All Chapters of A Deal with the Mafia Lord: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Aurora woke to the sound of rain. Not the kind that fell softly against windows, but a storm that seemed to claw at the air itself. She opened her eyes slowly and saw gray clouds hanging low over the city.Except it wasn’t her city.She was back in New York, or something that looked like it. The skyline was familiar, but every building had cracks running through its glass. The streets were empty. The lights flickered. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, long and distorted, like a memory stretched too far.Aurora pushed herself up from the ground. Her hands were scraped and bleeding. The coin lay beside her, dull now, no longer glowing. She picked it up and slipped it into her pocket.Her breath came in shallow bursts. The city smelled of smoke and metal. Every sign she passed flickered between languages she didn’t recognize.She whispered, “What did you do to my world?”No answer came. Only the rain, heavy and endless.Aurora walked. Her reflection followed in puddles, but ever

Aurora opened her eyes to silence again. But this time, it wasn’t darkness that greeted her.It was light. Endless, and golden, and outward extending into a breathing sky. The earth under her was all water-like teeming with fragments of a city which she had nearly forgotten. Towers were high, however, they were softer, and they were made out of glass moving like liquid. There was the odor of rain and smoke and remembrance.She got up slowly, her hand moving over smooth ground which throbbed a little under her fingertips. The coin was down by her side, its shine constant and unmoved. It did not hum any longer with the hunger with which she was used to be frightened.Aurora whispered, “Where am I?”The world seemed to answer in whispers carried by the wind. Home.Her throat tightened. “No. This isn’t home. This is what’s left of it.”The horizon rippled, and faint outlines of the city she knew—the old New York—flickered like ghostly reflections. For a heartbeat, she saw the Blackwood bu

The impact came like a heartbeat.Aurora opened her eyes to blinding light, her body sprawled across smooth, cold ground. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if she was still falling or already still. The air shimmered, heavy with energy. She forced herself up, every muscle shaking.Around her stretched a city that defied sense. New York and Country C had become one. Glass towers melted into spiraling marble. The streets curved upward like veins, feeding into floating bridges that hung in the air without support. The sky was cracked down the middle, one half gold, the other black, bleeding together in a storm of color.She had seen destruction before. This was something else. This was creation gone mad.The coin hovered a few feet away, spinning slowly, glowing brighter than ever. Its light reflected off the fractured buildings, casting endless reflections of her face across every surface. Each one looked a little different. Some smiled. Some cried. Some looked dead.Aurora reached out. “

The rain had always calmed Aurora. It used to remind her of renewal, of the soft rhythm of home in Australia. But tonight, the sound made her restless. The newsroom lights flickered as thunder cracked above Manhattan, and she stared at her reflection in the dark window—same woman, different ghosts.She had survived. Or at least, that’s what everyone believed. The Blood Coin was gone, the chaos buried, and the world went on. Yet deep inside her, something still pulsed with a faint, stubborn rhythm. The shard she’d found after the gate collapsed—a thin sliver of light that refused to leave her.She told herself it was harmless. That it was only a reminder of Julian. But when it began to glow again, months later, she knew peace had only been pretending to last.It started small. A whisper, barely audible, threading through the hum of computers. Then a heat beneath her collarbone. Aurora pressed her hand to the locket under her blouse. It burned against her skin.Her breath caught. The sh

The world he woke to was silent.Julian opened his eyes to darkness that moved like smoke. The air was heavy, damp, and alive with a hum he couldn’t understand. His first breath burned. His second came with the taste of ash.He pushed himself up from the cold ground, confusion threading through his thoughts. The ground beneath him wasn’t earth or stone but something else, something that pulsed faintly as though alive. Every step he took left a glowing footprint that slowly faded behind him.He looked around. There was no horizon. Only fragments of what used to be a city, floating in slow motion—buildings twisted into impossible angles, staircases that led nowhere, glass that reflected nothing. It was beautiful and horrifying all at once.He pressed a hand against his chest. His skin was warm, too warm, like there was a fire burning just beneath it. When he looked down, faint golden light seeped through the cracks of an old wound that no longer bled.Julian tried to speak, but his voic