Lahat ng Kabanata ng Mafia’s Feud : Love & Betrayal : Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

She rose and crossed the room, pacing like a caged bird. Her bare feet whispered against the cool marble floor as her thoughts twisted tighter and tighter. She wanted to scream, to burst into the dining hall and throw their words back in their faces. To tell her father she was not a pawn to be traded or a wound to be avenged. She was his daughter, flesh of his flesh, with a heart and will of her own.But she didn’t.Because she knew what it would earn her, not freedom, but chains. Tighter walls. More guards shadowing her steps. They would turn her into a prisoner within her own home, all under the guise of protection.She pressed her palm flat against the windowpane, staring out at the gardens below. The night air shimmered with cicadas and the faint perfume of orange blossoms, scents that had always comforted her. Tonight they felt like a mockery, the world outside so alive, while she suffocated within.Her reflection in the glass stared back at her, pale, lips tight, eyes too wide.

The streets felt different after Tatiana vanished.Angelo moved like a shadow among shadows, but his breath carried fire, his pulse a war drum inside his chest. Every corner he turned, every whisper of boots on stone, he expected her to reappear, that sharp smile, those eyes that could slice straight through him.Instead, he was alone.He found himself drifting without thought, past alleys stinking of oil and smoke, past shuttered windows that hid the kind of men Giovanni wanted him to root out. He wasn’t seeing them. He was seeing her.Tatiana’s words burned deeper than any knife.“Just like I nearly did.”“She’ll die for you, Angelo.”He dragged a hand through his hair, gripping until his scalp stung. Damn her. Damn the way she could still twist his thoughts. She had always been sharper than anyone gave her credit for, born of iron hands and colder nights, her softness reserved only for him. And he had thrown it all away when he had left, no explanations, no promises. He couldn’t af

The flashing lights, the pulse of the music, the sudden chaos when those men cornered her. She remembered the fear, the certainty that she wouldn’t walk out of that room alive. And then him.The way he’d stepped into the fight, precise and brutal, taking down men twice his size as if it were second nature. Yes, there had been danger in him, sharp and merciless, like a blade drawn without hesitation. But there had also been control. Purpose. He hadn’t lost himself to violence; he’d wielded it like a weapon, clean and efficient.And then afterward, when the noise had died down, when it was just the two of them, something else had broken through the cracks.She remembered his eyes dark, steady, and startlingly clear. Not the eyes of a reckless monster. Not the eyes of the ruthless heir her friends described.They were the eyes of someone who had seen too much, carried too much, and yet… in that moment, he had looked only at her.Lucy closed her eyes, heat rushing to her cheeks at the mem

The estate had never felt smaller.Lucy had grown up within its high walls, roaming marble halls and sprawling gardens with the ease of someone who thought she belonged. But now, with Vince’s men at every corner, their eyes sweeping over her like she was glass about to crack, the place felt more like a prison than home.She couldn’t even lean out her window without seeing one of them standing by the gate, arms folded, pretending not to be watching her.It gnawed at her, this constant supervision.When she went to the library, they followed at a distance.When she lingered in the garden, they lingered too.When she whispered with Selene over the phone, she swore she saw shadows shift in the hall outside her room.Vince had promised she would never be left unprotected again.But to Lucy, the word unprotected had started to sound a lot like trapped.And yet amid that suffocating watchfulness, she noticed something else.At first, it was nothing more than a feeling.A prickle at the back

She saw the boy who once told Tatiana he wanted to breathe without chains.But as quickly as it came, it was gone.His hand clenched at his side, as though the weight of her words was something physical, something he had to wrestle down.When he finally spoke, his voice was raw.“You don’t understand what you’re standing in the middle of, Lucy. You think this is about us? It isn’t. It’s bigger. Blood and power and old debts, they’ll drown you if you keep walking into it.”“Then pull me out.” Her words shocked even herself, but once spoken, she couldn’t take them back. Her eyes burned with unshed tears as she looked at him. “If you care so much about protecting me, then stop telling me what not to do. Stop shadowing me like a ghost. Be here. Or go. But don’t keep me trapped between fear and silence.”The silence that followed was unbearable.She could hear the faint bustle of the square again, distant but approaching. Vince’s men would realize she was gone. Her friends would start aski