Semua Bab She's an Assassin: Falling for the Enemy : Bab 111 - Bab 120

The evening was warm, the kind of warmth that wrapped itself around the old stones of the Vittorio estate and lingered there like a ghost. Vittorio sat on his balcony with a cigar balanced between his fingers and a glass of deep red wine at his side. Below him stretched the manicured gardens with dark shadows creeping between trimmed hedges as the sun dipped lower on the horizon. He inhaled deeply, savouring the scent of burning tobacco.Money had been pouring in ever since Isabelle’s dating heist. Five hundred billion dollars stolen from the Iranians–a sum so vast it could buy governments, topple empires and bend nations. To any other man it would have been cause for unrestrained celebration. But Vittorio was not any other man. He knew every coin stolen carried a shadow. Already the Iranians were howling, their fury echoing across borders. Terrorist factions had begun stirring, their anger lashing out like a storm. Vittorio smiled faintly. Let them rage. They were noise and noise co

Present day*************Alessa’s fingers trembled around the phone long after the line had gone dead. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths as though the walls of the mansion had suddenly shrunk around her. The voice–it still echoed in her ears. Soft, desperate, cracking with a sorrow she had not been prepared to hear. Her mother. Alive.For twenty years, Alessa had buried that possibility in the graveyard of abandoned hopes. She had built walls, wrapped herself in iron, taught herself never to wonder, never to hope, because hope was cruel. Yet here it was–shattering her armor in seconds. “No.” She whispered, clutching the phone so tight her knuckles whitened. Her eyes burned as she stared at nothing. “No… it can’t be. It’s not possible.” Marco was beside her in an instant, his hand closing gently over hers, grounding her. His gaze was steady, cautions, like a man approaching a wounded lion. “Alessa… you heard her voice. That wasn’t a scam or a trick. She’s reaching ou

The attic smelled of dust and old wood, a faint scent of mothballs clinging to the cracked boxes stacked in the corners. Moonlight crept through a small window, painting stripes across the floorboards where Alessa sat with her back against the wall. A nearly empty bottle dangled from her fingers, her other hand resting limply across her knee. The burn of alcohol had stopped numbing her throat a while ago. Now it only deepened the ache lodged in her chest. She tipped the bottle back anyway, forcing another swallow and letting it rol through her like fire.Her thoughts wandered to the days when her body was small and fragile, when her world was ruled not by choice but by survival. She had clawed her way through cruelty, through a childhood where there were no bedtime stories, no gentle hands or guide her, only harsh voices and harsher fists.The training they forced into her–knives, guns, poisons, endurance drills that left her bleeding and fainting–had carved her jet k something other

The café was quiet, tucked into a corner of the city where no one would expect a De Luca or a Vittorio to appear. The faint hum of jazz drifted from hidden speakers and the air smelled faintly of roasted beans and polished wood. Alessa sat rigid, her chair angles slightly away from the table as though she was poised to leave at any moment.Her eyes, cold and unreadable, were locked in the woman across from her. Gloria. Her mother. The woman who had haunted her memories as both a ghost and a curse. Gloria looked nothing like the broken image Alessa had carried for years. She was dressed in an elegant navy suit that fit her like it had been cut from silk for royalty.A delicate watch gleamed at her wrist. Her hair was swept back neatly but the sunglasses she wore indoors betrayed something deeeper–an unwillingness to show her eyes, to reveal whatever truth lingered there. Her hands trembled faintly when she reached forward, attempting to bridge the decades between them.But Alessa leane

The silence after Gloria’s departure clung to Alessa like a second skin. She sat by the pool, knees pulled close to her chest, the smoke from the slim cigar Marco had pressed into her hand curling above her like ghostly ribbons. The blue water shimmered under the don evening lights, reflections breaking apart with every ripple. Her thoughts wouldn’t stop racing. Her mother’s words echoed in fragments–I loved you then, I love you now… Sophia needed saving… you were the wound that never healed. None of it sat well in her heart. Love, abandonment, guilt–all twisted together until she couldn’t tell which was real and was manipulation. Marco leaned back against the stone edge of the pool, arching her in silence.He let her smoke, let her breathe, let her unravel. He knew her storms by now. They didn’t need to be calmed, only endured until she gathered her fire again. When she finally exhaled sharply, flicking her cigar stub into the water, he tilted his head. “Better?” He asked.Alessa sh