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Accueil / Romance / CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride / Chapitre 121 - Chapitre 130

Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 121 - Chapitre 130

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121

THE MORNING AFTER~ANYA POV~I wake to sunlight and panic.For a second, I don't know where I am. Then it all rushes back, the stabbing, the blood, the escape.I am on a bus. We have stopped. I sit up, looking around wildly. My hand goes to my stomach instinctively."Lagos," the bus driver calls out. "Twenty-minute stop."Lagos in Portugal. We made it across the border. I am out of Spain.I stumble off the bus on shaking legs. The bus station here is even smaller than Málaga's. Just a parking lot with a small building.I need to think. I need to plan. But first—I need to ditch Marco's phone. If César lives (and he will, because monsters don't die), he will track everyone. Marco's phone will be traced.I walk to a trash can. I pull out the phone. One more call. Just one.I dial. It rings. And rings."Hola?" Diego's voice. It was rough, scared. "Dee, it's me.""ANYA! Where are you? Papa said.... Are you safe? Are you.....""I'm fine. I'm in Portugal. Diego, did you leave? Did Papa leav

Chapter 122

~ANYA POV~Lisbon doesn't smell like the expensive cedarwood and imported tobacco that used to cling to César's suits.It smells like saltwater, diesel fumes from the yellow trams, and the constant, salty scent of grilled sardines flowing through the narrow alleys of Alfama. It's a loud city, but honestly? I love the noise. The noise means people are alive. The noise means I'm just one of a million voices, buried in a place where no one knows my name."Maria, the floors in the lobby won't scrub themselves," Sister Teresa called out, her voice echoing through the clean hallway of the women's shelter."Coming, Sister!" I shouted back, grabbing my yellow rubber gloves.I am Maria now. Maria Santos. Weirdly enough, I'm getting used to it.When I first rolled into Lisbon on that cramped bus from Lagos, I was a mess. I was a girl in an oversized leather jacket with a bandaged hand and a heart that felt like it had been through a meat grinder. Father Miguel had sent me to his cousin, Sist

123

THE AWAKENING~César POV~(AFTER THE STABBING) Beep. Beep. Beep.The sound is a rhythmic insult. A machine telling me I'm still tethered to this world when I should be out burning it to the ground.I try to shift, and the world explodes into white-hot agony. The shard. I can still feel it. Not the glass itself, but the memory of her hand driving it into my side. The resistance of my own skin. The look in her eyes—not fear, but the cold, dead vacuum of a woman who had finally left the room.My Siren didn't just sing this time. She bit."Don Navarro, please, you must remain still," a voice says.I open my eyes. The light is aggressive. Sterile. I'm in a private medical suite. I can smell my own blood, iron-sharp and heavy, clashing with the lemon-scented floor wax.A man in white scrubs is hovering over me. He looks like a fly I want to swat. Dr. Sigel. He's adjusting the IV line in my arm—the arm where I gave her my blood only months ago."The kidney was damaged," the doctor says, hi

124

THE FLUTTER~ANYA POV~The sun was just rising, making the Tagus River look like shiny gold as I walked home from work.It was that strange, quiet time in Lisbon when the party people had gone to sleep and the fish sellers were starting to put ice on their fish.My back was killing me. Being five months pregnant and spending eight hours a day scrubbing the baseboards of a tech firm wasn't exactly what a doctor would call "optimal prenatal care," but it was my life. Maria Santos didn't have the luxury of maternity leave.I was crossing the street toward the shelter, my head down, counting the cobblestones to keep my mind off the dull ache in my hips, when I heard it.The slow, steady sound of a big engine.I didn't need to see it to know it was a large car. A strong one. My heart, which had been calm, suddenly raced like a trapped bird.I kept my eyes on my feet, my pace quickening. Don't look. Just keep walking, Maria.The car slowed down. I could feel the heat spreading out off the

125

THE DOG KENNELS(César POV)(ONE MONTH LATER )The scar on my side is a puckered, angry ridge of purple flesh. It itches when the weather is wet and burns when I move too fast. I don't cover it with expensive creams or seek out plastic surgeons to erase it. I want it there. I want to feel the ghost of her hand every time I button my shirt.It has been one month since she put me in the dirt. One month since my "Siren" turned into a shark.I walk toward the back of the estate, past the manicured roses that Anya once tended, toward the sound of barking. The Dobermans are restless today. They smell the rot in the air."Patrón," Iñigo says, falling into step beside me. He looks tired. "He hasn't eaten in two days. He's begging for water.""Begging is a start," I say.We reach the kennels. The smell is overpowering—raw meat, dog waste, and the copper tang of fear. In the furthest run, tucked away from the light, is a man slumped against the concrete.Marco.He thought he was a hero. He th

