Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Mafia's Kingpin's Arranged Bride: Kabanata 121 - Kabanata 130

Author’s POVThe heavy bag swung back and forth beneath Lorenzo Moretti’s unrelenting assault. Every jab was exact, his knuckles piercing the leather with such power that they reverberated through the reinforced chains. A play of dark light on his hard muscle from the private gym, each taut tense move the triumph of practice he had perfected through all these years. Sweat was dripping down from his temple, and his breath was measured and short.Lorenzo didn’t hear the door open, but he knew the sound of those familiar, measured footsteps. He spoke between punches, without breaking the rhythm. “You never thought you would cross over into the world, big brother.”Carlos Moretti stood by the door, a fitted suit recounting a man who had never worked a lunch shift in a bar a day in his life at a gym filled with raw metal and scorch marks. He was propped against the wall with a sly grin on his face, observing his younger brother at work.“I was curious,” Carlos said evenly, his voice as mu

Author’s POV“Tunnel B is currently quite safe, "Diego reported, hurrying until he was even with Ethan. “But the supports in Tunnel C may need reinforcement after the blast. That is going to cost us both time and manpower.”"Even so, do it, " said Ethan without hesitating. “Safety first. Under no circumstances may we resort to skipping the rules."The boss hesitated for a moment before nodding, “Okay, understood.”But then Ethan stopped and turned to him. “Diego, I need your trust. I know everything seems to be on edge and some of the men are questioning whether we can handle the Morettis. But this mine has seen darker days than this and so have we."Diego's face softened and he gave a small smile. “If anyone can hold us together, it’s you, Ethan.”With a quick nod, Ethan moved on with his rounds, working out in his head how to reinforce the site next.Around midday, Ethan called his men together for a conference. Standing on a few boxes stacked on top of each other, he gazed out over

Jordan’s POV Excusing myself from the company that had just walked in on Sierra and me, I stepped a few centimeters away from the bar, pressing my phone to my ear as I heard Ethan’s voice come through. His tone was even, but I heard the slight tension underneath it. That was Ethan–always cool, never letting anything get away unless it had to. But I knew him well enough to know when something was wrong. “Boss, everything’s under control,” he started, but that made alarm bells go off in my head right away. I turned slightly, keeping Sierra on the edge of my peripheral. She was still sitting at the bar, sipping on her juice and acknowledging the presence of Elara who sat on the stool that I had just vacated yet something about the way Elara leaned in toward Sierra caught my eyes. Her body language was overly stiff, her expression too fierce. At the other end, Dominic was chatting up or perhaps flirting with the bartender. There was something about the whole scene that felt… orchest

Sierra’s POVMy pulse quickened when he took a step back, his hand still hovering, near my waist, but no longer on me. The warmth that had radiated off him now felt insubstantial, like the heat of a dying fire. The air was bleaker with his words. “It’s nothing, really,” came out of his mouth again, but no longer thickly.I followed him closely, a blend of concern and anger rising within me. Something was wrong and it was something he wasn’t saying. His effort to shove me away with faux nonchalance only drove my determination to find the truth. I wasn’t going to let this fly.“You know, if you continue to insist it’s nothing, I’m just going to start worrying more,” I said, my tone friendly but the words solid. “And I won’t stop until you explain what’s really going on.”His eyes flashed to mine, a silent plea within them. The silence, the silence between us too real, too ever-present. He parted his lips to say something, then closed them again, as if the words were lodged somewhere in

Sierra’s POVThe subsequent days after we returned from the resort were a kind of slow unravelling, the kind of tension that builds when you’re holding your breath, unsure of what’s coming next. He was there, and yet he wasn’t as his body remained within inches of mine, but the distance between us was like an invisible wall. He was more ghost than human, far away, icy, and I could not touch him the same way again. The words we had not said, the questions we had left unasked, hung heavy in the air around us, a silence louder than any word.I attempted to dismiss the subtle changes, the deselection of the little things. But they were too conspicuous, too irrefutable to ignore. His eyes, those deep, steady eyes I used to find so reassuring, increasingly evaded mine. Each time I asked something simple, about how his day went or whether he needed anything, his darting eyes would shift away, as if to avoid the trespass of meeting my gaze for the fear of revealing something I wasn’t meant