All Chapters of Auctioned to the mafia land: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Milene's POVSaturday came slower than I wanted it to, which was a strange thing to admit to myself after three months of wanting nothing more than for time in that house to move faster, to get me anywhere but where I currently stood.Mara helped me dress for it, though I'd told her twice it wasn't anything formal, just a movie, and she'd given me a look like she didn't believe a word of that."He asked you himself," she said, straightening the collar of a soft blue sweater instead of one of the structured dresses I'd been wearing for weeks. "That's not nothing in this house.""It's a movie, Mara.""Mm." She didn't argue further, but the small smile tugging at her mouth said enough.The east wing screening room turned out to be smaller than I expected, dim lighting, deep leather seats built more for comfort than show, a wall of film reels and discs that looked older than either of us. Angelo was already there when I arrived, sleeves rolled u

Milene's POV"Not alone how?" I asked, my voice sounding steadier than I felt.Angelo was already standing, already reaching for the jacket he'd tossed over the back of his chair minutes ago, and something about the speed of it scared me more than his words had."Her father," he said. "Mikhail's with her. They're at the Meridian, two blocks from here. Enzo's men clocked them an hour ago.""Why would he bring her here himself? I thought Enzo said he was staying quiet.""He was." Angelo's jaw worked once, the same way it did right before he said something he didn't want to. "Quiet doesn't mean patient. And thirty days isn't a deadline Mikhail agreed to. It's one the council gave me."I stood too, though I wasn't sure why, some instinct telling me I should be moving even if I had nowhere to go. "What does that mean?""It means he's not waiting for the council to decide anything." He crossed to the door, then stopped, hand on the frame, and looked back at me like he'd forgotten something.

Milene's POVRoberto didn't turn up that night. Or the next day.Enzo's men combed through every place he was known to frequent, the underground clubs he liked, the apartment downtown he kept for reasons nobody bothered explaining to me, the private airstrip Angelo used for the family's less official cargo. Nothing. He'd gone quiet in a way that felt deliberate, the kind of quiet that meant somebody had taught him how to disappear properly, and I didn't like thinking about who that somebody might have been."He's done this before," Angelo said on the second night, pacing his study while I sat curled into the chair by the window, watching him wear a track into the rug. "Disappeared when things got difficult. The operation that got me shot. Same pattern.""Except this time you're actually looking for him.""This time I actually understand why he ran." His jaw tightened around the words. "Enzo pulled the security logs from that whole stretch. The blas

Milene's POVI didn't tell Angelo everything Angeline said. Not right away.I told him the parts that mattered for the war, that she hadn't sent anyone after Mia, that her father was using her humiliation as leverage he never actually cared about beyond the terms he could squeeze out of it. Angelo listened with his jaw tight the whole drive home, and when I finished, he was quiet long enough that I thought he might not respond at all."You believe her," he said finally. Not a question."I do.""Why?"I thought about the way her hands had shaken around that coffee cup, the brittle grief underneath her fury. "Because she didn't have to tell me any of it. She could have let me walk in there scared and confused and said nothing useful at all, and instead she told me things that could get her in trouble with her own father if he knew."Angelo didn't argue, which told me more than agreement would have.I didn't tell him about the gir

Milene's POVNobody moved for a second. It felt like the whole house had stopped breathing along with me."Where," Angelo said, and the word came out so quiet it was almost worse than if he'd shouted it."I don't know yet." Enzo's hands were still shaking around his phone. "The car she took, we tracked it as far as the old coastal road, then it just... stopped transmitting. Same as the cameras in the east corridor. He's had help cutting our tracking, boss. This wasn't done alone.""Mikhail," Angelo said, the name coming out like something bitter. "He's been giving Roberto resources this whole time. That's how he's stayed hidden for weeks.""We don't know that yet.""We don't know anything yet," Angelo snapped, and it was the first time I'd heard him raise his voice at Enzo in all the months I'd known him. He caught himself almost instantly, pressing the heel of his hand against his eyes like he could push the panic back down by force. "I'm s