The Mafia’s Obsession

Alexandria's POV.The first thing I noticed was the blood on his shoe. A gun he was holding loosely because obviously he's done using it. A man lying right in his own pool of blood.I’d found the door by accident. A plain grey one, propped open, in a hallway I never should’ve been in. One wrong turn after leaving the bathroom, and instead of finding Priya at the bar, I walked down a concrete staircase into a room I wasn’t meant to see.Four men. One was on his knees. Three were standing. The tall one in the dark suit held a gun loosely at his side, as he had finished with it. The man on the floor wasn’t moving. Blood pooled on the concrete near his head.I froze in the doorway, clutch pressed tight against my ribs, heart hammering in my ears.The tall man turned around.His eyes met mine. Calm. Too calm. He had a sharp, handsome face that would’ve been attractive in any other situation. Dark suit, dark eyes, the kind of presence that filled the whole room without trying.Nobody spo

Alexandria’s POVMatteo stood in the doorway for a long moment, his broad frame silhouetted against the hallway light. His expression confuses me. He didn’t say anything about what had happened between us—just the order, delivered in that low, commanding voice.“Get some sleep,” he said. “And don't leave this room" He added as the door clicked shut behind him, and I was alone again in the vast east room. I stayed sitting on the edge of the bed, the white sheets rumpled beneath me. My body still throbbed with the memory of him—rough hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise, the way he’d taken what he wanted without asking. Brutal but possessive. The brief pause where his dark eyes had lingered on mine, like he was seeing past the debt and the complication.It confused me. It angered me. And worst of all, it pulled at something deep inside that I didn’t want to name.I envied Giulia. The thought made my stomach twist with shame, but it was true. She was his wife; elegant, compose

Alexandria POV.The building-wide alarm screamed through the penthouse, red emergency lights flashing violently across the medical ward.Matteo’s fingers were still buried deep inside me when the chaos erupted. He cursed sharply and pulled them out, leaving me empty and aching on the couch.“Stay here. Legs open,” he ordered, grabbing his gun from the bed side. Then he was gone, moving like death itself.I heard the violence unfold — shouts, rapid gunfire echoing through the halls, glass shattering, a man’s scream cut short by a final muffled shot. The silence that followed was heavier than the noise. Minutes later, the alarms died and the red lights faded.The door slammed open. Matteo entered, shirt splattered with fresh blood, eyes burning with adrenaline and something far darker when they landed on me — still obediently spread on the couch.“The threat is handled,” he said, voice low and lethal.“Rossi crew. Three dead. They won’t try again.”He locked the door and stalked towar

I didn’t move.The woman standing in the frame was nobody I recognized. Older. Dark coat despite the hour, silver threading through her hair, posture so composed it looked practiced. She held nothing in her hands. She didn’t need to. The way she looked at me, unhurried, unsurprised, like she had already accounted for exactly what she would find in this room was unsettling enough on its own.She looked me over once. Slowly.“Alexandria Russo,” she said quietly.My stomach tightened. I said nothing.She stepped inside without being invited and reached into her coat pocket. Placed something on the dresser just inside the door was small, flat, a key card and stepped back.“Service elevator,” she said. “The floor bypass was disabled twenty minutes ago. There’s a car at the east entrance. It will take you wherever you need to go.”I looked at the key card. Then back at her.“My father sent you,” I said.“Yes.”“The same father who signed me over to the Ferrano family four days ago.”She did

I didn’t scream.Screaming required a functioning throat and mine had sealed itself shut the moment I registered what Romano was holding. Matteo’s gun — I recognized it the way you recognized something you’d seen in a man’s hand often enough that the shape of it became familiar. Black. Heavy. Currently pointed at the floor but held with the ease of someone who had pointed it at other things many times before and found the experience unremarkable.Romano looked at me across Giulia’s immaculate suite and said nothing.I looked at him and said nothing.The silence lasted exactly long enough for me to count three exits — the door behind me, the window forty floors above Lisbon, and the bathroom to my left whose lock wouldn’t hold against a man Romano’s size for more than four seconds. None of them were good options. I filed that away and kept my face completely still.“Close the door,” he said. Quiet. Accented. The Albanian bleeding through his Italian in a way I had never noticed before