Lahat ng Kabanata ng FOR HER SAKE: Kabanata 131 - Kabanata 140

Mateo’s POVThe restaurant was too quiet for my comfort. The kind of quiet that was intentionally put there. It was a bid to make a place seem more expensive, rehearsed, and sterilized of emotion. A single lamp glowed in the middle of the table, cutting a neat amber circle of light between me and Vasquez.He was already there when I arrived, suit pressed, tie immaculate, glass of scotch sweating against his hand. The man had aged well, too well. If it weren’t for the faint scar that split the edge of his eyebrow, you wouldn’t believe he’d ever seen war. And even with that being there, the ladies had always managed to find him hotter. A drive to danger, I would guess. I tried to remember how he was as a younger child. Wild, of course. Brutally honest and crazily stubborn. I had been the nerdy, less annoying one to everyone else but him. He had always made it a note to complain to our parents about me always wanting to be around him. Our mother would say that it was simply because he

Leona’s POVThe thing about paranoia is that it doesn’t tap you on the shoulder.It creeps in quietly, like smoke under a locked door, slow, invisible, and almost impossible to chase out once it’s there.Leona had lived with that feeling long enough to name it. Tonight, it was sitting in the passenger seat, whispering, He’s still behind you.She caught the reflection in her rearview mirror again, the same dark sedan, same busted headlight, same patient distance.For the third time in ten minutes.Even though she knew who he was now, it didn’t make her feel less creeped out. After her father had passed, she had gone to his office to pack his things and find out more about what happened and nobody had said shit. Just the normal, ‘sorry for your condolences that was beginning to piss her off. Her best bet was that they had been paid off for that. It was crazy the things money could do. So even though he had poised as someone warning her last night, heaven knows what he would’ve done ins

Third Person’s POVGunfire has a rhythm. You learn it when you’ve lived long enough on the wrong side of the war front.The first burst was close, too close to have been anything but his face.Gabriel was out of bed before his brain had even caught up. One hand grabbed his gun, the other swept his phone off the nightstand. The half-cracked window glowed faintly from the streetlight outside, smoke already curling past the blinds.He crouched low, peeked through. Two men. One crouched behind a sedan, the other at the corner of the alley. Testing range. Not aiming to kill him, more to just warn him. It was crazy to him how much they were doing to just scare him away. He thought about Leona for a second and wondered if she was alright. If these fuckers were here, were they there too? He needed to wrap this up as fast as possible and check on her pretty ass.“Cute,” he muttered, an image of her face in his face popping up in his head.He slipped on his jacket, moved fast, silent. By the t

Gabriel’s POVThe knock came just after nine, two short taps, one long. The rhythm was familiar enough to make me smile before I even opened the door.Leona Vega stood there in her usual brand of chaos: messy bun barely hanging on, hoodie two sizes too big, and a look that said she hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours but refused to admit it. In her hand was a flash drive and a coffee cup that probably wasn’t for me.“You really need to stop showing up like you live here,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.She raised an eyebrow, deadpan. “I need your stronger decryption drive.”“Sure you do.” I stepped aside, letting her in. “Just admit it, you missed me. After all your bawling when I left for the office the other day? I’m hurt.”She rolled her eyes, brushing past me. “You’re confusing ‘tolerating your presence’ with affection again.”“Same thing, different phrasing.”Her mouth twitched like she was fighting a smile. She didn’t win.The living room looked the way it always did, with

Amelia’s POVThe city was louder than usual these days. Every sound, the noise of an engine’s growl, a distant siren, a slammed door at a distance felt like a warning wrapped in the tiny commotion. I’d stopped sleeping properly. My office had become my bedroom, my phone, my alarm, the little constant texts from Kelvin, and my paranoia, the only thing that kept me company.By the third night of back-to-back meetings, my body felt hollow. The press couldn’t get enough of me, “the fearless CEO,” “the woman taking on the empire,” “the phoenix of the Vasquez legacy.” Beautiful lies dressed up in headlines. But beneath it, I could feel the ground shifting. Someone was waiting for me to slip and I knew that the moment I did, I would not be able to get back up.I had just kicked off my heels and started eating instant noodles at my desk when the sound of keys in the door made me freeze. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe. The door opened, and there he was, Kelvin.He didn’t say anything at first.