Or he’ll kill
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 27: Seven days
Matteo’s POVThe rain had started again. Not the kind that invited umbrellas or window-side poems—this was the cold, punishing kind, the kind that made everything feel heavier than it already was.I sat in the backseat of the black Escalade, silent as the engine idled near the dockyard. Nico was in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, eyes watching the storm.He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. We both knew what tonight was. Not a truce. Not a conversation.A reckoning.“You sure about this?” Nico finally asked, voice low.“No,” I said, and meant it.He gave me a look in the rearview mirror, then turned off the engine.We walked the rest of the way.The abandoned warehouse stood like a beast’s carcass—stripped, skeletal, looming. Inside, only one overhead bulb flickered above a steel table, two chairs waiting like vultures.He was already there. Rafael Aragon. Wearing black gloves, sipping from a paper cup like he wasn’t the one who had just pulled strings that nearly end
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 26: Blood Roses
The air inside the bunker tasted stale, heavy like it was soaked with grief I was still trying to swallow. I pulled the sleeves of my jacket over my hands, staring blankly at the cracked floor. There was a war outside, a silent one, moving like a shadow across the city.And Matteo Vergara was playing the part of the broken man.I saw glimpses of it on the small TV in the corner. His black suit. His bloodshot eyes. His voice shaking as he gave statements to the media. The world mourned for him, the heartbroken fiancé who had lost everything in one cruel twist of fate.Except none of it was real.I was still here. Hiding. Breathing. Burning from the inside out."You ready?" a deep voice asked from the doorway.I turned my head and saw Nico leaning against the frame, arms crossed, a small smirk playing on his lips. He was one of Matteo’s trusted men, someone who had been with him long before all this chaos started."As ready as I'll ever be," I said, pushing myself to my feet.The past f
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 24: U going to betray me?
The room was quiet except for the steady hum of the ceiling fan above us, its rhythmic whirr doing little to calm the tension in the air. My heart was racing, a storm of confusion swirling in my chest as Matteo stood before me, his usual confident demeanor replaced with a rare vulnerability. I couldn’t help but notice how his hand twitched at his side, a gesture that betrayed the calm he was trying to project. The weight of the conversation hanging between us was too heavy. It had been too heavy since the moment he told me about the blood contract. “Amara…” Matteo started, his voice low, measured. “You need to understand something. This blood contract—it was forged, against my will. Rafael forced me to sign it. Tortured me until I didn’t have a choice.” I blinked, struggling to process his words. “Tortured you? But you’re the one who…” I trailed off, unsure of what to say. The lies, the manipulation, everything I had known about him felt like a cruel joke. “I had no choice,” he co
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 23: Queen On The Board
The air was thick with tension. Every step I took felt like it echoed in the silent room, my shoes clicking sharply against the polished floors. The walls were adorned with dark, intricate paintings—power, money, blood—they seemed to mock me. I wasn’t just in Lazaro Reyes’ territory now. I was standing on the precipice of a world I had only heard about in whispers, a world where people like me didn’t belong. Lazaro stood at the other end of the room, his back to me, looking out over the city. The view was stunning—everything below looked like it was mine for the taking. I swallowed the lump in my throat, wondering just how deep this game went. “You've come a long way, Amara,” Lazaro said, his voice smooth and measured. “And now, you're in a position to make choices. The choices you never had.” I took a step forward, resisting the urge to turn and walk right back out. This wasn’t some simple meeting. This was an offer. A dangerous, seductive offer. “I don’t need your pity,” I said,
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 22: Blood Debt
The morning light crept through the cracked stained-glass windows of the abandoned cathedral, casting colorful streaks across the dusty floor. I could hear the faint rustling of fabric, the quiet footsteps of someone moving through the shadows. My breath was caught somewhere between anticipation and dread, but there was no turning back now. I had come this far—too far, perhaps. I stepped inside, my heart hammering, but I refused to let fear control me. I had to face this. Whatever this was. And then I saw him. Lazaro Reyes. He stood in the center of the room, his silhouette framed by the sun filtering through the stained glass. His face was sharp, cold—too much like the stories I had heard growing up. The leader of one of the most dangerous syndicates in the world, the very man I had been taught to hate. But there was something different about him now, something that made my chest tighten. Lazaro’s eyes locked onto mine, and for a moment, the world around me faded into nothing. I
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 25: The Funeral
The night was silent except for the faint rustling of the wind outside, carrying with it the scent of rain. I sat in the dimly lit bunker, my legs pulled up to my chest, the cold concrete pressing against my skin. My heart felt like a stone lodged deep in my throat, suffocating me.I had died today. Or at least, the world thought I had.The car crash had been staged perfectly—a fiery explosion that left nothing but ash. Matteo had been the grieving man, the one caught in the middle of it all. He had cried on camera, his emotions raw and public, while I sat in the shadows, hidden away in a place that no one could find. It was all too much, too much to process. How could anyone live in a world where everything, even death, was fabricated?I pushed myself off the floor, my eyes scanning the dimly lit room. The cold walls, the old furniture—it all looked so familiar, as if it had been waiting for me all this time. Matteo had prepared this place long ago, anticipating the possibility of so