126

THE SECOND TRIMESTER~ANYA POV ~The air in Lisbon during the day feels different from the chilly night air I was used to. It is thick and smells like roasted coffee and the wet air from the trams.By my seventh month, the night-cleaning shifts became a physical impossibility. My center of gravity had shifted, and my lower back felt like it was being chewed by a dull saw every time I leaned over a scrub brush.So, Maria Santos found a new mask to wear: a waitress at Café do Mar, a bustling tourist trap near the Praça do Comércio.The uniform was simple—unforgiving black trousers that I had to leave unbuttoned at the top, a crisp white shirt that strained against my belly, and a green apron tied high. In the chaos of lunch rushes, I was invisible. To the Germans, I was "the girl with the espresso." To the Americans, I was "the one with the water." I was a moving part in a machine, and for once, anonymity was a luxury I enjoyed."Maria! Table four needs their galão!" my boss, Jorge,

127

THE DECAY~CESAR POV~SIX MONTH LATER The bright numbers on the big screens in my office used to feel like music. I could watch a green ticker move and imagine the busy activity of a whole continent—the transport of goods in the Mediterranean, the smooth transfer of information through my computers, and the growing wealth of Navarro.Now, the screens were nothing but a collection of jagged, red wounds."Patrón, the Valencia port authorities have frozen our primary loading dock. We're losing four hundred thousand euros an hour in stagnant cargo," Iñigo's voice came from the shadows by the door.I didn't turn around. I didn't even blink. I was staring at a high-resolution satellite image of a small village in the Pyrenees. A place where a woman matching her height had been spotted three days ago. It had turned out to be a dead end—a hiker with the wrong color hair."Let it freeze," I said. My voice was a dry rasp, the sound of wind over old bones."The board of directors is calling f

128

18 HOURS~ANYA POV~The lunch rush was a blur of clicking heels and the high-pitched whistle of the espresso machine. I was balancing a tray of three pastéis de nata and two double shots of coffee, my lower back feeling like it was being squeezed by a vice. Marcello was heavy today, riding low, his weight making every step an exercise in gauzy willpower.I was three weeks early, but I told myself I just needed to make it through the weekend. I needed that extra forty euros in tips.I reached for the edge of table six, and then, the world shook.It wasn't a sharp pain. It was a dull, heavy pop deep inside my pelvis. For a second, I thought I had just strained a muscle. Then I felt the warmth.A sudden, hot rush of liquid hit the floor, soaking through my sensible black trousers and splashing onto the worn tiles of the café.Clatter.The tray slipped. Porcelain shattered. Dark espresso bled into the puddle at my feet. The conversation in the café died instantly."Maria?" Jorge, my bos

129

THE GHOST OF MARBELLA~CESAR POV~(Twelve months.)Three hundred and sixty-five days since I felt the cold bite of glass in my side. Fifty-two weeks since the woman I branded as mine walked out into the night and became a ghost.I sat in my study, the only light coming from the bank of monitors that never slept. My empire was a hollow shell. I had liquidated three major shipping ports in the last month just to fund the private intelligence teams scouring the continent. I had spent fifty million euros to find a woman who was probably living on bread and water, and I had nothing to show for it but a stack of digital dead ends.I knew she was here. Somewhere.My teams had tracked her prenatal records up to the fifth month—a clinic in Seville, a midwife in Faro. She had been careful, but she had been visible. And then, at the five-month mark, the trail had gone cold. Flat. As if she and my heir had simply dissolved into the Atlantic air.The door creaked open. I didn't reach for my gun

130

THE FIRST MONTH~ANYA POV~They don't tell you that motherhood, at least in the beginning, is just a long, hallucination-inducing blur of bone-deep exhaustion.I'd been back in my tiny attic room for three days, and honestly, I felt more like a ghost than a woman. Marcello was barely a week old, and he seemed to have one setting: screaming. He cried when he was hungry, he cried when he was wet, and sometimes, he just cried because the air in the room felt too still.I hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. My hair was a matted knot at the base of my neck, my shirt was stained with leaked milk, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw the ceiling of that clinic spinning."Please, Marcello," I whispered, my voice cracking as I swayed back and forth in the middle of the room. "Just for twenty minutes. Let Mommy close her eyes."He didn't listen. He just turned a deeper shade of red and let out a shriek that felt like it was drilling into my skull. I sank onto the floor, squeezing him to my

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