Lahat ng Kabanata ng BLOOD AND VOWS: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

BLOOD AND VOWS---CHAPTER TWELVE HE SAVES HER“In this world, sometimes your only shield is the devil standing beside you.”She knew something was wrong before the first bullet broke glass.It wasn’t the silence—it was the shift in it. The sudden stillness of guards who should’ve been stationed outside the car, the tension in the air like the earth itself had sucked in a breath it wouldn’t release. Emilia sat in the back seat of the black SUV, two guards in the front, one beside her. Routine. Boring. Scheduled. That’s what made it perfect for an ambush.The sniper took the first shot clean through the windshield—driver dead before his foot left the gas. The second bullet missed her shoulder by an inch and embedded itself in the headrest. Blood sprayed the side window. The man next to her shoved her down, returned fire—one, two, three rounds—and was cut off mid-shout when a second shot tore through his neck. She hit the floor, rolled under the seats, heartbeat loud enough to drown ou

BLOOD AND VOWS---CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE SAFEHOUSE“Some cages look like refuge until you realize the lock is on the inside.”They didn’t argue about the safehouse. They didn’t have time. One of the guards had been compromised—Alessio caught him trying to disable the estate’s north perimeter camera feed just after midnight. A bullet to the knee and two broken ribs later, he confessed to leaking floor plans to Vitale’s courier ring. “You’re surrounded,” the man said through blood. “It’s just a matter of when.” So they packed bags—light, no electronics. They used an old exit route built under the wine cellar, a relic from a previous war, and drove three hours north without headlights, escorted only by two men in black Suburbans who never said a word. When they arrived, the house looked empty. Safe. Quiet. Which, in their world, meant danger just hadn’t caught up yet.The place belonged to a Moretti cousin who’d gone “legit” years ago—Alessio didn’t trust him, but he trusted the paranoia

BLOOD AND VOWS---CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE AFFAIR THAT WASN’T“The most dangerous betrayal is the one people expect you to commit.”The rumors hit first.Like whispers with knives in their teeth, they came slithering in through back alleys and encrypted messages, always the same shape: Emilia Romano has been seen with Jace Vitale. She kissed him before the war began. She leaked the route to protect him, not her cousin. She was always his.Alessio didn’t speak on it.Didn’t ask.Didn’t accuse.But silence is louder than shouting when it lasts long enough.She felt it everywhere—in the way he passed her in the hall without touching her waist, in the way his voice never rose even when it should’ve, in the way he looked through her instead of at her.She had bled for him.Burned for him.Buried people for him.But all it took was a single ghost with the right smile to rewrite her history.It didn’t matter that she hadn’t touched Jace since she was seventeen.It didn’t matter that she thought

BLOOD AND VOWS---CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A KISS WITH BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS“Sometimes love tastes like smoke and gunpowder. And still—we kiss it anyway.”The first man they killed was laughing. He was stationed by the gate, half-drunk, too confident in the silence of 4 a.m. to notice the shadows creeping in. Emilia shot him through the temple before his fingers reached the alarm. His blood misted the flowers planted beneath the Vitale crest. Alessio didn’t flinch. He stepped over the body like it was rain.The compound was designed to withstand raids, not retribution. Thick walls, iron shutters, panic rooms that promised survival. But no one planned for two people with nothing left to lose.Inside, the lights were low and the heat was rising—literal and otherwise. Alessio moved like a predator. Emilia followed him, knife in one hand, pistol in the other. No orders. No backup. Just history between them and violence ahead.Room by room, they cleared the east wing. Four men dead. Two wounded.

BLOOD AND VOWS---CHAPTER TWENTY SHE LEAVES“Sometimes the only way to win is to disappear first.”The blood hadn’t dried yet. Not on the floors. Not on her skin. Not in her memory. And Emilia was starting to feel it—the pressure, the pull, the weight of every lie that had been peeled back like old wallpaper. Her mother was still silent, speaking only in fragments and riddles about things no one understood. Sofia flinched every time the door creaked. Rosa barely slept. And Alessio—he tried to hide it, but she saw it anyway—he was fraying. Unraveling. Rage didn’t keep a man alive. It just made the dying louder.Emilia packed a bag just after 3 a.m. One change of clothes. Two handguns. A blade. Her old passcard from the southern docks. One memory. No promises. She didn’t leave a note. Didn’t wake anyone. She just slipped through the side exit, past the sleeping guards, down the gravel road and into the night.She didn’t leave because she was afraid. She left because she couldn’t think