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Chapter 7: The Storm Before Midnight
Last Updated:
2025-04-16 15:42:14
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The mansion didn’t feel like it missed him.Matteo’s absence didn’t echo through the halls or cling to the walls like I thought it would. Instead, it felt like he’d never been here to begin with. Like the shadows were used to swallowing people whole and forgetting their names.But I remembered.I remembered the way his voice dropped when he was tired. The way his fingers flexed like he was holding onto the edge of something invisible. The way his anger looked a lot like grief.I wasn’t here to mourn him, though.I was here to find out why I ever met him in the first place.The library door creaked as I pushed it open. The room smelled like smoke and dust and faintly of violets. I didn’t sit this time. I walked straight to the shelf I’d ignored the first night—tall, cold, too symmetrical. The one Rafael had mentioned without really meaning to.Behind the third row, just beneath a row of encyclopedias, I found it.A thin stack of old notebooks. Leather-bound. Faded. Smelling of old perf
Last Updated : 2025-04-18Blood Roses And Bullet Vows Chapter 9: The Spy in the Shadows
The city at night had a way of folding in on itself.Lights bled into puddles. Traffic blurred into a low, restless hum. And the shadows? They moved like they had secrets they weren’t ready to give up.I kept my hood low as I walked past the edge of the parking lot. This wasn’t the kind of place you visited twice. It looked like it had been forgotten on purpose. Rusted metal gates, vines climbing the cracked walls, silence heavy enough to bite.But the black SUV parked beside the abandoned warehouse wasn’t forgotten.It was waiting.I crouched behind a dumpster. Not glamorous, but it gave me cover. From here, I could see the passenger door swing open.Lorenzo.Of course.The man always looked like he was half a second from violence. His coat was wrinkled, dark hair pushed back with fingers that probably knew more about killing than combing.But it wasn’t just him.Another man stepped out of the shadows.And this time, my breath caught.The kind of catch that hurt on the inhale.Elian.
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There was no knock.Just the slow creak of the door as it opened, followed by the kind of silence that didn’t ask for permission. Matteo filled the threshold like a shadow slipping through light, and I didn’t need to look up to know it was him.You could always feel him before you saw him.“You moved safehouses,” he said, voice smooth but never soft.I didn’t answer. Not right away.Instead, I kept my gaze on the half-empty glass of water on the nightstand, watching the way the light trembled against its edge.“You’re tracking me,” I murmured, not a question.Matteo stepped inside, letting the door click shut behind him. “I’m watching you,” he corrected, walking in like the room owed him something. “Tracking’s for amateurs.”I didn’t flinch. Didn’t shift. Just looked up.“You don’t trust me,” I said.“I don’t trust anyone.”His eyes flickered over my face, pausing at my collarbone, like he was searching for something under the skin.“Especially not the girl who runs into warehouses al
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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
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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
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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
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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 : 2025-04-20
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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
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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
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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
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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,
