MasukShare
Chapter 39: The Devil Bleeds
Terakhir Diperbarui:
2025-05-06 09:15:39
Bab terkait
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Prologue: The Blood Promise
(Ten years ago) There are things a child shouldn’t remember. Like the smell of burning flesh. The sound of bones cracking beneath a boot. Or the way her mother’s hand shook when she whispered, “Don’t make a sound, baby. Not even a breath.” I was nine when I saw my father die. Not the man who raised me. The man whose blood runs in my veins. The man who built empires out of bullets and betrayal. I didn’t know it then. Only that Mama always said he was “gone” in that vague way grownups say when they mean something deeper. That day, I learned what “gone” really meant. It was supposed to be a quick trip. We were supposed to be in and out of Manila in a day. Mama needed to meet someone. “Business,” she said. I was wearing my favorite sneakers. Bright red, scuffed at the toes from schoolyard games. I remember because I kept staring at them when the screaming started. Like if I focused hard enough, I wouldn’t hear the gunfire. But it didn’t work. You never forget the sound of your
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-10Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 1: The Bride
(MATTEO’S POV) They say a man should feel something on his wedding day. Joy. Hope. Nerves. Even guilt. I felt nothing. Not when I slid the cufflinks into place, black on black. Not when the housekeeper knocked on the door and told me the guests had arrived. Not even when I caught my reflection in the mirror. Sharp suit, sharper stare, and the ghosts behind my eyes who never stopped watching. I was a soldier marrying a stranger. A son honoring his family’s demand. A man with blood on his hands and no space in his chest for anything that didn’t taste like control. No, I wasn’t nervous. I was bored. “This is a mistake,” my cousin murmured beside me, low enough that only I could hear. “You don’t need her. You have the army. The routes. The respect.” I adjusted my tie. “I also have enemies. And her last name.” “Cruz,” he spat like it burned. “Your father would’ve—” “My father’s dead.” Silence cut between us. He didn’t say it, but I knew what he was thinking. That
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-10Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 2: The House Of Glass
(AMARA'S POV)The morning after my forced wedding, the sunlight felt fake. Like it was shining on the wrong people, on the wrong story. I opened my eyes to silence and unfamiliar air. Cold. Sterile. Not a single picture on the wall. Not even a crack in the marble floor. It was too perfect. Too polished. Like the kind of house that didn't want to be lived in.Just stared at.Just controlled.I sat up slowly, my head heavy from pretending. Pretending I wasn’t terrified. Pretending that the vows didn’t feel like chains around my throat. Pretending that Matteo Valerio hadn’t looked at me like he’d seen a ghost he wanted to bury twice.I checked the door.Locked.Of course.A maid knocked fifteen minutes later. Said nothing, just handed me a change of clothes and a tray of food like I was an exhibit behind glass. I almost asked her name. Almost.But then I remembered where I was.I was not here to make friends.I showered. Changed. Didn’t touch the food. I didn’t trust anything in this hou
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-10Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 3: Paper Vows, Iron Chains
The mansion never slept.Even at two in the morning, it breathed with a quiet menace—heels clicking against marble in the hallway, guards whispering over radios, shadows sliding beneath doors. I stood by the window in our so-called bedroom, staring at the driveway below. Two black cars. One motorcycle. The rest hidden somewhere, like everything else in this house.I hadn’t moved for over an hour. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think past the man from the meeting.“You look like your mother.”The words looped in my head like static, like the kind of thing you don’t realize is dangerous until it’s already cracked open something inside you.My mother had died when I was ten. Hit-and-run, they said. Closed casket. I never saw her face again. Never asked questions. Not because I didn’t want to, but because people looked uncomfortable when I did.And now… now some stranger said her name like it was a weapon.I wanted answers. I wanted truth.Instead, I had a marriage contract and a door that didn
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-12Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 4: Secrets In The Walls
