Lahat ng Kabanata ng Beauty and the Mafia Beast: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

[ZEKE]I don’t want to stop fucking her.That’s the first thing I feel—pure, seething irritation—as I’m yanked out of that moment, still buried inside her, still tasting her breathless gasps against my mouth.A boom. Distant, muffled, but unmistakable. And then, a second one, louder and closer. I still inside her, my spine snapping straight. That wasn’t thunder. Not in this fucking castle. That was an explosion.“What the fuck was that?” I snarl, pulling out of her too fast, my cock still throbbing, my hands shaking.Camilla slides off the counter with wobbly legs. Her dress is still hitched around her hips, lips kiss-swollen, eyes wide. But it’s her face that stops me cold. She’s gone white. Bloodless. She’s scared. Not confused, not startled—terrified.Something’s wrong.I wrap an arm around her waist, feel how light she is, how stiff. I grip tighter than I should. “Stay close,” I mutter, yanking my phone out of my jacket. “Marco.” No answer. “Marco, pick up the fucking phone,” I hi

[CAMI]I wake up with my neck screaming and my throat sandpaper-dry. My head lolls to the side, the world blurry and dim—until I blink hard, once, twice, and the shadows sharpen into something familiar.No. No, not this room.The chair digs into my spine as I shift, and that’s when I feel it. Metal. My ankles are bound, my wrists cuffed to the armrests. Fuck. I’m trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey in the same fucking room where Vance had once been kept. Where he’d looked me in the eye and told me I was a mistake.But I’m not alone. Claire’s across from me, wrists tied, legs folded awkwardly. Her lip’s split. Her hair’s matted to her forehead. She’s awake and sitting next to her, equally beaten, is Jake. His knuckles are raw. There’s dried blood at the corner of his mouth.His breathing is rough. Claire’s is too. Mine joins theirs in the silence.And then it all floods back.The hallway. The thick fog swallowing everything. Zeke had grabbed me, hard, wouldn’t let go. But Claire… Cla

[CAMI]I don’t know how long it’s been since Zeke walked out of the room. Could be minutes. Could be hours. Could be days. Time isn’t real anymore.All I know is that at some point, I retched up the nothing in my stomach, warm bile spilling down the front of me, burning my throat on its way out. And then I closed my eyes because the smell—the metallic stench of Jake’s blood mixing with my vomit—started to make my brain glitch, my thoughts looping into madness.That’s when the flashes came. The first time I met Jake. The way he’d crack the worst jokes just to make Claire roll her eyes. The nights we spent crammed into my apartment after a run at the clubs, half-drunk and laughing over takeaway. How safe he felt to have around.I don’t react when someone unlocks the metal cuffs around my wrists. I don’t open my eyes when arms hook under me, lifting me like I weigh nothing. I hope stupidly that it’s Marco. He at least had the decency to look away when Zeke turned into… whatever that was.

[CAMI]I hear my name through the fog. It’s faint at first, like someone calling from the other side of a dream. When I hear it again, I force my eyes open. The light in the room stabs at them, and for a second, I regret waking at all.There’s someone beside me.It takes more strength than it should to turn my head. My neck feels heavy, my body sluggish, like I’ve been drugged. My brain takes a few seconds to catch up, to put the features together: sleek hair, sharp cheekbones, the kind of visible elegance you don’t fake. Vivienne Russell. Zeke’s mother.Her gaze is fixed on me, soft in a way that almost feels like relief. For half a heartbeat, I feel it too. Relief. A lifeline. Then I remember. She’s his mother. Zeke, who thinks I tried to kill him. Zeke, who’s furious because he thinks I betrayed him. Zeke, whose rage leaves no room for mistakes.My eyes close on their own, my shoulders collapsing back into the bed. I can’t hold them open anymore.“You need to eat something,” Vivien

[CAMI]Claire blinks at me. Her lips are pale and split, her hair matted with sweat. My gaze drops to the dark stain soaking the centre of the bandage at her hip, and the other smaller bandages strapped haphazardly around her arms, the angry scratches carving lines across her skin.“I’m fine,” she says, leaning forward, her hand moving over my arm to reassure me. I let exhale, but that doesn’t keep the tears from pooling in my eyes. Fuck. She survived this. She starts explaining before I can ask. “I—” her voice cracks at the very start, and I notice her hands are shaking. “I took him to one of Vance’s stash houses. Only a few people know about it. He had guns there and cash. Some important papers, too, I guess. None of it was on record, so of course I understood it was pretty fucking important. I knew there’d be guards, and I told that motherfucker. I warned him. But he—” her breath catches, “he pushed me forward anyway. Made me the bait.“We blew it up,” she whispers, almost proud, a