All Chapters of Way Out: Owned by the Mafia Boss: Chapter 121 - Chapter 128

I reach into my pocket and pull out a small scrap of paper folded into quarters. It’s a stupid old habit — a note to Marcus hidden in the lining of a sock when I need someone to make a move without drawing attention. I smooth it with my thumb as if comforting a small animal. On it I write an address and a name: a drop point, a time. No mention of a bureau, of a mission. No coded header. Just an instruction elegant in its simplicity: Get me an extraction route. If not extraction, prepare a secure vector to move Mira to safety on my word. My hand shakes only a little as I fold it back and slide it into the lining as if it were a seed waiting to be planted.When Dante looks up, I meet his eyes and say nothing. He can guess parts of my plan; he always does. He also watches for patterns in people like a man reading a weather map. If he catches the move, he will understand the desperation beneath it. If he does not, Marcus will walk at dusk and collect the note; the only people who will kno

(Dante’s POV)“Who is this for?” I asked.He swallowed. “Marcus. He watches out for me. He’ll… he’ll move her if I say the word. If I can’t get out clean, he’ll take her.” The words came out fracturing, each one a shard.Marcus. Marcus had no patience for drama and even less fondness for men who played with lives. I knew the man; he’d once taken a bullet for a bartender who’d given him a sandwich and a grin. Marcus moved like an honest clock — slow hands, steady tick. If Luca had breathed that name into a strip of paper, he had chosen the right kind of ally for extraction.But use and trust are not the same. I studied the folded square the way a man might stare at a jagged blade and measure whether it could cut his palm. “You passed my men already?”“No,” he said quickly. “I—no. I hid it before they came. I was going to send it out tonight.” His mouth dried. “I thought to wait for dark but—”“But you came here instead,” I finished. The arc was small and neatly self-inflicted. “You tho

(Luca’s POV)Night smells different when you’re about to do something that matters. It’s sharper, full of oil and hot concrete, the scent of engines idling and neon overheating. The laundromat at the corner smelled like bleach and old coins and the faint perfume of someone’s life that keeps spinning. I waited in the shadow of the awning, the bandage at my side riding tight beneath my jacket, a reminder that every breath could be the last I had taken yesterday.Marcus arrived like a man who had practiced slinking for decades: no flourish, no adrenaline, just the quiet competence of someone who’d been asked to do a favor and knew better than to ask why. He was older than me, hands weathered, eyes the color of spare change. He folded into the slot behind the van’s wheel without fuss. Two men in the passenger seats watched the street like hawks.“You sure about the time?” Marcus asked. His voice was low, a rasp as seasoned as the upholstery. He had a face that kept secrets because the sec

(Dante’s POV)I knew Luca had lied the moment he walked into the penthouse.He tried to stand tall, jaw set, his eyes too sharp, too alive for a man who had just run through the city with Santoro’s hounds at his heels. But his hands betrayed him. They shook—not violently, not like a man gripped by panic, but with the subtle tremor of someone who had carried too much, too fast, too far.The blood on his shirt was not his. I could smell it before I saw it. The copper tang carried across the room like incense in a cathedral, announcing sin before confession.“You’re late,” I said. My tone was even, the kind of cold that makes men forget if you’re human at all.Luca—Ethan, though he had buried that name so deep even I almost forgot it—dropped the duffel on the floor. His voice was sandpaper. “We got her out.”He didn’t need to name Mira. I saw her in the shadow behind his words. Safe, somewhere beyond my reach, beyond Santoro’s claws—for now. A victory, but a hollow one.“What else?” I as