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Chapter 12

Penulis: DGorgeous1
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-20 00:01:53

The rain had stopped, but the night still clung to the estate like smoke. Seraphina stood beneath the arched window of her bedroom, eyes tracing the damp path Lucien had walked her up just hours before. Her hair was still wet from the sea, her shoulder sore from where Elira's bullet had grazed her. She hadn’t told Lucien. Not because she wanted to keep secrets. But because pain was hers—a form of control. He had enough of her already.

The files she'd recovered were gone, whisked from her hands the moment they stepped through the gate. Guards. Anton. No thank you. No congratulations. Just silence.

Now, she'd been caged again.

Not physically. There were still no locks on the door. Still no guards posted outside.

But this was a new kind of cage: invisible, precise.

He didn’t need bars.

Lucien Marchesi could lock a woman up with his absence.

Matteo hadn't come. Raina was gone. Adriana's perfume no longer lingered in the

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  • Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire   Chapter 34

    The estate was quiet.Too quiet.Not in the way that suggested danger. But in that rare, strange pause where no one died, no one betrayed anyone, and the halls didn’t echo with the steps of men carrying loaded weapons.It should have felt like peace.To Seraphina, it felt like exposure.She sat alone on the balcony of her private quarters, legs curled beneath her, hair unbound. Her eyes traced the low hills that framed the edge of the vineyard. Somewhere beyond them, Gabe and Julian were still alive. Still breathing. Still plotting. Monsters . The architects of everything that had happened to her.And yet...All she could think about was Lucien.He hadn’t knocked when he entered her room the night before. He hadn’t needed to. The way they moved around each other now—like two planets shifting closer with every pass—made permission irrelevant.They hadn’t kissed.They hadn’t touched.But that was almost worse.Because there was nothing accidental left between them.Everything was a choi

  • Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire   Chapter 33

    The air above the Cosenza compound smelled of rust, old oil, and something bitter—like burned coffee and cordite.Lucien stood in the open troop vehicle as it rolled through the last of the gravel path. A drone buzzed overhead, one of four, tracking the angles of entry, monitoring thermal signals.Matteo crouched over the mobile monitor inside, scanning live feeds.“No movement inside the primary corridor,” Matteo muttered. “But someone was here last night. The main gate sensor tripped for seventeen seconds. Then silence.”Lucien said nothing.His eyes stayed fixed on the compound.An old petroleum storage facility, it stretched out like a concrete corpse — long storage domes, collapsed piping, sun-eaten signage. The place should’ve been demolished a decade ago.Instead, it had become bait.Or so Cristiano wanted him to believe.But Lucien wasn’t here to play his brother’s game.He was here to finish it.“Three minutes out,” Matteo said into his comm. “Teams Alpha and Bravo in positio

  • Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire   Chapter 32

    The first move in any war isn’t fire.It’s silence.Lucien stood before the master table in the war room, an ocean of glass and blue-lit screens reflecting on his face like moonlight on steel. Across from him, Seraphina sat cross-legged on the leather armchair, quiet but attentive, her focus razor-sharp.Matteo stood just behind, arms folded, expression unreadable.Anton remained in Palermo, strengthening alliances.Vincenzo handled the flow of currency and men behind the scenes.Which left Lucien, Seraphina, and Matteo to carry out what came next.Lucien gestured toward the center monitor, where a schematic of one of ValeCorp’s old logistics hubs blinked in ghostly green.It was a dormant asset. One of Julian's original smuggling pivots.“I want this property listed on the black ledger,” Lucien said.Matteo frowned. “It’s flagged and frozen. Why light it up now?”“Because they’ll see it,” Seraphina answered for him. “And think we’re distracted.”Lucien nodded.“It’ll look like we’re

  • Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire   Chapter 31

    The ambush hadn’t left a scratch on Lucien’s body.But it had opened a wound in his mind.He sat alone in the eastern gallery, light from the window striping across his cheekbones like pale scars. The gallery was quiet, hung with ancestral portraits that stared down with frozen judgment.Lucien ignored them.In front of him: a projected image from the attack site — frozen, blurred, then slowly enhanced by Matteo’s surveillance team.A single man. Slender build. Wavy dark hair.A hundred yards from the ridge, angled just enough away from the main cameras to obscure his face.But not enough.Lucien’s fingers clenched.The silhouette was older now, broader in the shoulders, but the stance… the tilt of the head… the arrogance in posture…It was unmistakable.Cristiano.The bastard wasn’t just alive.He’d been watching.From the shadows. From the side of the mountain. Not leading the ambush—but calculating its outcome.The implication was worse than Lucien had expected.Cristiano had plann

  • Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire   Chapter 30

    The road to Cefalù curled like an old scar across the hills.The sky was still grey from the morning’s mist, though the vineyards below the cliffs shimmered in slow golden light. Cypress trees bordered the narrow route, tall and slender, like sentinels carved from grief.Lucien rode in silence.The black Maserati swept smoothly through the curves, Matteo at the wheel, eyes behind dark glasses, jaw tight as usual. In the back seat, Lucien sat with Seraphina beside him, a fine-cut charcoal suit hanging on him like second skin. Her hand rested loosely on her thigh. She didn’t reach for his.But she was close enough to feel the weight in his chest.They hadn’t spoken since leaving the estate.There was no need.This wasn’t a conversation.It was a ritual.A pilgrimage.Today marked the anniversary ofValeria Marchesi’s death—and her birthday. The cruel symmetry of it was

  • Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire   Chapter 29

    The rain fell in a hush, soft as secrets.Seraphina stood in the Marchesi library, surrounded by old tomes and the faint crackle of firelight. The estate had grown eerily quiet — not in danger, not in disarray — but a hush that came when the wolves had fed and the world waited for them to stir again.Lucien wasn’t in the house. Not in his study. Not in the war room. Not even in the cellar where he sometimes disappeared when words became too heavy and orders too many.Anton had said he was out overseeing new shipments.Matteo had just grinned and shrugged.Vincenzo — always careful — had changed the subject.Which meant one thing: they were protecting him.And Lucien only needed protection when the past was clawing at him again.Seraphina didn’t mean to go digging.But the moment her hand brushed the uneven spine on the shelf near the desk, and that small hidden panel clicked open &mdas

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