Lahat ng Kabanata ng Switched at the Mafia Auction: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

~ Avelyn ~The backstage hallway was dim, the clatter of heels and faint chatter fading behind me as I tried to vanish into the shadows. My pulse still hammered from the performance, but it wasn’t just the adrenaline, it was the storm that had started brewing the second I’d stepped off the stage. Kyle’s hand on my wrist. His desperate, questioning eyes. I wanted to retreat, to disappear before my own contradictions became too loud.“Kyle… just leave,” I said, keeping my voice flat, controlled. The words felt foreign, almost robotic, but inside my chest a riot raged. I could feel his stare burning into me, pleading, furious, confused. I hated myself for not wanting to look at him. Hated myself for the tiny, dangerous spark that lingered in my veins whenever Xander’s voice whispered through my memory: Be my woman.I wanted to deny it. I wanted to fight it. And yet I couldn’t. The thought alone made my stomach twist in ways I didn’t recognize, made my legs feel like lead, and my heart a

~ Avelyn ~Now I was alone in the room, the air snapped back like it had been held hostage. My chest rose and fell too fast, like my body forgot how to breathe at a normal human pace.I pressed my back to the cold wall and tried to swallow, but my throat felt locked. Every place he had touched me still burned…my wrist where he stopped me, my face where his thumb traced, my mouth where—No. I wasn’t thinking about that.I squeezed my eyes shut.God, what the hell was happening to me?The kiss replayed anyway, uninvited. The shock and the heat, it was different each time but it had the same effect of claiming me, leaving me helpless and vulnerable, as if the world dropped out for a second. I pressed a shaking hand against my lips. Why the hell was I thinking about that? Why do I visualize it when he’s inches close?I shouldn’t feel anything, I shouldn’t react, I shouldn’t be standing here frozen. I hated him for what he did.But I hated myself more for the way my body responded befo

~ Avelyn ~ My breath caught in my chest like I had a heart attack, humiliating me with disbelief.His lap was solid heat beneath me, warm, close, too much for me to handle. But he didn’t move, didn’t shift, didn’t even pretend to be startled. If anything he was enjoying it!Of course he wouldn’t be affected. It’s Xander Sterling we’re talking about. He wasn’t a man who gets startled.He was engineered to create chaos, then watched people drown in it.But that wasn’t the only problem right now, beneath me I felt a bulge from his pants and my face turned beet red, my palms pressed against his chest instinctively, trying to push myself up, trying to pretend this wasn’t happening, trying to erase the way my stomach flipped. But his arm wrapped around my waist firmly, grounding me in place and causing my efforts to be in vain.“Don’t,” he murmured.A single word command dressed like a whisper but it had the power to freeze me. Because it wasn’t the tone that stopped me.It was the fac

~ Xander ~The moment Avelyn slipped out of my room, the quiet hit me like a blow, not the peaceful quiet or the restful kind.This was a quiet that presses hard against the walls, against your ribs, against the inside of your skull, the kind that makes you very aware you’re standing alone in a space that still smells like someone else.Her scent lingered like an invisible chain, not her perfume.Her.That warm, soft aroma with a trace of vanilla and something faintly floral, something delicate that didn’t belong in a place like this — in my place.It clung to the sheets, to my shirt, to the air itself. I exhaled slowly, but it didn’t leave my lungs.What is it about her that engraves itself to my memories. Those trembling hands…Her pulse jumping under my fingers…The way she panicked not because she feared me, but because she feared herself… even if she would never admit it. I pressed my thumb to the bandage on my lip, the one she put there, with fingers she couldn’t steady, bre

~ Avelyn ~I left the mansion with a strange heaviness pressing into my ribs.Maybe it was the way Xander watched me leave with crossed arms, expression unreadable, like he was already waiting for me to come crawling back with the truth.I refused to think about that.The driver held the door open for me, and I slipped into the backseat, hands tangled in my lap. The sky outside was a dull gray, and the road was unusually quiet, almost too still, like the world was holding its breath with me.The entire ride felt… wrong.Cold.Ominous.My phone stayed stubbornly silent in my hand. I called Ariana again. Straight to voicemail. The ringing felt like it was mocking me.I stared out the window, chewing on the inside of my cheek.This isn’t her. This isn’t Ariana. Something must’ve happened. Something is off. She wouldn’t just disappear.But the doubt crawled in anyway soft, poisonous.Was Xander right?I shook the thought out of my head so fast it almost hurt.No. No, he didn’t know her.