Semua Bab Bound by blood and lies: Bab 61 - Bab 70

The silence was never ending.It wasn’t the comfortable, nice quiet from before. No. This was the kind of silence that screamed in your ears. The type that was deafening and made you want to run mad. The type that echoed death because I knew that a lot of that was going to happen tonight.I stood in the middle of Ricci’s luxurious and once comforting living room, surrounded by soft leather couches, a massive TV, a half-eaten bowl of popcorn… and the dreadful knowledge that five people had just been slaughtered.Because of me.I sank onto the couch as my knees could no longer carry the weight of my body or maybe it was the weight of my guilt.They were Ricci’s men. His people. They died because he harbored me, protected me, kissed me on a damn Ferris wheel like we didn’t live in a world where suck actions like that could get you killed.I pressed the heel of my palm against my eyes, trying to stop the tears that threatened to spil

The mansion was quiet—too quiet.The kind of quiet that made your skin itch and your gut twist. I had walked through my own halls a thousand times, but tonight it felt... different. The blood on my coat was drying, cracking like paint with every step. My boots left a crimson trail of blood on the marble floors with each step but I didn’t care. I was too focused on something else to care.Too tense.Too afraid.Of him.Don Ricci is a man without emotions but tonight, I was filled with themI paused at the door to the main living room,my hand on the frame. My knuckles were scraped and sore. The high from the fight hadn’t worn off, but something heavier had started to settle in my chest, and I hated how unfamiliar it felt.It was fear.Not of death.Not of revenge.But of Eli.Of what I’d see in his eyes.I stepped in and stopped cold.He was there.Standing in the center of the living room like he’d been waiting.His gaze was

Sunlight streamed in through the parted curtains, warm and golden, casting soft streaks of light across the bedroom floor. It was the kind of soft light that made everything feel slower, more delicate—like the world had hit pause just for us.I stirred before he did.Ricci—Enzo—was still asleep, his breath steady, chest rising and falling in a rhythm that seemed almost too peaceful for someone who had slaughtered thirty men the night before. His arm was draped loosely around my waist, the other bent behind his head. His face, usually so hard and unreadable, was relaxed now. The lines of violence, command, and danger erased by sleep.I studied him in silence.The faint stubble on his jaw, the little injury on his lip that had started to scab, the faint bruises already forming on his ribs. Every inch of him told a story—and yet, here in this quiet morning I could almost forget what he was capable of. Almost.A part of me wanted to move. To slip out of bed, sta

It had been almost two months.Two months of watching the same part of the sky from the same balcony. Two months of waking up to the sound of the same espresso machine, of pacing the same hallways over and over, of training in the same gym, and eating dinner in the same damn room. And while I could admit that there were far worse prisons than Ricci’s estate—especially when the warden kissed like that and touched like he did—I was starting to go a little bit crazy.“Please,” I groaned for the fifth time that morning. I was sprawled out on his bed, dramatically kicking my legs like a bored child throwing a tantrum.Ricci stood near the mirror, buttoning up his perfectly ironed white shirt. The morning sun filtering in through the window, hitting the sharp angle of his jaw just right. If I weren’t so desperate to escape, I’d have admired the view longer because damn was it an amazing one.He turned slowly, one brow raised in that arrogantlu handsome

The moment the terrace door flew open and Ricci’s man stepped through, everything changed.I could feel it like a sudden drop in temperature. A stillness that wasn’t peaceful anymore—but charged, like lightning had just struck a tree. The man looked like he’d run through hell barefoot—sweat dripped down his temple, he was breathing hard, his eyes were wild and a little bit haunted.He didn’t speak in English. The words tumbled out in fast, clipped Italian—coded, urgent.I recognized a few word from the conversations Ricci had trained me to understand over the weeks, but this wasn’t the usual “check the perimeter” or “bring the car around.” No, this was something else. Something serious.Ricci froze for just a second.Then everything about him changed.He grabbed his phone and his shirt in one swift motion, muscles instantly becoming taunt beneath his skin, his face shifting into that unreadable expre