I didn’t expect much from a house built on blood, but I also didn’t expect the silence to be this loud.It wasn’t the kind of silence that meant peace. It was the kind that pressed against your skin like humidity. Heavy. Watching. Waiting.After the funeral, Matteo disappeared for the rest of the day. Not a word. Not a knock. Not even the echo of his boots in the hallway. Just gone. And in his absence, the house felt like a stranger again—walls too white, floors too clean, windows that didn’t open.I didn’t cry.I wanted to, but I couldn’t.Maybe because crying felt like surrender. And I wasn’t ready to lose again.So I walked.Not with a plan. Not even with hope. Just footsteps echoing through halls that weren’t mine, wearing shoes that didn’t belong to me, passing portraits of men with dead eyes and tighter suits.This place was built to trap people. Not with locks. With beauty. With secrets.And I was tired of being the only one without answers.Down one corridor, past a wing that
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-12Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 5: The House that Watches
I woke to the sound of something shifting. Not loud. Not sharp. Just enough to pull me out of sleep and make my heart start sprinting before my mind caught up.The red folder was still next to me, under the pillow where I’d shoved it last night like some kind of talisman. But no one was in the room. The door was still closed. Locked from the inside.Still, something felt… off.I sat up slowly, brushing hair from my face, the silence pressing against my ears again like it had weight. The kind that makes your ribs feel too tight and the air feel too thick.I wasn’t alone.Not in this house. Not even in this room.I turned toward the mirror.Nothing.But I swear something moved just at the corner of it. A shimmer. A breath. Something just out of reach.I forced myself up. Pulled on the thick robe someone had left folded at the end of my bed. Opened the door with steady hands that didn’t feel like mine.The hallway was still.Too still.I walked barefoot, each step a whisper against the p
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-16Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 6: The Meeting
My heart made a sound I didn’t know it could make.He asked to meet me.Not send a message. Not watch from afar. Not play some ghost game from the shadows.He wanted to see me.My real father.The man with the scar on his lip and the truth buried somewhere behind those cold eyes.“When?” I asked.Matteo didn’t look at me right away. He stared past me, through the window, like the answer was somewhere in the trees or the clouds or the quiet spaces in between.“Tomorrow,” he said. “Ten a.m. You’ll be driven there.”I blinked. “And you’re letting me go?”He finally looked at me.“I don’t want you to. But I won’t stop you.”That didn’t feel like permission.That felt like surrender.“Where?”“A neutral location. Old estate outside town. Used to belong to the Aragon family. He’s repurposed it.”I nodded slowly, even though nothing made sense anymore.“What’s the catch?”“There’s always a catch,” he said. “But you’ll have to figure that out yourself.”I wanted to scream.To throw something.
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-16Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 7: The Storm Before Midnight
It was past eleven when I left the library.The air outside bit at my skin. The silence of the estate felt too clean, like something had been scrubbed away. I held the box tight against my chest, like it would stop the questions from crawling out of my ribs.Matteo hadn’t said a word the whole ride back.He didn’t ask what Rafael told me. Didn’t demand to know what was in the box. He just stared straight ahead, fingers clenched around the edge of the seat like he was trying to anchor himself somewhere.I hated that he looked like he was breaking.Because I didn’t know if I wanted to fix him or finish him.I stayed in my room all day after that.Didn’t speak. Didn’t eat. Just stared at the photos, the files, the grainy footage that blurred the lines between memory and myth.Rafael hadn’t lied.But he hadn’t told the whole truth either.I watched my mother in a video dated three months before she died. She sat on the edge of a bed in a hotel room, hair damp, eyes hollow.“If this ends b
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-16
Bab terbaru
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
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 35: The Last Line
The silence was deafening. The kind that doesn’t just settle into your ears—it crawls into your bones. For the first time in weeks, no one spoke. No one dared to. We just stared at each other, faces half-lit by the low hanging bulbs of the safehouse, the weight of Matteo’s decision heavy in the air. He had snapped. Not loudly. Not with guns or fury. He broke quietly. Like glass left too long in a fire, beautiful until it just… cracked. “I’m done holding back,” Matteo finally said. I looked up from the blueprints spread across the table. “What are you saying?” He didn’t answer right away. He just walked over, placed Rafael’s video message in the center of the table, and hit play again. His brother’s muffled cries filled the room. Everyone flinched. “This—” Matteo pointed at the screen, “—this is the line. The last f*cking line.” No one argued. Not eve
