Share

Chapter 10: No Way Out

Author: Phayvord
last update publish date: 2026-02-22 20:51:18

Bella’s POV

The bunker’s air is cool and still, almost clinical, like the inside of a vault that’s been sealed for decades. The only sound is the low hum of the ventilation system and the occasional drip from a pipe somewhere in the walls. No windows. No clocks. Time feels elastic here—stretched thin, then snapped back without warning.

We’ve been underground for what feels like hours, maybe a full day. I’ve lost track. My body is a map of their hands: faint bruises on my hips where Nico gripped
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 60 — Aftermath

    Life folded itself back into ordinary shape faster than I expected after Konstantin's final letter — faster, certainly, than it had after Kessler, when the fear had lingered for weeks even after the danger was gone. Maybe it was Sofia, three years old now and utterly unbothered by any of it, dragging us all back into the rhythm of daycare pickups and bedtime stories and the particular chaos of a toddler who'd recently discovered the word "why" and intended to use it on every sentence anyone spoke in her presence. Maybe it was simply that we'd learned, over the past two years, how to let peace be peace instead of waiting anxiously for the next blow to land."She asked me today why Papa Victor works so much," Nico said one evening, watching Sofia arrange a small army of stuffed animals across the living room floor with the intense focus of a general planning a campaign. "I told her it's because he likes buildings full of people arguing about money. She said that sounded boring and went

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 59 — The Move

    Konstantin's plan, once he laid it out fully, was simpler than I expected and more dangerous than I wanted to admit."Dmitri's support isn't as solid as it looks from the outside," he explained, back at the gallery, voice low even in the empty room. "Many of the older lieutenants follow him out of fear, not loyalty. Fear that if they don't fall in line, they become the next example of what happens to people who hesitate. If I can show them a different example — that hesitation, caution, even mercy, still has a place in how this organization survives — some of them may reconsider where their loyalty actually belongs.""And I'm supposed to be that example," I said."Not directly," Konstantin said. "I would never ask you to appear before them, to speak, to be seen at all if I can help it. But a recorded statement — carefully controlled, never revealing your location, never showing your daughter — acknowledging that you exist, that you are Renata's daughter, and that you've chosen a life

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 58 — Neutral Ground

    The meeting was set for a private art gallery on the city's east side, closed for a "private viewing" that Victor's money had arranged on six hours' notice — enough time to sweep the building twice, position Nico's people on every entrance and rooftop with a sightline, and still leave Konstantin Volkov's own security enough room to feel like the arrangement wasn't a trap, even though, in every practical sense, it was designed to be exactly that if things went wrong."He's here," Nico said quietly into his earpiece, watching a car pull up on the security feed from the small office we'd claimed as a command post one floor above the gallery itself. "Alone in the car. Two men outside as escort, staying at the perimeter like we agreed.""How does he look?" I asked, my voice steadier than I felt."Older than his photographs," Nico said, studying the screen. "Tired. Not what I expected from a man supposedly fighting to hold onto power."I smoothed my dress with hands that wouldn't quite stop

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 57 — Choosing a Side

    "If we're doing this," Nico said the next morning, spreading a new set of files across the table — files that had materialized overnight through channels I still didn't fully understand, some combination of his own family's remaining connections and favors Victor's money could still call in — "we need to understand exactly what we'd be helping Konstantin against. Not just Dmitri as a person. His actual power base.""What have you found?" I asked."Dmitri's built his support on speed and brutality," Nico said. "Younger lieutenants, impatient with Konstantin's more cautious approach. He's consolidated control over the organization's Western European operations in the past eight months alone — faster than anyone expected, which suggests he's either extremely capable or extremely reckless, possibly both." He tapped a photograph clipped to the file — a man in his thirties, sharp-featured, cold-eyed in a way that reminded me uncomfortably of the men who'd once come for me on a dark island l

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 56 — The Response

    Victor's lawyers drafted three versions of the letter before I finally threw all of them out and wrote it myself, sitting alone at the kitchen table late that night while Nico ran security assessments in the next room and Victor made calls to people who could quietly expand Sofia's protection without alerting anyone to why.*Konstantin,**I received your letter. I won't pretend it didn't shake me — thirty-one years is a long time to learn you've been living under a name that was never fully true, and a longer time still to learn why.**I don't know you. I don't know what you want from me, and I won't pretend I trust your motives simply because we share blood. But I'd rather understand the danger you're warning me about than wait for it to arrive on its own terms.**I have a daughter. She is the only thing that matters to me in any of this. If you have information that protects her, I want it. If you have an agenda that puts her at risk in any way, I want to know that too, so I can pla

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 55 — Digging

    Sofia's birthday party went ahead exactly as planned two days later — a small, bright chaos of balloons and cake and a handful of other toddlers from her daycare group, Victor crouched on the floor in a suit jacket he'd stopped caring about ruining, Nico filming approximately four hundred photos on his phone like a man trying to memorize every second of ordinary joy before something came to threaten it again. I watched them both and felt the strange doubled weight of the week — genuine happiness sitting right alongside a fear neither of us had said out loud in front of Sofia, the letter locked in Victor's study safe, waiting for us to figure out what to do with it.We didn't get back to it properly until that night, once Sofia was asleep and the last of the balloons had been swept into a corner of the living room."I made some calls," Victor said, spreading a folder across the kitchen table — a new habit of ours by now, the same table where we'd first read Konstantin Volkov's letter,

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 13: Midnight Run

    Nico’s POVThe dashboard clock glows 21:47.Less than three hours until wheels-up.The bunker feels like a coffin now—too quiet, too clean, too full of the scent of her skin and the ghosts of what we just did. Bella is asleep between us on the bed, curled on her side, one hand resting protectively

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 5: The Reckoning

    Bella’s POV The safe house feels too quiet after Nico leaves. The kind of quiet that presses against your eardrums, amplifies every drip from the showerhead, every creak of settling wood, every shallow breath you take while staring at that damning photo on the coffee table. Victor’s text is sti

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 4: The Morning Aftermath

    Bella’s POVSunlight slices through the blackout curtains like a blade—thin, merciless, cutting straight across my bare hip.I wake up sore in places I forgot could ache.My thighs are sticky. My core throbs with a dull, satisfied pulse. There’s a faint bruise blooming on the inside of my left brea

  • My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie    Chapter 3: The Safe House

    Chapter 3: The Safe HouseBella’s POVThe rain has turned the city into a black mirror. Streetlights fracture across wet asphalt, headlights smear like wet paint, and every red light feels like a warning we’re ignoring.Nico drives with one hand on the wheel, the other still resting high on my thig

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status