INICIAR SESIÓNThe drive away from the docks was silent except for the newborn’s soft cries and the ragged sound of our breathing. Matteo gripped the wheel with bloodied hands, his jaw clenched so tightly I feared it might shatter. The baby — the one we had saved, the one Giulia had died protecting — was nestled securely in my arms, wrapped in my torn jacket. His tiny fingers clutched my shirt like he already knew the world was cruel.Matteo kept glancing over, dark eyes burning with a storm of emotions: relief, rage, fierce protectiveness, and something deeper that made my chest ache. Love. Raw, messy, all-consuming love.“We’re not done,” he said quietly, voice like gravel. “Renata has the other one. Our other son.”I swallowed hard, pressing a kiss to the baby’s forehead. “I know. She said come alone.”Matteo’s hand shot out, gripping my thigh hard enough to bruise. “You’re not going anywhere without me. Never again.”The safehouse he took us to was one of his hidden ones — a modest villa tucked
The horizon was bleeding soft orange when we reached the old industrial docks. Salt-laced wind whipped through the cracked windows of the SUV, carrying the smell of the sea and distant decay. Matteo drove with white-knuckled intensity, one hand on the wheel and the other clamped possessively on my thigh, fingers digging in like he needed the constant reminder that I was real. His jaw was tight, the silver scar catching the early light. Every shallow breath he took betrayed the pain from his wounds, but his dark eyes burned with something far more dangerous than rage.“You’re not walking in there alone,” he said, voice low and rough. “Giulia doesn’t get to set the rules anymore. Not after everything she’s done.”I turned toward him, heart aching. “If there’s any chance to save that baby—your baby—I have to try, Matteo. I can’t live with more blood on my hands.”He pulled the car behind a rusted shipping container and killed the engine. Silence fell, thick and heavy. For a long moment h
The crash left my ears ringing and the taste of blood in my mouth. The SUV was crumpled against the roadside barrier, steam hissing from the engine. Matteo’s arms were still locked around me like iron, his body a shield even as fresh blood trickled down his forehead. Outside, headlights pinned us like prey. Drago and Lorenzo stood twenty meters away, guns drawn, their men forming a deadly circle.“Hold on to me,” Matteo had whispered.Now he moved like the devil himself.He kicked the door open with a snarl and opened fire, the gunshot deafening in the confined space. One of Drago’s men dropped. I grabbed the pistol from the floor and fired blindly through the shattered window, my hands shaking but my aim fueled by pure terror and love.“Get her out!” Matteo roared at Priya and my father.Priya dragged me from the wreckage while Matteo covered us, limping but relentless. He dropped another guard with a precise shot, then tackled a third in brutal hand-to-hand. Fists cracked against bo
“Matteo!” The scream tore out of me before I could stop it.Priya swerved the car hard, tires screeching on gravel as another gunshot cracked through the night. I twisted in my seat, heart exploding in my chest. There he was—Matteo Bellini, alive, limping but unstoppable, bloodied and furious, running straight toward us through the chaos of the Ferrano compound. His dark eyes locked on mine across the distance like a promise and a threat all in one.He was supposed to be dead. I had watched Lorenzo pull the trigger. I had seen the flames.Yet here he was. My monster. My obsession. The only man who had ever made me feel truly alive.“Stop the car!” I shouted, already reaching for the door handle.Priya cursed. “Alex, no—there are too many of them!”A sniper’s shot rang out from the rooftop. Matteo dove behind a low stone wall just in time, but I saw the spray of blood from his arm. He roared something in Italian and returned fire, dropping one of Lorenzo’s men with lethal precision.My
The world returned in fragments—sharp pain in my side, the metallic taste of blood, the rumble of tires on gravel. My hands were zip-tied in front of me, wrists raw. I was slumped in the back seat of a sleek black SUV, Priya pressed against one side of me, my father on the other. Both looked as broken as I felt.Matteo.The memory hit like a bullet to the chest. The way he’d dropped to his knee, blood on his lips, those dark eyes locking on mine with final, devastating love. “I love you. Both of them are ours.” Then the gunshot. The flames rising behind us as we sped away.A sob tore from my throat before I could stop it.“Easy, kiddo,” my father murmured, voice hoarse. “He might still be alive. Bellini’s too stubborn to die easy.”I wanted to scream at him. This man who had slept with Giulia, fathered a child in secret, sold me like currency, and still tried to play hero. Instead, I turned my head away, staring out the window at the burning warehouse shrinking in the distance.Lorenz
The warehouse fell into a stunned silence so heavy it felt like the walls themselves were holding their breath. My father—Marco Russo—stood in the back entrance, limping but alive, his bandaged chest rising and falling as he met my eyes. That weak, familiar smile was still on his face, but something darker lurked behind it. Something I’d never seen in the man who had spent my life running from debts and bad decisions.“What the hell are you talking about?” I whispered, my voice cracking. Matteo’s arm tightened around my waist like a steel band, his body vibrating with barely contained rage.Marco stepped further into the light, ignoring the guns still pointed in every direction. “The surviving twin… he’s mine, Alexandria. Giulia and I… we happened years ago. Before you ever walked through that grey door. She needed an ally inside the Bellini world. I needed leverage against the debts I kept piling up. It was mutual. Useful.”Giulia’s voice crackled weakly through the speakerphone Rena
Alexandria POV.The pill sat cold on my tongue as I lifted the glass of water with a trembling hand. Matteo’s eyes burned into me, unblinking, demanding obedience. I swallowed it down just as Giulia stepped fully into the doorway, her silk robe whispering against the frame.She saw everything.Her
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'
Alexandria's POV.I turned around.Matteo's wife was standing in the kitchen doorway, clad in a silk robe, one hand still resting lightly against the frame, as if she hadn't decided whether to enter fully or leave immediately.She looked so beautiful, and I just know she's been taking care of herse
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 tu




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