All Chapters of Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King: Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

Cali’s POVThe smell hits me before I even step inside.Not blood.Not death.Something older.Worn-out mattresses soaked in sweat. Plastic bottles filled with murky water. Discarded rags balled in corners. It smells like fear left too long in the dark. Like survival turned sour. Like shame that was never theirs to carry.And then I see them.Seven girls. No older than twenty. One of them could be as young as thirteen. Huddled together on the cold cement floor like stray animals in a storm. Thin limbs. Haunted eyes. Clothes that stopped being clothes weeks ago and became armor. Or camouflage. Or just another lie to survive another day.I don’t speak right away.If I’ve learned anything from my own trauma, it’s that silence matters. Quiet can be a kindness when the world has been nothing but loud and cruel.They watch us like we’re a second danger.And maybe we are.Behind me, Hale steps into the room, his gun lowered, his body tense. He doesn’t say anything either—but he doesn’t have t

Cali’s POV.The plane ride home is quieter than I expected.Not because there’s nothing to say—God knows there’s too much—but because neither of us seems to know where to start. Hale sits across from me in the private cabin, arms crossed, legs stretched out, one ankle over his knee. His eyes are on the window, but I can tell he’s not seeing anything. Not the clouds. Not the sea of ink-dark sky outside. He’s somewhere else entirely. Still in that bunker. Still tracing wires back to names we haven’t uncovered yet.I don’t interrupt.I just sip my water and wait for the seatbelt light to turn off. Then I move over, sliding onto the leather bench beside him without asking. He doesn’t say a word—just lets me lean into his side, one heavy arm curling around my shoulders like it belongs there.We land in silence.No press. No questions. No trail.Just the black SUV waiting at the hangar with a tired-looking Rook behind the wheel and a thermos of hot coffee in the center console like he someh

Hale’s POV.It starts with a text.Blocked number. No metadata. No trace.But I know who it’s from.S: “Dover site. 3 hrs. Bring her. Bring heat. Don’t bring ghosts.”Dover.Not England.Dover is a code. A fallback location used by Telmun insiders when they’re ready to cut their losses and vanish. S mentioned it once, years ago—before he buried himself off-grid.The message means someone’s ready to talk.Or ready to die.Either way, I’m going.—Cali doesn’t argue when I tell her we’re leaving again. She just zips her bag shut, tucks her knives under her jacket, and meets me in the garage in under ten minutes. No questions. No whining. Just the same storm-eyed determination that scares the hell out of me and makes me love her more than I know how to say.We fly out that night.Touch down six hours later on a private airstrip in southern Albania. Vaughn meets us at the perimeter with new gear and a transport van that doesn’t look like much but could outrun half the Interpol fleet if pr

Hale’s POV.The rain had already started when the plane touched down. A slow, rhythmic drizzle that coated the tarmac in a sheen of gray, casting everything in a quiet, unearned calm. We didn’t speak much on the drive back to the estate. Cali leaned against the window with her arms folded, eyes vacant, still replaying the warehouse, the girls, the sounds—those damn sounds—of another kind of battlefield that didn’t require bullets to destroy a person.I knew that silence.The kind that came after a win that didn’t feel like a victory. We’d pulled seven girls from hell, exposed the Telmun operation for what it was, shut it down, and yet something in my chest still felt wound tight. Not out of fear. Not grief. Just pressure. Like the job wasn’t done. Like something bigger was still out there, watching, waiting to fill the vacuum we’d created.The estate appeared over the hill just before dawn. Lights glowing faintly behind tall windows. Calm. Untouched. I knew Rosalita would be up alread

Cali’s POV.The third floor of Hale’s estate was always shrouded in a kind of silence that didn’t belong to the rest of the house. Downstairs was movement—muffled voices, bootsteps, the occasional clink of glass from the kitchen or the steady hum of Rosalita checking on Belle. But up here, everything was still. Like time had paused. Like even the air didn’t want to breathe too loud.I stood at the base of the staircase for a full thirty seconds before I finally moved.The wood groaned beneath my bare feet, each step creaking like it was trying to warn me off. Maybe it was. I ignored it.Hale had never explicitly banned me from coming up here. He didn’t need to. This part of the house was old. Untouched. Untamed. The third floor wasn’t remodeled, wasn’t part of any guest tours or operational plans. It was like a locked attic in an old castle. Full of bones. Full of ghosts.The hallway was lined with shuttered windows and thick velvet drapes that hadn’t been drawn in months. Dust floated