Semua Bab CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride : Bab 1 - Bab 6

~ANYA POV~“Yaya!”The shout cut through the bass-heavy music pounding inside CÉRRO Nightclub. I didn’t need to look up from the drink I was mixing to know it was Athena. Only she called me that.I glanced anyway. There she was, strutting across the bar like she owned it—blonde hair glowing under the neon lights, lips glossed to perfection, and that mischievous grin plastered across her face. The grin that meant trouble.“No,” I said flatly, sliding the cocktail across to the waiting customer.He didn’t take the drink right away. His eyes were too busy glued to my chest. Typical.“Would you like anything else, sir?” I asked, forcing my voice into customer-service-sweetness.“Yeah,” he yelled over the music, leaning way too close. “Your number.” I clenched my jaw. Great. Another drunk who thought spitting on me while shouting counted as flirting.He wasn’t ugly—late twenties, maybe, with dirty-blonde hair and a smirk that screamed “I’ve watched Wolf of Wall Street too many times.” But

~ANYA POV~I woke up to blinding light. Not “morning sun peeking through curtains” light. No……this was middle-of-the-day, ‘you have-overslept-your-life-away’ light.The wall clock confirmed it: 12:30 p.m.So much for church in the morning. I rolled over with a groan, deciding I’d just go by five in the evening instead. Church was always open, and honestly, I wanted the place to myself.Last night replayed in my head like a movie on loop. The men. The blue-eyed stranger. The cab pulled up just in time. Everything could’ve gone horribly wrong if that ride hadn’t shown up.The thought made my chest tighten.For two years, Athena and I had walked that same road to the bus stop, drunk on laughter, heels clicking, sometimes even singing. Not once had we run into anything like ‘that’.I dragged myself out of bed, trudged down the short hallway, and locked myself in the bathroom.When I first joined Athena in London, she’d been living in a cramped one-bedroom. After a month, she got me a spot

~ANYA’S POV~The ride back to our apartment was suffocating, like sitting in a vacuum with no air. Athena, for once, had nothing to say: no sarcastic remarks, no dramatic commentary. Just silence.Two hours slipped by after we got home. We ate our tacos in robotic bites, neither of us tasting the food, then disappeared into our separate rooms without a word.Now it was quarter past eight. My body was drained, but sleep refused to come. My mind buzzed like a hive that wouldn’t quiet. I’d tried putting on a movie, hoping the noise would drown out the storm in my chest, but every scene blurred until the screen may as well have been blank.With a frustrated huff, I threw off the covers and considered stomping into Athena’s room. She always let me crawl into her bed when the world felt too heavy. I was halfway off the mattress when a soft knock rattled the door.My pulse stuttered. Athena never knocked. She only barged in like she owned the place—unless she needed me. Unless she was sca