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chapter 85
publish date:
2026-08-22 12:29:58
Latest chapter
The Don's Ruthless Empire chapter 702
POV: Isabella“You knelt at the Speaker’s chair, Matteo. Do not lie to me. I know the dust of that Hall, and I know the face you make when you are protecting me from the truth.”I am Isabella, and I said it in my own bedroom at seven in the morning, with a cup of cooling tea in my hands and my husband standing in the doorway like a boy caught stealing plums. His canes were crooked. His good coat had a gray smear on the knee. He looked as if he had run a mile, which he could not do, and aged ten years doing it.“I was only walking,” he said.“Matteo.”“I was walking, and I knelt to tie my boot.”“You cannot tie your boot. You have not tied your own boot in three years.” I put the cup down, carefully, because my hand does not hold things as it used to. “Sit. Please. I have been dying of boredom for six months, and I will not be handled.”He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress sighed. For a long moment he did not look at me, and I watched the sun move across his white hair, and I lo
The Don's Ruthless Empire chapter 701
POV: Matteo“The knot is wrong, Matteo. Isabella ties like a sailor, and this is a bow, the kind a child ties on a shoe. Somebody has been under my chair, and I want you to tell me who.”I am Matteo, and Giulia said it at dawn, in the empty Hall, with one lamp hissing between us and the smell of cold stone in my nose. I had come on my two canes through the wet streets, because her boy had pounded on my door before the sun was up. Isabella was still asleep. I had left a note beside her pillow and a kiss on her hair, and I felt like a thief for both.“Show me,” I said.Giulia is not a woman who trembles. She has stood against ministers and gunmen with the same flat face. But her hand shook as she pointed under the Speaker’s chair, to the shallow space where the box sat. Plain wood. Flat and square. Bound in twine, with a drop of black wax at the knot.I lowered myself to one knee. It cost me. My bad leg screamed, and I let it.“The seal is whole,” I said. The little lantern in the wax w
The Don's Ruthless Empire chapter 700
POV: Isabella“Tell me honestly, Isabella. Does it frighten you that the whole city is down there, and nobody has climbed the hill to ask your opinion? Because I would be furious, and I would hide it very badly.”I am Isabella, and Matteo said it in the soft gold light of an April evening, six months after the telegram, on the bench beside the stone. The lantern hung on its iron hook, unlit, waiting for dark. Below us, spread out like a map, lay Marabella. The harbor. The salt pans, flashing white. The Hall with its tall doors thrown open. And everywhere, in every street, shutters standing open to the spring.I had kept my promise. For six months I had lain in bed, and sat in chairs, and been fed soup. Two months of it, and then another four, because Renzi had discovered he enjoyed ordering me about. I was thinner. My hand still shook. But I could climb the hill now on Matteo’s arm, slowly, stopping at every bend, and no one carried me.“I am not frightened,” I said.“You are lying.”
The Don's Ruthless Empire chapter 699
POV: Matteo“I carried this question up the hill like a stone, and I am going to set it down in front of all of you. Whoever hates me for it may hate me in the morning.”I am Matteo, and Giulia said it on Thursday evening, standing beside the new carving with the lantern burning at her shoulder. The sun was low and red over the sea. The whole hill was full. I had never seen so many people in one place, not even at Salvatore’s funeral. They stood on the path, and in the grass, and on the stone wall, and some of the children sat on their fathers’ shoulders with candles in their fists.We had carried Isabella up in the chair again. This time she did not argue. She sat with a blanket over her knees and Renzi at her elbow, and her face in the sunset looked almost young. I walked beside her on my two canes, slowly, past Marta’s green door, where an old woman stood in her open window and raised one hand to us, like a flag.Giulia did not make a speech. I had expected one. Instead she took a
The Don's Ruthless Empire chapter 698
POV: Isabella“You could tell me, Isabella. One word. One look. You have never been wrong about this city, and you are going to stand there and let me guess.”I am Isabella, and Giulia said it on Thursday afternoon, in the small back room behind the dais, where the lantern had hung on Sunday and where I had been carried when I fell. The room smelled of dust and cold tea. A single window let in a wedge of gold light. Giulia stood against the wall with her arms folded, still wearing the black sash of the Speaker, and her eyes were red.I sat on the little couch with a blanket on my knees. Matteo had gone to find me a cup of something warm. He had looked at me for a long moment before he left, and I knew he did it so that Giulia and I would have our privacy.“I have been wrong about this city a hundred times,” I said.“You have not.”“I am wrong about it every Monday.” I tried to smile. “Sit, Giulia.”“I will not sit.”“Then stand. But please stop looking as though I have betrayed you.”
The Don's Ruthless Empire chapter 697
POV: Matteo“He is right, Matteo. I have watched her for three days, and I am terrified, because I do not know who I would be in this Hall without her standing behind my chair.”I am Matteo, and Enzo said it on Thursday morning, on the steps of the Harbor Hall, before the sun had cleared the roofs. He had not shaved. His coat was buttoned wrong. I had known him since he was a lean, argumentative young man who contradicted me about sails, and I had never seen him look so lost.“Who is right?” I asked, though I knew.“Varga. About her.” He gripped the iron rail. “Do not misunderstand. I hate him. I would gladly push him into the harbor. But I lay awake all night, and I thought, he said the true thing, and he said it to hurt us. That is the worst kind of enemy.”“Enzo.”“Tell me I am wrong.”I could not. Behind us, through the open doors, I could see the Long Table, and at its end, in the pale light, a small figure in a shawl. Isabella sat as she always did now, with her back straight an
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