Home / Mafia / Switched at the Mafia Auction / Chapter 211 - Chapter 220

All Chapters of Switched at the Mafia Auction: Chapter 211 - Chapter 220

279 Chapters

Chapter 211: Better alone

~ Avelyn ~The mask came off.And it was Kyle.For a second, my body didn’t know how to react. Relief tried to surface, but it collided violently with anger, with humiliation, with the lingering tremor of fear still crawling under my skin.He had dragged me out of a taxi with a mask, in broad daylight like I was prey.My fingers were still locked around the suitcase handle when he leaned forward and grabbed my wrist.The same wrist that had barely healed from the bruise earlier.“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded, his voice low but sharp enough to cut. “Running off alone? With this much cash? What were you thinking?”The pressure on my skin made me wince, but I didn’t pull away.I yanked my hand free instead.“What were you thinking?” I shot back, my chest rising too fast. “You abduct me like I’m some criminal? Do you know I almost had a heart attack? You had a mask on, Kyle!”His jaw tightened, but he didn’t apologize.Not this time.“You shouldn’t have left,” he said, every wor

Chapter 212: Hunt quietly

— Xander —Kyle’s base sat behind iron gates and layered security, the kind built by a man who expected retaliation long before it arrived.Engines idled behind me as my convoy came to a controlled stop.My men stepped out first.Disciplined.Silent.Armed, but not postured.We had just crawled out of a war that cost too much blood to count. I had no intention of walking blindly into another.But intention and necessity were rarely the same thing.The gates opened slowly deliberately.Kyle walked out before I asked for him.Of course he did.He didn’t hide, didn’t send a lieutenant.He came himself, stopping a measured distance away, his men forming a quiet wall behind him.For a moment, we simply looked at each other.Two men with too much history and not enough trust.“You brought an army,” Kyle said evenly, though his tone carried that familiar edge. “Planning to storm my front yard?”“If I were planning to storm it,” I replied calmly, “you wouldn’t see me first.”A few of his men

Chapter 213: Lonely

~ Avelyn ~The flight was quiet.Too quiet.Kyle didn’t sit beside me. He kept his distance like proximity might weaken his resolve. His men handled everything — documents, transfers, vehicles waiting at landing.No names were spoken.No real location was shared.Just movement.City after city dissolved beneath clouds until even I lost track of direction.By the time we reached the coastline, the air felt different. Saltier. Wider. Like the world had stretched open and swallowed noise whole.The house stood alone on a rise overlooking the sea.White stone walls.Tall glass windows.A long curved balcony facing nothing but endless blue.It was beautiful in a way that almost hurt.The kind of place people chose for new beginnings.Or exile.The wind moved through my hair as I stepped out of the car. I could hear the ocean before I saw it fully — that steady rhythm of waves folding into themselves, again and again, as though the world were breathing.Kyle stopped a few feet behind me.“Y

Chapter 214: A loud man

— Xander — They expected rage. And I gave them silence. By the third day, the search units were recalled. By the fourth, surveillance teams were reassigned. By the fifth, I stopped asking for hourly updates. The city exhaled. Whispers spread quickly through the underworld — that I had finally accepted her death. That grief had burned itself out. That the war had drained me of appetite for another hunt. Let them believe that. A loud man is predictable. But a quiet one forces imagination to work overtime. I resumed meetings, signed contracts, reviewed shipment routes and rebuilt what the last war had fractured. Outwardly, everything returned to structure. Order and routine. But routine is where patterns hide. And patterns are where truth breathes. I did not look for Avelyn, looking implies desperation. I looked for absence. The first thing I traced was money. Not her name, that would be too obvious. Instead, I reviewed unusual liquid movements within a spe

Chapter 215: Footprints

~ Avelyn ~It had been a month.Thirty-one days of ocean.Thirty-one days of waking up to the same silver horizon and pretending the stillness meant peace.Kyle wasn’t supposed to come.That was the rule. At least the unspoken one.No pattern, no attachment and no emotional lapses.Which is why when I saw the car climbing the hill from the balcony, my first feeling wasn’t relief.It was anger.He ensured he wasn’t tracked, I could tell. The vehicle wasn’t one I’d seen before. It stopped short of the usual turn. Security rotated differently today. He had done his precautions.That almost made it worse.If you know the rules, why break them?I stayed on the balcony as he stepped out.Wind tugged at my dress. The sea stretched wide and indifferent behind me.When he looked up and saw me, something in his shoulders loosened.That small reaction betrayed him.“You’re not supposed to be here,” I called down before he could speak.His mouth twitched. “Nice to see you too.”I didn’t smile.

