Bound By Blood: The Step-Brothers' Temptation의 모든 챕터: 챕터 251 - 챕터 260

Amelie’s POVI woke to the sound of men’s voices.They were low at first, hushed, as if the night itself was straining to listen in. My head throbbed, every nerve in my skull pulsing with sharp, hot pain. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. The world was dark, rocking faintly around me, the air thick with gasoline and leather and the tang of blood that wasn’t entirely mine.Then memory hit me like a whip.The room. The girl. Her body slack in my arms. The warmth spilling from her throat, her eyes going glassy even as I tried to hold her together. Raphael laughing while her last breath shuddered against my chest. And then—my own hand shaking, the gun bucking as I fired at him. The last thing I remember was the oain at the back of my head after they threw me into the car, and then after all that was darkness. I squeezed my eyes shut. My stomach twisted. I wanted to scream, to tear my skin open just to crawl out of it. But all I did was curl tighter against the seat, fighting the b

_Raphael’s POV_The road stretched on forever, black through a dead countryside. The SUV rattled over gravel, its headlights cutting pale tunnels through the dark. My sides throbbed where the bullet had hit me, a deep ache that pulsed with every bump. The bandage one of my men had wrapped around it was already damp and sticky. The pain wasn’t important. Pain was never important.What mattered was the silence.I sat in the passenger seat, gaze fixed on the darkness ahead, though I wasn’t really looking. My mind replayed the past hours over and over, the images burned into me like scars.Her face.Her eyes when she pulled the trigger.For the briefest instant, Amelie had wanted me dead. There had been no hesitation in her finger, no mercy in her aim. She’d shot with the pure intention of ending me. And she’d almost succeeded.Almost.I let the word roll around in my mind like a fine drop of wine. It wasn’t bitterness I tasted. It was exhilaration. She had dared. She had defied.The lit

_Amelie’s POV_The hours bled together in the dark.The SUV rattled endlessly, the drone of the engine and the hum of tires pressing into my skull until I thought I might lose my mind. My cheek still throbbed from his slap, my wrists burned raw against the rope, and every bump in the road sent a jagged ache through the back of my head where I’d struck it when they shoved me inside.I thought it couldn’t get worse.Then Raphael’s phone rang.It was subtle at first—just a buzz against leather—but the moment he answered, the atmosphere inside the SUV changed. He stiffened, a predator catching a scent. His hand, which had been pressed lazily against his bandaged wound, curled into a fist.“Say that again,” Raphael whispered. His voice was sharp, cutting through the dark like a blade.The man on the other end spoke fast, low. I couldn’t hear the words clearly, but I caught fragments: school… little girl… gone.Raphael’s entire body went still.My chest tightened. Whoever was on the other e

_Nico’s POV_The safehouse was never quiet.Even when no one spoke, even when the girl upstairs lay still on the thin mattress I’d given her, the place breathed. Old pipes clanged, the wind slid through cracks in the brick, the floorboards creaked under the weight of ghosts.I sat at the scarred wooden table, cigarette burning down to the filter, untouched bread and cheese still on the counter from when I tried to coax her into eating. The child hadn’t taken a single bite.Smart girl.I dragged in smoke and let it sit heavy in my lungs before exhaling into the dim kitchen. It had been so long since I had taken a smoke, and now I found myself doing it once more. Matteo had gone outside again, pacing in the cold to cool his temper. Luca was stretched out in the other room, silent, pretending to read but really listening to every breath I made.The fracture between us pulsed like a wound.And then the phone rang.Not my burner. Not one of our secure lines.But my personal phone.I glan

_Nico’s POV_“Is that hers?” Matteo asked, his voice hiding the anger he felt within. But I couldn't answer that yet. Because I feared what the answer might be. The fingernail had a chipped polish—pink gone gray. The skin at the cut end was clean as if it had been severed and then washed, then wrapped. There was a thin smear of dried blood around the plastic. For a split second, my heart dropped into my chest as the fear of who it belonged to gripped me.“It’s not hers,” I said suddenly, staring at the finger intensely.Matteo looked at me like he was asking how I was so sure and I shook my head. “This is longer. It's not hers. He wants to use it to scare us. He knows where we stay,” ‘“That bastard.” Matteo growled.The two of us looked at that finger like it might change into another shape if we blinked thrice. Then the sound hit us: the little girl downstairs humming, the impossible incongruity of life after death in the same house. I felt something like bile climbing my thr