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 36: Judas Among Us
Betrayal has a sound.It isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself with crashing glass or bullets through walls.It whispers.And tonight, I heard it.The whisper of footsteps where there shouldn’t be any. The creak of a hinge. The breath someone holds when they think they’re alone.We had grown too comfortable. Too confident in our shadows and secrets. And now, those same shadows were bleeding.It was Elias.Matteo’s right hand.The one who stood beside him in every war, every negotiation, every moment where death leaned in too close. The one who had once pulled Matteo out of a burning car with a bullet in his shoulder and a snarl on his face.And he was the one leaking information.I didn’t tell anyone at first. I watched.I watched him excuse himself just before major meetings. I watched his phone light up in the middle of blackout drills. I watched him brush off questions with too muc
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 34: Mercy’s Edge
I had barely stepped into the damp, echoing silence of the abandoned warehouse when the weight of what was about to happen hit me. My breath caught, chest tight with something I couldn’t name. The smell of iron and old leather lingered in the air, mixing with the faint scent of gunpowder that had almost become synonymous with my life.Matteo Monteverde stood just a few steps ahead, his posture tense but resolute. His eyes were trained on the dark figure ahead of us, waiting. Watching. Calculating.Rafael Aragon.We had tracked him here. This was it. The moment we had prepared for. The moment Matteo had sworn would end with blood on his hands. Rafael had pushed too far this time. He had killed too many of us. Torn families apart, burned lives to the ground. There was no turning back now.But as I watched Matteo take a slow step forward, I saw something in his eyes. A hesitation. A flicker of something I hadn’t expected.“I thought this wou
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 33: The Wake Of The Living
Rain tapped like soft whispers against the windshield, and the world outside the tinted glass blurred into shadows and smoke.The hearse ahead of us moved slowly, a dark carriage dragging Matteo Monteverde's name through the mud one last time. The streets were lined with umbrellas and whispers, mourners and monsters dressed in black.And somewhere in the crowd... was me.Draped in a long black veil, a wig darkening my hair, I stood still. Silent. My heart beating in sync with the thunder above. My heels sank into the softened earth, and my gloved hands clenched the umbrella handle so tightly I thought it might snap.I didn’t speak. I didn’t blink.I just watched.Watched Rafael Aragon walk up to the podium like a grieving brother. Like a man who didn’t have blood on his hands.He wore mourning well. Black suit, black tie, just a touch of red in his pocket square—because the devil never forgets his color.He look
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 32: The Ghost Letter
The second envelope came at dawn. No knock. No footsteps. Just a soft thud, like a breath exhaled through paper, as it landed on the floor of Matteo's room. I didn’t notice it at first. I was dozing off, curled up in the chair, my fingers still loosely holding Matteo's hand. But the sound pulled me out of the fog. There it was. Another letter. Same yellowing parchment. Same shaky ink. But this time, it was addressed to Matteo. I didn’t touch it. Not right away. Something about it felt wrong. Like it breathed. Like it watched. I stared at it as the sun cracked through the slats in the window, slicing light across the tile floor. My heart hammered in slow, heavy thuds. I didn’t know if I was more afraid of what was inside it or the fact that it had gotten in at all. No one had come through that door. No one. And still, it sat there. I finally reached f
Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 31: Shot Through The Heart
The blood wouldn’t stop.It soaked through my fingers, warm and terrifying, as I pressed harder against Matteo’s chest. I couldn’t even tell where the bullet had entered anymore—only that the bleeding wouldn’t slow, and his breathing was getting shallower.“Faster!” I screamed over my shoulder, my voice cracking. “We’re losing him!”Emil didn’t reply. He just drove harder, weaving through the barely lit roads like every second could kill us.The safehouse wasn’t far now. A medical one—hidden deep in the hills, off-grid, fully equipped and used only for the most desperate moments.And this was desperate.I stared down at Matteo’s face. His lashes twitched against his pale skin, sweat dotting his forehead. His lips were tinted red.“Stay with me, please.”My voice was smaller now. I didn’t care about pride or anger or what happened yesterday. Not when his life was slipping through my hands.The van jolted
