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CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Fecha de publicación:
2026-03-28 21:15:23
Último capítulo
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER NINETY THREE
"The most dangerous rooms are the ones you walk into without knowing you won't walk out."SOFIAI come back to consciousness slowly.Not all at once. In pieces. Sound first — a distant dripping of water somewhere, the low murmur of voices, the particular hollow echo of a large empty space. Then feeling — my arms pulled back and bound, something hard beneath me, the cold of a room that hasn't been warm in a long time.Then everything else.I open my eyes.The warehouse is enormous and dim. High ceilings with metal beams running across them. Concrete floors stained with things I don't want to think about. Small dirty windows near the top of the walls letting in the barest grey light that tells me it is either very early morning or a heavily overcast day and I have no way of knowing which.I am in a chair in the middle of the space.My wrists are bound behind me. My ankles are bound to the chair legs. The rope is not loose.I test it anyway. Pull against it until the rope bites into my s
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER NINETY TWO
"Some moments are so terrifying that your body forgets how to be afraid and just becomes it."SOFIA. I don't even have time to pull Isabella further back before the light hits us and there is a man standing there — big, masked, dressed in black — and his hand is already reaching in before I can do anything at all."No—"I grab Isabella and pull her behind me. Put myself between her and the hand reaching for us. Every instinct I have is the same one it has always been — her first. Always her first."Don't touch her." My voice comes out shaking but I make it loud. "Don't you dare touch her—"The man grabs my arm and pulls and I have no choice but to come with it or let Isabella's hand go and I cannot let her hand go so I come out of the wardrobe still holding her and suddenly the bedroom is full.Four men inside the room.Two more in the doorway.Six total.All masked. All in black. All holding weapons like they are extensions of their hands rather than things they are carrying.Isabel
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER NINETY ONE
“IT’S TEARING ME APART, HE IS SLIPPLING WAY”SOFIA."The succession." He stands up. Already reaching for his jacket. Already moving into the other version of himself, the Valentino heir, the family business, all the things that exist outside these four walls. "With Dante—" He stops. Starts again. "The other families are in chaos. There's an emergency meeting. Every major family head is being called in."I stare at him."You're leaving.""I have to Sofia. If I don't show up it looks like—""You're leaving right now.""I will be back as soon as I can." He is at the door. He turns back and looks at me and the conflict in his face is real — I can see it clearly. He does not want to leave. Not right now. Not like this. "Rosa is here. She will stay with you and the children. I will be back tonight and then we can talk about New York and—""Go." My voice comes out flat. "Just go Marco."He looks at me for one more second.Then he is gone.I hear his footsteps on the stairs. Hear him saying
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER NINETY
"GRIEF DOESN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO BE READY. IT JUST ARRIVES AND TAKES EVERYTHING."SOFIAThe ceiling is the first thing I see when I wake up.White. Still. The ceiling of my bedroom that I have stared at on so many sleepless nights that I know every mark on it.For exactly two seconds I don't remember.Two seconds of just existing. Just breathing. Just the ordinary feeling of waking up in a familiar room with light coming through the curtains.Then it comes back.All of it.The television. The red banner. The fire on the bridge. His name in the newsreader's mouth.I close my eyes again immediately like I can push it back out if I try hard enough.I cannot."She's awake."Marco's voice. Close.I open my eyes.He is sitting in the chair beside the bed — the one that is usually just decorative, the one nobody ever actually sits in. He looks like he has been there for a while. His jacket is off and his sleeves are rolled up and there are marks under his eyes that weren't there this morning.
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER EIGHTY NINE
"THERE ARE SOME MOMENTS THAT SPLIT YOUR LIFE INTO BEFORE AND AFTER. THIS WAS MINE."SOFIAI cannot move.The newsreader is still talking.Her voice keeps coming through the speakers in that careful measured tone that news people use when they are delivering something enormous and trying to hold it inside professional language. Words keep reaching me in pieces.Explosion.Multiple vehicles.Believed to be.Dante Valentino.His name in her mouth again.His name on a breaking news banner in red letters at the bottom of a screen that is showing me a bridge on fire.No.The word starts somewhere deep in my chest before it reaches my mouth. Just that. Just no. Small and certain and absolute.No.NoNot again.The footage on the screen changes — a different angle now, a camera from further back showing the full scale of it and the scale of it is what finally breaks through the numbness and hits me like something physical. The bridge is not just damaged. It is destroyed across a wide stretch.
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER EIGHTY EIGHT
"THE QUIETEST MOMENTS ARE THE ONES THAT CHANGE EVERYTHING."SOFIACleaning is something I can control. Something that has a beginning and a middle and an end and produces a visible result. The hallway is clean or it isn't. The kitchen surfaces are wiped or they aren't. There is something enormously comforting about that kind of simplicity when everything else in my life is complicated beyond what I know how to manage.I have done the hallway and the kitchen and I am working on the sitting room when I hear Marco come downstairs.His footsteps pause at the sitting room doorway.I feel him looking at me before I look up."What are you doing?" he asks."Cleaning." I don't stop moving the cloth across the bookshelf. "Maria had a family emergency. The others are on their scheduled break. I didn't want to call anyone in."A pause."Sofia.""The shelves were dusty Marco. It needed doing.""You are pregnant."The word lands in the room and sits there between us. It is the first time either of
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
“EVERY GIRL IS A DOLL. EITHER BARBIE OR ANABELLE.”SOFIA.Luca. It's Luca, grinning at me like he didn't just scare ten years off my life."What are you doing?" I press my hand to my chest, trying to calm my racing heart."I'm going with you." He settles into the seat like he belongs there, stretch
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
“IF YOU FALL I WILL ALWAYS BE THERE”__FLOOR.DANTE.Luca arrives like a hurricane in human form. I released a pre–stressed sigh, because I know just hou much chaos he is about to bring."Dante! Where the hell are you, man? This place is huge. What, Marco needs a castle to compensate for something?"
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER TWENTY
“DON’T RUN, YOU WILL ONLY DIE TIRED.”DANTE.He pulls out his phone, shows me a series of messages. "The Bratva made their move. Hit three of our shipments in the last forty-eight hours. Killed fifteen of our guys. Took one of our warehouses—the one with the European shipment."My blood, which was
HIS BUTTERFLY (BETWEEN TWO DONS) CHAPTER EIGHT
FORBIDDEN THINGS HAVE A SECRET CHARM. DANTEThe fight felt good.No, better than good. It felt right. Natural. Like slipping into a second skin that fits perfectly.I'm standing in the small room they use as a makeshift locker area, wrapping my knuckles with fresh bandages. My hands are already st
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