Semua Bab His Baby My Burden: The Mafia Rider's Claim: Bab 71 - Bab 80

Matteo didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. But I could see the fear in his eyes. It was wild, untamed, bleeding through the cracks of the man he tried to be. “I’ll kill them all.” “We might not have to,” Enzo added, voice sharp. “Some of Don Rossi’s men were taken out by friendly fire. I think some of them were our tourist friends from middle east.” Matteo looked up, surprised. “You sure?” “Caught them using their own hand signals while the Rossi men advanced. And it's only our friend's from the middle east who have such thing.Matteo… we have a shot at flipping this war on them.” I gripped Sofia closer, my voice hoarse. “Then finish it. For her.” Matteo leaned in and kissed me once, hard and desperate. “For us.” Then he rose again like a soldier stepping back onto the battlefield and vanished up the stairs, fire in his blood, vengeance on his tongue. And I stayed where I was, holding our daughter like she was the last light left in the world.I didn’t realize I had stopped breathing un

The boat groaned softly as it bumped against the edge of the dock. For a few seconds, no one moved. The hum of the motor had long gone quiet. All that remained was the wind brushing through the trees above and the creak of wood under us like the river didn’t quite want to let us go. I blinked up at the silhouette of a lodge tucked among the pines. It looked abandoned from the outside due to the windows dark, porch covered in vines, the roof half-devoured by moss. But it was shelter. It was a place to breathe. Matteo stood first, stepping onto the dock with Sofia still limp against his chest. His shirt was soaked, not just from the river mist but from her fever-slicked skin. He didn’t flinch as the boards creaked beneath his boots. Enzo climbed out next with the bag of meds and clothes. Vito followed, still limping, face pale. I was the last to rise. My legs barely held me. I hadn’t even realized how long I’d been gripping the side of the boat until I saw the bruises forming alo

Snowflakes danced lazily outside the window as I poured warm milk into Sofia’s cup. She was curled up on the rug near the fireplace, her knees tucked under a knit blanket, eyes glued to the pages of Anne of Green Gables. The scar on her side peeked slightly beneath the sleeves of her pajama top, a ghost of a past I prayed she’d someday forget.We lived now in a small chalet nestled between the Alps, far from the screams and smoke of Italy. Far from Emmanuele. Far from death.The war had ended that night. Or maybe it only paused.I had stopped counting the exact days since we fled, but I knew winter had fully settled in by the time we reached St. Moritz. The snow felt like a clean slate. Quiet. Cold. Unassuming. A sharp contrast from the chaos we left behind. Enzo had found the safehouse through an old contact. Hidden between the trees, the chalet stood at the edge of a frozen lake with nothing but silence for miles. It was the kind of place where the world could forget you existed. An

The world doesn't make noise the same way after you've been tortured.But somehow, this silence feels louder. The cold cuts deeper. And time… it slows like it’s watching you crawl and laughing in your face.Finding them should’ve been easy for me. But nothing about Giuli ever was.She was smart. Smarter than me in ways that mattered. When she vanished, she didn’t leave breadcrumbs she erased her entire trail.No bank activity. No credit history. No contacts I could trace. She vanished just like before.Even Enzo, that bastard, went completely dark.I started in the south. Sicily first. Old contacts. Bikers. Brokers. The type of men who could find anyone if you paid the right price. But even they came up empty.“She’s gone, Ricci.” one of them told me, wiping his nose with the back of a greasy hand. “Your girl? She doesn’t exist anymore.”I nearly broke his face for saying it. But part of me knew it was a compliment. She had learned everything I taught her. Disappear. Vanish in plain s

“I thought you were dead,” I breathed. “You didn’t come back.” “I tried,” he said. “I tried, Giuli. They caught me. They… I was locked underground. Days. Weeks. I don’t know how long. I only got out because the thought of you away from me nearly killed me." “Who—” I tried asking who did this to him but cut me off. “Emmanuele.” he said. “It was him.” A fresh wave of silence fell between us. The kind that said the world had just changed again. I took one more step forward and buried my face in his chest, my fingers curling into his coat like if I let go, he’d vanish again. He held me. So tight I could feel every fracture in him. So tight it hurt. “I never stopped looking for you,” I whispered. “I know,” he said, voice thick. “I felt it. Every night.” And then the strongest man I’d ever known... my monster, my sinner, my storm sank to his knees in the snow and wrapped his arms around my waist like he was begging the earth itself to keep him here. I bent with him. Fell wit