Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bound by blood and lies: Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

The first thing I noticed was the cold.Not biting or icy, it was just… cool. Like a room that had never known warmth. No comfort. No life. It clung to my skin like plastic wrap, too clean, too quiet. Like the air itself had been disinfected, scrubbed of every trace of humanity.The second was the silence. It was too complete. Too intentional. Not the kind of silence that settles naturally. No, this was engineered, perfected. The kind of stillness that made you hyper-aware of every breath, every twitch, every heartbeat like a drum in your own ears.Then came the pain. A dull throb pulsing behind my eyes like a heartbeat. My head pounded like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, and when I opened my eyes, I winced at the sterile, white overhead light flickering above me. Harsh. Unfeeling. Like it had watched a thousand scenes unfold just like this one.My wrists ached, but when I tried to move, I realized I wasn’t tied.I was lying on a

Glass shattered down the hall again.I didn’t care which vase it was this time. I’d already broken three. My fists itched for something more than porcelain.“Where the fuck is he?!” I roared, my voice echoing off the walls.No one answered.No one dared.The entire estate was in chaos, flipped, gutted, gutted again. Every room, every hallway, every damn camera feed scrubbed over and over.Still nothing.Still no Eli.Gone.Like smoke through a crack.Matteo stood at the edge of the control room, fists clenched, his jaw tight enough to snap bone. The security team hunched over screens, not one of them daring to breathe too loud.The loop played again.Eli walking into his room, looking very tired.Head down, shoulders slumped, hands in pockets. Calm. Normal.Timestamp: 21:08.Then static.Barely a blip. One second of interference.Bu

The moment the front door creaked open, my heart stuttered in my chest.My voice had grown hoarse, raw from hours of shouting into phones, cursing at silence. Matteo had paced near the fireplace, tension rippling through his shoulders like waves on choppy waters. He hadn’t sat down once. None of us had.Now he stood beside me as we watched the figure walk in.The entire estate was locked down—guards at every corner, drones sweeping rooftops, our tech team on overtime trying to trace a digital ghost.Eli had vanished.No signs. No leads. No chatter on the streets. It was like he’d been swallowed whole by the night.His phone had gone dead. No outgoing calls. No pings. No activity on any of his devices. Even the street cams we hacked into lost him after he passed the third block from Nathan’s building. After that—nothing. Just smoke and static.We’d feared the worst.A kidnapping. A hit. A betrayal.All o

I stood in front of the home office door for what felt like hours, my knuckles hovering in the air, frozen mid-knock. Behind the door, I could hear the low hum of voices Luca’s calm, calculating tone, and Matteo’s more loud bursts. They were probably reviewing surveillance, territory reports, or planning the next move. Always in control. Always two steps ahead.I was tired of feeling like I was five steps behind.I finally knocked.The murmurs ceased. Footsteps padded toward the door before it swung open, revealing Matteo in a navy shirt rolled at the sleeves, tie loosened like he’d just finished strangling someone with it. His eyes softened a little when he saw me but not much.“Eli.” He opened the door wider.Luca sat behind the desk, suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled up as usual. His cold gaze locked onto me like he was trying to read my mind.I stepped in, standing stiffly in front of them.

The house was quiet, eerily still. I stepped inside, the soft click of the door behind me filling the silence. But it wasn’t peaceful. No, it felt… suffocating. Like the air itself was pressing down on me. I could feel the tension, thick and suffocating, wrapping around me like a tight coil. My heart pounded in my chest, my fingers tightening around the ghost of the duffle bag I had hidden earlier. Had they followed me? Did they know what I had taken? The thought of the papers was still heavy in my mind, even if the bag was stashed away in a safe corner for now. I couldn’t let them find out what I had. Not yet. Before I had time to get a hold of my thoughts, the lights flickered on, too bright for the darkness that was there moments ago. I blinked, my eyes stinging against the sudden brightness. I heard them before I saw them—those two devils who’d haunted every inch of my life since I’d first walked into their world. Luca