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Chapter 11: Hollow Graves
Last Updated:
2025-04-19 00:09:22
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Blood 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 : 2025-04-25Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chaptee 18: He Killed Him
The drive was long, the world outside a blur of darkened trees and winding roads. But the silence inside the car was deafening. Matteo’s grip on the steering wheel was tight, his jaw set in that familiar way. The tension between us thickened with every passing mile, like it could choke me at any second. I kept my eyes on the dark landscape, though I wasn’t really seeing it. My mind replayed everything—the kiss, the way his lips had burned into mine, his words, his touch. But mostly, it replayed the one thing I didn’t want to think about: the confession. I killed your father. The words echoed in my head, over and over. I couldn’t escape them. My chest felt hollow, like a part of me had just cracked open. And the worst part? I didn’t know if I hated him for it. How could I? If what he said was true, my father wasn’t who I thought he was. But then… did that really change anything? He was still my father. The man who raised me. Who protected me. Who I trusted. And Matteo—he kill
Last Updated : 2025-04-25
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Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 45: Smoke in the Veins
There’s something about gunmetal that smells like fear. Not because it’s cold or sharp, but because it holds a story in its weight—of what it’s done, and what it could still do.That’s what I was thinking when Natalia tossed a Glock into my palm like it was nothing more than a hairbrush.“You need to stop flinching,” she said, arms crossed, one brow raised. “Guns are not snakes. They don’t bite unless you make them.”Easy for her to say. She was carved from shadows and forged in war. I still flinched every time the trigger clicked.“Again,” she said.I exhaled and aimed.The bullet missed the center by a lot.Natalia sighed. “You’re thinking too much. Don’t overanalyze it. Feel it. Trust your instincts.”“I don’t think I have any instincts,” I muttered.She stepped closer, too close. Her hands wrapped around mine, correcting my grip. Her voice softened for the first time since training started. “You survived kidnapping, betrayal, and your own heart. You have instincts, Amara. Stop dou
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 44: The Blood Pact
The air in Rafael's war room was sharp with tension and too many unsaid things. It wasn’t as grand as I imagined—it looked more like a forgotten chapel turned into a command center. Stained glass windows, cracked and faded, spilled tired colors on the dusty floor. A long oak table stood in the center, scattered with maps, old cigars, empty glasses, and blood-red folders.Everyone was already seated when Matteo and I arrived. Rafael stood at the head of the table, a scar cutting across his brow like punctuation. His gaze flicked to me, then Matteo. He didn’t say anything until we sat down.“There’s a traitor in the camp,” he said without a hint of ceremony.Just like that.No warm-up. No warning. Just fire.My stomach flipped.“What do you mean?” Matteo asked, already leaning forward, jaw clenched.Rafael glanced at the folder in his hand, but didn’t open it.“I mean someone here has been feeding the Vasquez cartel information. Locations. Numbers. Schedules.”A beat of silence.Luca sw
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 43: Scar Stories
We didn’t leave the red room right away. Not even after the truth had already torn through every corner like a cold wind. I stayed in the chair for a while, the folder still on my lap. Matteo sat across from me, elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands.Silence wasn’t awkward. It was thick. Sacred, even. Like we were giving each other space to breathe after drowning for too long.I was the one who broke it.“Do you ever think,” I said slowly, “that maybe we’re just... broken in ways we don’t even understand?”Matteo didn’t look up right away. But when he did, there was something raw in his expression. Not pity. Not guilt. Just... something honest.“All the time.”His voice was quiet, but I heard every syllable. It sank deep, stirring something I hadn’t let rise in years.He leaned back, stretching out his legs and staring at the cracked ceiling like it had all the answers.“You want to know who I was before all this?”I nodded.“I was loud,” he said with a small, bitter laugh. “I
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 42: The Red Room
I wasn’t planning to break anything today. Not locks. Not rules. Not even my own promises. But there I was, standing in front of a door Matteo had explicitly told me never to open. The red room. It wasn’t just locked. It was sealed like a secret. Like it was guarding something so dangerous, even the walls didn’t want to remember. But I needed answers. Not whispers. Not warnings. Real ones. So I picked the lock. The click echoed in the hallway. It sounded too loud, too final. But I pushed the door open anyway. The first thing that hit me was the smell. Dust. Paper. Something older than time. The room was windowless. Red velvet curtains hung on the walls even without windows to cover, and the light was dim, coming from a single bulb swaying slightly from the ceiling. I stepped inside, and the air shifted. The room wasn’t a bedroom or a library. It was something else. A vault of memory. A shrine. Or maybe a crime scene. There were filing cabinets. Stacks of boxes. Shelves filled
