All Chapters of VELVET GUN: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

“They thought they’d buried storms they never counted how many they couldn’t see.” The Finn mansion wasn’t quiet anymore it hadn’t been for days. Even the air buzzed differently — thick with tension, hushed with secrets, and crackling with something sacred, something only they knew. Chefs bustled in and out of the kitchen, the scent of roasted lamb and fresh pastries lacing the corridors like perfume. Fresh-cut roses adorned the hallway, their blood-red petals the only warning to outsiders that something—someone—had returned. Guards were doubled, every entrance covered. Thomas hadn’t slept in three nights, his eyes sharper than ever as he stood like a stone at the west end of the mansion, watching every car that turned the gravel path. The Finns were celebrating something and it was not for the world to know, it was for them, for Ellie. For her war, for their revenge, for a ghost that had refused to die. Upstairs, in the master suite, Ellie stood in front of the gold-framed mirro

“Every flame they stoked now echoes in ashes and sometimes, plan B is the only thing stronger than fear”. The club shimmered beneath red light like a secret you weren’t supposed to find. Marcella DeRossi-once Alba,now something far colder and more cunning—sat in her private booth on the mezzanine floor of the Del Porto Club. Her legs were crossed, lips stained wine-red, cigarette burning slow between her fingers. She looked like every man’s dream and every woman’s warning. Tonight was supposed to be her last job, the final performance in the long, winding opera they’d orchestrated Ellie, Amy, and herself. Across town, a message had been slipped into the hands of one of Ellie’s father’s trusted men. A business proposal, conveniently hosted in the exact club Marcella occupied. A meeting meant to expose the tangled secret behind Giovanni Capetti and his not-so-innocent affair with Marcella. If Ellie’s father saw it—if he caught Giovanni with another woman—it would ruin the arranged marr

“ One thing about Ellie and Amy is that their plans might fail but a more successful one would be the way they triumph” The Merchetti mansion was bathed in gold. Drapes of champagne silk clung to the high windows, and candlelight glimmered like stars suspended midair. The air smelled of fresh orchids, white gardenias imported from Florence, and tension. Heavy tension. Upstairs, in one of the vast rooms lined with imported mirrors and hand-painted wardrobes, Ellie sat before her vanity in silence. A pale blue silk robe hugged her curves, falling just past her thighs. Her golden-blonde hair had been curled into soft waves cascading over her shoulders. Red lips, porcelain skin, and cold eyes. She looked like a queen being dressed for execution. A diamond-studded tiara lay untouched on the velvet box before her. She didn’t look at it, she didn’t look at anything. The door creaked open behind her.“Cara mia,” came the warm, sweet voice of her Nonna. “You look like your mother the day she

“Most people will finally breath, thinking this is the end of Ellie and Amy but it’s just the beginning of an end they wanted” The storm had passed — at least on the surface. It had been two months since Ellie shattered the Merchetti empire with nothing more than truth, blood, and the woman she loved standing beside her. Two months since Giovanni was humiliated in front of the most powerful families in Italy, since Giulia’s secrets came undone like the back of her favorite couture gown, since Nonna no longer looked at Ellie with disappointment, but with silence — the kind of silence that comes when awoman knows her reign is over. Ellie hadn’t been seen much since that night. The mansion had grown quieter. Staff whispered less. Guards stood more often at the doors than the gates because the threat was no longer outside, it was inside her, inside them. In the form of a revolution no one could see coming and today… the doctor had arrived. He came alone, draped in a brown coat too heavy

“I’ll meet you in the silence after war—if you’re still mine.” The villa’s back wing — midnight Alba kissed like she had been starved, not from lack of lips, not from loneliness but from the absence of her. Isadora gasped against her mouth as Alba pressed her into the door, hand already sliding beneath her skirt, the door hadn’t even closed fully. Their bodies were half in the hallway, half in the room, they didn’t care. Somewhere down the corridor, someone coughed and turned a page of a book, life went on. The world outside the villa spun but not in here In here, the clock broke. “I thought I lost you,” Isadora whispered, her voice sharp and sweet and breathless like citrus. “They said you were” “Dead?” Alba breathed into her mouth. “They’ve always said that.” “You don’t get to joke about it.” “I’m not joking.” Alba caught her face between her hands. “I came back for you.”The kiss that followed was deep and trembling, desperate, the kind of kiss that only happens after war. Al