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Chapter 33 – The Dead Don’t Lie
publish date:
2025-11-04 14:26:12
Latest chapter
Daddy's Bargain Chapter 51
The Don's PovThe cemetery was twenty minutes outside Palermo.I came alone. I always came alone. My men knew better than to follow me here — not because I had forbidden it, though I had, but because there were limits to what loyalty required and watching an old man talk to a grave was beyond them.The drive was quiet. The kind of quiet I had stopped fighting somewhere in my sixties, when I'd finally understood that silence wasn't empty. It was just everything you weren't saying, collected.I had a great deal collected.The cemetery sat on a hillside, old stone walls, cypress trees standing like they'd been placed by someone with strong opinions about atmosphere. The morning was cool. October in Sicily always arrived with manners — politely cold, apologetically gray, nothing like the violence of August.Alessia's grave was in the far corner, under the cypress nearest the wall. Simple marble. Her name, her dates, a small carved lily because she had loved them and I had remembered and t
Daddy's Bargain Chapter 50
''Celeste's POV''The thing about sitting still was that it gave your brain too much material to work with.And my brain, left unsupervised, was a menace.It had been doing this thing lately where it replayed moments I hadn't even known I was storing. Not the dramatic ones — not the arguments or the near-death experiences or the time Azrael had looked at me across a room like I was either the best or worst thing that had ever happened to him and honestly both felt accurate. No. My brain, being specifically cruel, had decided to archive the small things.The way he'd handed me a glass of water once without being asked, like he'd simply noticed I needed it.The half-second before he smiled, when you could see him deciding whether to bother hiding it.The way he'd said my name — not 'Celeste' like my father said it, clipped and proprietary — but like it was a complete sentence on its own.I was eating toast at my father's kitchen island at 7am, thinking about this, when I decided I was d
Daddy's Bargain Chapter 49
''Azrael's POV''They left me alone at 9am with half a loaf of bread, specific instructions not to die, and a list of things I was not permitted to do that Liora had written on actual paper and stuck to the refrigerator with a lemon-shaped magnet.The list read:'1. No cliffs.''2. No water.''3. No wandering.''4. No wandering and calling it something else.''5. Eat the soup on the stove.''6. Do not touch Auntie's radio.''7. If something hurts, sit down. Do not "push through it." You are not competing in anything.'I read it twice. Found it both deeply patronizing and oddly touching. Stuck it back under the lemon magnet and made myself coffee.The argument about whether they should go had started at breakfast and concluded approximately forty minutes later with Liora's aunt winning through sheer force of personality and a speech about how the market in the village only had fresh anchovies on Tuesdays and if they missed it they'd have to wait another week and she was not, she made c
Daddy's Bargain Chapter 48
Azrael's POVI found the boats by accident.In my defense, I wasn't supposed to be outside. I was aware of this. The island rules had been recited to me with such frequency that I could probably recite them backwards in my sleep — don't wander, don't go to the cliffs, don't go near the deep water, don't exist unsupervised in any capacity that might give Liora's aunt another reason to curse at me in Italian.But it was a Tuesday. Or possibly a Wednesday. Time moved differently on Linosa, slow and thick like honey, and I had spent the morning watching a gecko on the bedroom wall and wondering if this was what losing your mind felt like or if it had always looked this peaceful.I needed air.The path behind the house led up a slight rise between two ancient walls of volcanic rock, and if you followed it far enough you came out on a flat shelf that overlooked the northern water. I'd found it three days ago during what I was officially calling 'a supervised walk that ran slightly long.' Li
Daddy's Bargain Chapter 47
Celeste's POV""Here's the thing about grief nobody tells you.It doesn't feel like sadness. Not really. Sadness was something you could point at — a rainy Tuesday, a bad phone call, the last episode of a show you loved. Grief was different. Grief was waking up in the morning and reaching for your phone to tell someone something funny before remembering that the person you wanted to tell was gone, and then lying there staring at the ceiling while your brain slowly, cruelly caught up with reality.Every morning. Like a fresh delivery.I'd been doing that for three weeks.The Rivera townhouse was immaculate and suffocating and full of people who kept touching my shoulder and asking if I needed anything, and the answer was always "yes, actually, I need the one thing none of you can give me," so I smiled and said "I'm fine" until the words stopped meaning anything at all.Sofia was still there. In the guest room. Sitting on the edge of my father's secret like it was a chair she'd been ass
Daddy's Bargain Chapter 46
Azrael's POVI didn't know why I went to the beach.Liora had specifically, explicitly, and with great dramatic emphasis told me not to go near the water alone. Her aunt had said the same thing, except with more Italian and what I was fairly certain was a curse of some kind directed at my general existence.And yet. Here I was. At the water.In my defense, it was four in the morning and everyone was asleep and my ribs only screamed a little when I breathed now, which felt like progress worth celebrating. Also the ceiling of that bedroom had become my personal enemy. I had memorized every crack in the wood. We were not on speaking terms.The island at night was a different thing entirely. Black water, black rocks, and a sky so full of stars it looked fake — like someone had gotten carried away with the decorating. The air was cool and sharp and smelled like salt and something green I couldn't name.I found a flat stretch of sand between two rock formations and sat down carefully, becau
Daddy's Bargain CHAPTER 43 – My Father, the Monster
Celeste’s POVI should’ve gone straight back to the hotel.But grief makes you stupid, and heartbreak makes you reckless, and losing Azrael… losing whatever the hell we were becoming… made me both.So instead of hiding, I took a cab straight to the Upper East Side. Straight to the penthouse I swore
Last Updated : 2026-04-05Daddy's Bargain Chapter 41 – The Island Rules
Azrael’s POVI woke up to pain.Not the sharp kind, but the deep, hot kind that crawled under your ribs and stayed there like it had paid rent. My entire right side felt like it’d been chewed by a shark. Breathing hurt. Existing hurt.The ceiling above me blurred in and out. It looked like wood… ol
Last Updated : 2026-04-04Daddy's Bargain Chapter 40 – Homecoming
Celeste’s POVNew York smelled the same.It was the same smell of rain on pavement, exhaust fumes, and burnt coffee, but somehow it felt smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I’d just gotten used to Sicilian skies and the sound of waves against stone walls.A driver waited for me outside JFK holding
Last Updated : 2026-04-03Daddy's Bargain Chapter 39 – The Ring
Celeste’s POVTwo days.That’s how long it had been since the Don told me Azrael’s plane went down somewhere near the Mediterranean coast.Two days since I stopped sleeping, stopped eating, stopped pretending to breathe normally.I kept telling myself they were wrong. Azrael De Luca couldn’t just…
Last Updated : 2026-04-03
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