Todos os capítulos de TO LOVE A MONSTER : Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

The hallway was colder than Nico remembered.He walked fast, past the archways and portraits, past the faint murmur of house staff in the distance, past the echoes of a conversation that had no place in this house. In his chest, something twisted hard, like a wire pulled too tight.Rafael. Alessio.He couldn’t unsee it.Not the way Alessio had looked at him. Not the way Rafael had touched him, as if he was something sacred. There had been no doubt in that room. No misinterpretation. No way to rationalize what he had seen into something innocent.Nico reached the end of the corridor and leaned against the wall, chest heaving slightly as if he’d run a mile. A wave of nausea crept up the back of his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead.He wasn’t supposed to know this.He was the younger brother, the one kept in the shadows when things got ugly. Alessio protected him, always had. From business, from violence, from blood. Even after their fath

Alessio stood in the hallway long after the reception ended.Everyone else had gone. The staff. The musicians. The cousins with their slurred congratulations. The older men with cigars and business nods. The mothers. His father.And Rafael.That last one he felt like a missing limb.Alessio leaned against the cool wall outside the bedroom door. His collar was open. His jacket somewhere he didn’t care to remember. His hand still smelled faintly of lilies, Isabella’s bouquet, handed to her after they kissed in front of God and family and every carefully arranged camera.He couldn’t walk in.He could hear her moving on the other side of the door. The soft rustle of fabric. A drawer closing. The creak of the bed.She was waiting for him.His wife.He closed his eyes.That word didn’t fit in his mouth. Wife. It felt like he’d stolen it. Like he was trying on someone else’s life. Nothing about it was his.Not the gold ring on his hand.Not the vows still echoing in his ears.Not the silence

Three days after the weddingAlessio stood outside the Montayo estate with Isabella on his arm, listening to her talk about wine pairings as if the knot in his stomach were something he could ignore.It wasn’t.The doors opened before she even knocked, as if someone had been watching from behind the curtain and the household staff greeted them like it was routine. Like this was already his life.He stepped inside, and it felt like walking into a past he didn’t belong to.Javier Montayo stood at the end of the hall, composed in a dark suit, his expression carved in stone.“Papà,” Isabella said, cheeks flushed with warmth, the perfect daughter. She kissed him on both cheeks, lingered a moment.Alessio extended a hand. “Don Javier .”A firm shake. “Welcome to the family.”He said it like a formality. Like a chess move.Dinner was already being plated.The dining room smelled of roasted lamb, citrus, something herbal Alessio couldn’t place. The table stretched long and gleaming under soft

The house was silent, but Alessio’s mind was not.Sleep had not come easily, not after the warehouse. Even now, hours later, his body still felt coiled, as if waiting for the sound of a gunshot that never came. He had tried lying in bed beside Isabella, but her steady breathing only sharpened the ache in his chest. So he had left her there, slipped out into the study, and sat in the dark with nothing but the decanter, the faint hum of the city outside, and his own pulse.He thought of what could have happened. What should have happened, maybe.Enzo Romano had been circling him like a wolf. The bodyguard he’d brought had vanished, traitor or coward, it didn’t matter. He had been alone. Outnumbered. And Enzo had tossed that photograph at his feet like a curse. A photograph Rafael had sworn no one would ever see.If Rafael hadn’t come, what then?Would they have beaten him? Shot him in the back of the head, left his body in that warehouse to rot among rust and shadows? Or worse. would t

The Montoya dining room was loud in the way only powerful families were loud….not shouting, not chaos, just too many conversations happening at once, all of them important to someone.Rafael sat two seats down from his father, posture straight, jacket buttoned, fork moving when it was supposed to. He nodded at the right moments. He smiled when someone made a joke. He looked like he belonged there.He didn’t feel like he did.The clink of cutlery against plates grated on him. The sound kept pulling him back to the table whenever his thoughts wandered too far which was often.Don Eduardo spoke from the head of the table, voice steady and authoritative. Ports. Routes. Percentages. Names Rafael had heard his entire life.Lucia sat beside him, elegant as ever, her knee brushing his under the table when she shifted. At one point she leaned in and said something about the wine.Rafael nodded, even though he hadn’t heard her.His mind was stuck on Alessio.Not anything dramatic, just the memo