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 41: Shards of Silence
The house was quiet in a way that didn’t feel peaceful. It was the kind of silence that pressed on your chest, like it knew what you were hiding. Like it was waiting for you to remember something you'd rather forget. Matteo was resting in the guest room on the lower floor, heavily bandaged and sedated. Rue was with him, sitting in the corner with a book she wasn’t really reading. She'd been shot too, but Rue had always treated pain like it was a mosquito bite—annoying, but not enough to slow her down. I climbed the stairs slowly, each creak of the wood loud in the stillness. Matteo's family house was old. The walls held secrets, and the air was thick with stories no one had finished telling. I wasn’t even sure why I ended up in his old room. Maybe I was looking for a distraction. Maybe I was trying to remember a version of him before the blood, the war, and the hurt. Maybe I just wanted to feel close to him while I still could. The room was cleaner than I expected. There was a
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 40: Crosshairs
The first shot missed. The second almost didn’t. I heard it before I felt it—the whistle of death slicing through the air, the splinter of stone beside my head as the bullet embedded itself in the wall. Dust exploded near my cheek. "Stay down!" I screamed at Matteo, dragging his heavy body behind the fallen column. His blood smeared across my palms, sticky and warm, like a promise that kept breaking every time I tried to hold on. Another shot rang out. This one hit metal. Sparks. Sniper. I was trained to recognize the rhythm, the way death hums just before it sings. Rafael wasn’t just taunting us. He was orchestrating it like music. A symphony of destruction. And we were the finale. Matteo groaned. "You need to leave me." "Don’t you dare say that." He blinked, dazed. His shirt was soaked through with red. His lips pale. The blood loss was catching up. "We’re not both making it out," he said softly. "Then neither of us is leaving." Our radios were dead. Our allies scattered
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 39: The Devil Bleeds
The sound of the gunshot echoed louder than my heartbeat. But it wasn’t pain I felt. It was warmth. Not mine. Blood sprayed across my cheek like a kiss from death. Not mine. “Matteo!” He had stepped in front of me. I caught him before he hit the floor, his body heavy, his knees giving out like they had no more strength to fight. His arms tried to hold on to me, but they slipped, and then I was holding all of him, trembling, trying to press against the wound like I could stop the bleeding with sheer will. Lazaro staggered back, his face frozen in shock. “No,” he whispered. “That wasn’t—” “You shot him,” I said. My voice cracked, not from fear, but fury. “You shot him!” His hand was still on the gun. Still trembling. Still aimed. Matteo coughed, blood leaking past his lips like ink from a dying pen. “I’m fine,” he said. But it was a lie. His eyes were already unfocused. “You’re not,” I whispered, pressing both hands on his chest. “Don’t lie to me.” The world around us ha
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 38: Burn Them
The sky wasn’t just burning—it was screaming. Flames licked the skyline as smoke spiraled upward like curses cast in ash. Buildings groaned under the weight of war. Sirens wailed far away, too far, like they knew this fight wasn’t theirs to stop. Matteo gripped my hand as we darted through shattered glass and fallen walls, bullets rattling like hail on concrete. We weren’t running from something. We were charging straight into it. "Go low!" he shouted, pulling me behind a flipped SUV. I dropped to the ground just in time to feel a bullet split the air above my head. The scent of oil and blood clung to the dirt, thick and choking. "They hit the southern line first," Emil's voice crackled through Matteo's comm. "Rafael's forces are splitting, but Lazaro's are on the move. It's chaos." "Good," Matteo replied coldly. "Let them burn each other. We'll clean the rest." We moved like shadows through the wreckage. Matteo took lead, always just ahead, always checking my back. He didn’t s
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 37: Firestorm Pact
War is a pact of fire. We sign it in blood and light it with a match. I should be afraid. But I’m not. I sit in the war room of the Crimson Line's hidden compound, a place that smells like gunpowder, sweat, and dying prayers. Across from me sits Elias—traitor, father, ghost. The silence between us is louder than bombs. "You’re insane," I say. Elias shrugs. "Probably. But I’m offering you the only shot at winning. Rafael is coming. He wants Matteo’s head and your ashes. I can give him something bigger." "The Vergara estate." He nods. "We let him win. We let him walk in. Then we bury him in it. One click. One explosion. End of story." I study him. The years have turned his face into stone, and grief has hollowed him out. I don’t trust him. But sometimes, you make peace with the devil to burn a worse one. "And after?" I ask. "I disappear. You rebuild. Matteo lives." He stands to leave, but I stop him. "He’s going to kill you," I say quietly. Elias pauses. "Let him try. I’ve g
