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15. A Prize For A Monster

Author: Erika Lana Bell
last update Last Updated: 2025-05-03 15:30:21

Cali’s pov.

I’m sprawled out across the velvet chaise like a half-dead cat, basking in the rare luxury of nothingness. No drills. No etiquette lectures. No Hale Holt breathing down my neck with his demands and leering eyes. It’s just me, a cold bottle of sparkling water, and the remote I wield like a weapon of mass destruction against this mansion’s sad excuse for entertainment.

Click. Click. Click.

Not that I’ve found anything entertaining enough to watch. Reruns. Infomercials. Some overly glossy cooking show hosted by a woman who’s definitely had her face pulled tighter than a violin string.

Click.

I pause mid-scroll, thumb frozen as the screen cuts to a news broadcast. Not because I give a damn about politics or whatever soulless billionaire is pretending to care about the world today. No. It’s the voice. That grating, nasal wheeze masquerading as a laugh.

My stomach curdles instantly.

“Local tycoon Marcellus Gentry donates thirty million dollars to fund a new pediatric cancer wing
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  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   163. Ryker

    Ryker’s pov. There was blood on his gloves again.Not fresh. Not warm. But dried and flaking in a way that left a reddish dust on everything he touched. It didn’t bother Ryker. He didn’t even notice it anymore.The safehouse was quiet, save for the hum of the generators two floors down and the faint whimpering of the idiot who thought tailing a Holt van alone was a good idea. He was duct-taped to a chair now, head lolling, one eye already swollen shut.Ryker didn’t care about his name. Never asked. He wasn’t here for confessions.Only confirmation.“You followed the car,” he said simply, voice flat, even. “Tell me what you saw.”The man tried to speak, lips sticky with blood.Ryker crouched, gloved fingers lifting the man’s chin.“Don’t make me ask twice.”“…a girl…” the man rasped. “Brunette. Thin. Looked like… like Ford’s daughter.”Ryker’s jaw twitched. “Which one?”“I— I don’t know—”“Was she limping?”The man blinked slowly. “Didn’t notice. She didn’t see me. I think— I think sh

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   162. The Team

    Hale’s pov.The sun hadn’t yet broken through the forest line when I saw her silhouette move through the clearing.Cali walked like a shadow sharpened to a point—precise, quiet, no wasted motion. She kept her head low beneath the scarf, hands gloved, phone already preloaded and tucked against her ribs like it was worth more than her own pulse.And maybe it was.This whole operation hinged on her slipping in and out without being seen, without being recognized. Without being shot.I watched from the northeast slope, crouched beneath the rusted ruins of a derailed transport train. My men were stationed in the brush, two hundred meters out. Far enough not to draw attention. Close enough to strike on command.Through the scope, I tracked Cali’s every step. Her boots pressed into cold, brittle gravel. Her jacket billowed lightly in the breeze. The moment she hit the center of the clearing, she dropped to one knee and placed the burner phone just beneath a broken slab of concrete, exactly w

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   161. Let The Hunt Begin

    Cali’s pov.The stars looked closer from up here.Closer… and colder.The observatory felt like a relic from another lifetime, a place built for watching the sky long before any of us ever came along and filled the ground with blood and betrayal. There were still metal plates bolted into the walls, fractured star charts curling along the ceiling, their faded ink showing constellations that didn’t seem to match anything I recognized anymore.Maybe that was the point.Hale and I had chosen this place for one reason: it was untraceable. No digital signal reached this far out. No wireless connection. No buried bug or camera or soft piece of code feeding back to some mole in our systems. It was off-grid, offline, and—for now—untouchable.But that didn’t mean I felt safe.Safety was a story people told themselves. I’d learned that when I was five.I stood by the old, warped glass of the main viewing room, arms wrapped tightly around myself as I stared down the thick line of trees below. The

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   160. Unexpected Turn

    Hale’s pov.The second I saw that message—Ryker’s smug, digital signature crawling across my screen like a parasite—I shut everything down.No warnings. No system diagnostics. No polite disengage.Just the master override key and a single command: kill the feed.The entire estate went dark from the inside out. Every internal security loop, every backup server, every feed tied to the external sensors—offline. Cut at the source. I didn’t care how many protocols it broke. If Ryker had been watching us, if he’d embedded himself into our walls, our wires, our lives—then I was done giving him the benefit of the doubt.No more waiting. No more wondering.We were at war now.Cali moved the second she saw my face. She didn’t need to ask. She read it the way soldiers read detonators—silent, tight, seconds away from ignition. She walked out of the room without a word, her hand brushing mine as she passed, and within minutes she was back with Belle’s medications and a weatherproof duffel slung ov

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   159. Estate

    Cali’s POV.The estate had never looked so sharp around the edges.By the time Hale’s jet touched down again and the wheels hummed against private tarmac, my fingers had cramped from holding the case too tightly. It hadn’t left my grip since we pulled it from the dirt. Not in the car. Not in the air. Not when I slept, if you could call closing your eyes for twenty minutes and hallucinating every horrible scenario “sleep.”Rosalita was already waiting at the entrance when we pulled in.Belle wasn’t with her.My stomach clenched, but the look Rosalita gave me calmed it before the fear could settle. She smiled softly. “Still asleep. The new meds make her groggy.”I nodded, murmured a thank-you, and stepped inside.Hale didn’t say anything until we reached the main study, the one with reinforced walls and blackout shutters. The one no one was allowed to enter unless he personally keyed them in.He locked the door behind us. Entered a code on the tablet in his pocket.Then finally—finally—

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   158. Stench Of Rot

    Hale’s POV.The building was already rotting.From the outside, the crematorium looked like a corpse left to weather. Vines crept over crumbling brick, windows boarded up, the stone angel above the doorhead so worn her face had eroded into a vague smudge. Nothing about this place said important. Which was the point.Cali didn’t speak as we approached. She stayed close, eyes sweeping the grounds with methodical precision. She hadn’t looked away from her surroundings since we stepped off the trail. Something about this place didn’t sit right. I could feel it too. It was too quiet. Too still. The kind of quiet that didn’t belong to ruins—it belonged to watchers.The front door gave under my hand with a reluctant groan.Inside, the smell hit first. Mold. Old ash. Something faintly metallic, buried under decades of decay. The main incinerator was exactly where Thorne said it would be—back room, beneath the broken rafters, split down the middle like someone had tried to disassemble it and f

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