Chapter 216: Nothing was wrong

~ Avelyn ~The market smelled like citrus and salt and something fried I couldn’t name.For a second, just stepping out of the car felt illegal.Noise wrapped around me instantly. Voices layered over each other, laughter, vendors calling out prices, the shuffle of feet against pavement. It wasn’t refined. It wasn’t curated. It was messy and alive.And I hadn’t realized how badly I needed that.Kyle stayed half a step behind me at first, like he was guarding something fragile.“I can walk on my own,” I told him.“I know.”But he didn’t move away completely.The stalls were painted in colors that didn’t match like sun-faded reds, chipped blues, striped awnings flapping lazily in the breeze. Fresh fruit was stacked in careless pyramids. Baskets overflowed with things I didn’t recognize.I stopped at the first stand without thinking.“What is that?” I asked, pointing to something orange and spiky.The old woman behind the table grinned at me like I’d just asked the right question.“Try.”

Chapter 217: Last Dance

~ Avelyn ~Kyle walked me to the door like he was escorting royalty back to her palace instead of a heavily guarded house by the sea.He didn’t step in. He stood there.Hand on his chest.Dramatic…completely dramatic.“Mademoiselle,” he said, bowing slightly, “won’t you invite me in for tea? After all my hard work as your bodyguard today?”I blinked at him.Then I narrowed my eyes.“You have been duped by this fine woman,” I replied, lifting my chin with exaggerated grace. “And therefore you shall not enter.”He gasped softly. Offended. Betrayed.“I carried your bags.”“You volunteered.”“I protected you from suspicious tomatoes.”“They were organic.”We both broke at the same time, laughter spilling out of us, warm and unguarded. The sound felt strange in my chest. Like something that hadn’t been used in a long time.I stepped aside.“You may enter, Sir Knight.”He walked in like he had won a battle.The house felt different tonight. Lighter. The market still clung to me, spices, suga

Chapter 218: A figure

~ Avelyn ~I lied.That wasn’t my last dance.From the moment I discovered that room, I couldn’t stop myself.At first it was just curiosity.Just one spin. Just one climb.But the mirrors remembered me.The pole remembered my palms.And for the first time in a long time, my body didn’t feel like something that had been bought or bargained or hidden.It felt like mine.I danced every other evening.Sometimes in silence.Sometimes with music playing from my phone, the volume low, like I was afraid the sea might judge me.I grew slower with time, less reckless and more careful.And now?Now I was too heavy to even lift myself off the bed without rolling to the side first and pushing up with both hands like a stranded seal.The pole was history to me.Six months.It had been six months living here.The peace was deafening.No news reports. No whispers. No sightings of black cars near the cliffs. No men asking questions in the markets.Not even a rumor of Xander Sterling’s scouts look

Chapter 219: My happiness

~ Avelyn ~Kyle’s fingers tightened around mine the moment he felt me slow down.“What is it?” he asked softly.I didn’t answer.The figure at the end of the corridor began walking toward us, unhurried, composed, like this meeting had been penciled into their day long before I knew it would happen.And then recognition settled fully into my bones.Ariana.She stopped a few feet away, close enough for me to see that time had changed her in subtle ways. She looked thinner. Sharper somehow. But it was her eyes that held me in place.They dropped to my stomach first. Not my face, not my smile.My stomach.I felt the shift in the air immediately.“Ariana…” I breathed, and I hated that my voice carried relief.Because a part of me was genuinely happy to see her alive and well. A part of me still remembered laughter, old conversations, the version of us that existed before everything shattered.She lifted her gaze slowly to meet mine, and she smiled.It was polite controlled but it did not r

Chapter 220: Psychic

~ Avelyn ~Another month passed.I told myself it was nothing, just time doing what time does. But the phone on my nightstand had become louder than silence.I remembered Ariana’s number by heart. Muscle memory. Like a song I couldn’t forget. Sometimes at night, when the sea was too calm and the house too quiet, I would unlock the phone and stare at the keypad.7…3…9…My fingers moved before my conscience caught up. I would type the entire number out.Then stare at it.Heart racing like I was about to commit something unforgivable. I’m just checking if she still uses it, I would lie to myself. As if people check numbers at midnight for sport. As if curiosity didn’t have teeth.I never pressed call, not once.And every single time I sat there suspended between guilt and temptation—Kyle would call out of nowhere.As if he could feel it, like something in him tightened when something in me wavered. The screen would light up with his name and I’d jump like I’d been caught doing someth

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