Все главы Lawless Hearts: Глава 11 - Глава 16

Luciano:She arrived like a slow-moving threat. Controlled. Composed. Beautiful in a way that begged to be ruined.I didn’t move when the elevator doors opened. I wanted to watch her walk into the lion’s den on her own, heels clicking against the marble, that pristine expression barely concealing the war brewing underneath. She was dressed like she meant business—sleek, clean lines, lipstick just a touch too bold for the courtroom. And yet... beneath all that polish, I saw her.Nervous. Flushed.She’d worked harder on her appearance today. Not for the case. Not for the law.For me.That should’ve satisfied me. Should’ve been enough of a confirmation that she was cracking, slipping into my orbit without realizing how deep she already was.But it wasn’t.I wanted more.She stopped a few feet away, eyes cutting through the air between us. That voice of hers—steady and stubborn—called me Mr. Moretti like it was supposed to keep distance. She still thought names and rules could cage what w

Ava: A full bottle of wine deep and surrounded by a sea of papers, I should’ve stopped. Should’ve closed the file, turned off the lamp, and gone to bed like someone with boundaries. But boundaries were for sane people. Rational people. Not me. Not anymore. Because between the transcripts and the redacted surveillance summaries, I found it. A crack. A real, actual crack. Hidden beneath layers of procedural sludge and carefully crafted distractions—but there it was. A misstep. A detail someone thought wouldn’t matter, that no one would look twice at. But I did. And it wasn’t small. This wasn’t some minor filing error or a questionable search warrant. This was big. Like case-dismissing big. A lie, repeated. An inconsistency in the witness statement that contradicted a timestamp so clean, it practically screamed fabricated. My heart slammed against my ribs. My fingertips were numb. I stared at it, reading it over and over again, just to be sure. Just to feel that rush, that sic

Luciano:She was close.Too close.Close enough for her scent to crawl down my throat—something expensive and sharp, layered over red wine and fear she was trying so hard to choke down. I could feel the heat coming off her skin, the tension in her limbs as her fists curled into the front of my shirt like she didn’t even realize she was touching me.Her breath hitched.Mine didn’t.Not outwardly.Inside, I burned.I didn’t move. I didn’t touch her. Not yet. I let her press against me, let her feel the war she was stepping into. Because that’s what this was now—a war. And she was the most dangerous weapon in it. She just didn’t know whose side she was really fighting on yet.“I can do this,” she said, her voice a whisper on the edge of a confession. “I will do this.”There it was.Conviction.Determination.Madness.I looked into her eyes and saw all three reflected back at me. But underneath them… a flicker of something else. Something she hadn’t given a name to yet.She was unraveling