Lahat ng Kabanata ng Falling For The Mafia Boss: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 76

The lights of the casino blur into a smear when I blink, a neon bruise that never quite heals. Tonight they hurt more than usual. Maybe because I know where the glow ends now in Liora’s apartment, in the curl of her cigarette smoke, in the way she presses her mouth against mine and makes me feel like I matter. Maybe because I can feel the pulls of two different orbits and they’re not compatible: one is fire and freedom, the other is steady checks and the cold calculus Raven and Matteo embody.I tell myself it's a choice. I tell myself I’m choosing a life I actually want.But choices are easy when you get to decide them between drinks and kisses. The hard part is waking up to the consequences.Tonight, though, starts simple enough. Liora texts me a name and a time, a place I haven’t been to before, one of those smoky after-hours rooms on the edge of the riverbank where the air tastes of rust and past mistakes. She says it’s a “show,” and I know what that code means: small stacks of chi

Matteo stands to one side and watches us both, the fulcrum between two poles pulling in opposite directions. He doesn’t move for a long time, and doesn't pick a side. He’s not made of the same compulsion as Raven and not the same longing as me. He is measured, which in this business is sometimes the most dangerous posture of all.“You could have been hurt,” Raven says finally, the syllables mechanical, precise. Her hands don’t touch me. They want to; she has always wanted to shape me into something safer.“You were,” she adds, quieter, as if that makes me smaller and the world correct.I tell her about the fight, about the scar-man’s hands, about Liora stepping in. She doesn’t ask about details. She only says, “Stay away from her.”Which is not a request, It’s a wall.I might have walked away then. I might have listened to the woman who built me from scraps and said, yes, you are my tether, and this is the price of the life I owe you. But Liora appears to me in a crooked memory when I

The city never really slept, it just changed its rhythm. By day, it was all noise and traffic, a symphony of horns and impatience. But at night, it exhaled. The streets quieted to a pulse, the kind you could feel through the soles of your boots if you stood still long enough. Matteo liked that pulse. It reminded him he was alive, even when everything else in him felt mechanical.He hadn’t spoken to Raven in two days, not really. They exchanged updates on safehouse maintenance, casino movements, surveillance patterns but nothing beneath that surface. She was ice, deliberate. Elias was distracted by Liora, wrapped up in something reckless and new. Matteo didn’t mind; the boy had earned a moment of foolishness. What unsettled him was the silence Raven left behind.She had built walls higher than anyone he’d ever met, and somehow, he’d grown accustomed to the cracks the moments when she let him glimpse what was underneath. But lately, even the cracks had sealed.That night, he found her