All Chapters of BOUND TO THE BLOOD KING: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The headlines had barely cooled.Donna of New York Rejects Reconciliation with the DeMarcos.Power Shift or War Brewing Between Underworld and Senate Elite?Bianca ignored every article, every whisper. But in politics and blood, silence was never safe.Three mornings later, she found Matteo standing by the glass wall of their penthouse, reading a confidential dossier. His jaw was tight, eyes shadowed with fury.“What happened?” she asked.He handed her the file. Inside were surveillance photos, financial audits, and a subpoena. Her front company Langston Imports was under federal review. At the signature line: Senator DeMarco.Bianca’s expression didn’t change, but her pulse thudded once, hard. “He’s digging.”“DeMarco doesn’t dig,” Matteo said darkly. “He burns.”Bianca closed the file and met his gaze. “Then he’s chosen war.”He studied her face for a long moment. “Your stepmother’s behind this.”“Of course she is.” Her voice was nice. “She couldn’t win with guilt, so she’s using th

The silence that followed victory was never peace, only the echo of what it cost.Bianca woke before dawn, the city’s hum distant through the penthouse windows. Matteo was asleep beside her, his arm heavy across her waist, his breathing even. The night before had been too calm too quiet after too much fire.And yet, the stillness pressed against her skull like a vice.She slipped from the bed, crossed the room, and stood by the window. The skyline glowed faintly beneath a bruised sky. Below, New York was waking to its next scandal, its next war. But Bianca’s war was inside her now, and it had no ceasefire.Her reflection caught her off guard. For a second, she didn’t recognize herself, the faint scar at her temple, the hollows under her eyes, the woman who’d burned dynasties but couldn’t silence her ghosts.Then she heard it soft, almost imagined.“You think you’re clean, little dove?”Her pulse stopped.The voice slithered through the air like smoke. She turned sharply into nothing b

The celebration had barely ended when the fractures began to show.Power, Bianca had learned, didn’t collapse with explosions; it cracked quietly first, along the edges of loyalty.The Romano Foundation had been declared a triumph of unity between commerce, politics, and underworld balance. Cameras called her “the most powerful woman in America.” But inside the marble corridors of the empire, men with soft smiles and sharp knives were already whispering her downfall.Among them was one man who knew her best after Matteo “Luca Vitale.’Matteo froze as the traitor stepped from the shadows.Not a rival don. Not a mercenary.Luca.His hair was shorter, his eyes older, but the voice rough and shaking was the same.Luca had once sworn loyalty with his blood. He’d taken a bullet for Matteo in Milan, had stood beside Bianca through her rise to power. But envy has a slow poison it doesn’t kill all at once. It drips.And Luca had been drinking from that cup for months.In a dim wine cellar bene

The city never slept, only shifted its mask.Rain-slicked streets gleamed under the sodium glow of midnight lamps as Bianca’s spy slipped through the narrow alleys of the Lower East Side. The air reeked of oil, smoke, and betrayal. Inside a forgotten warehouse, where iron beams dripped with condensation and the shadows whispered secrets, Luca Vitale held his war council.From her hidden perch in the rafters, the spy Rosa, thin as wire and twice as sharp listened. She had served Bianca since the early days of blood and ambition, back when loyalty was forged through hunger and fear. Now, she crouched in silence, every muscle coiled, her breath shallow.Below, Luca’s voice echoed through the cavernous space smooth, almost charming. “The Ashfords are losing their edge. Matteo is blind to the cracks, and Bianca she’s ruled too long by fear of ghosts.”A ripple of laughter followed. The men gathered around him wore the colors of minor families discarded pawns given new purpose. They believe

The wind from the Tyrrhenian Sea carried the scent of salt and burning myrrh.Torches lined the courtyard of the Romano ancestral estate, casting trembling halos of gold on the ancient stone. It was a place that had once crowned conquerors and buried traitors high on the Sicilian cliffs, where the ocean met fire and blood. Tonight, it will bear witness again.Bianca stood barefoot before the long bed of glowing coals, her white ceremonial gown trailing in the dust. Her fingers brushed the hilt of Matteo’s dagger, his mother’s crest etched into its blade. It was the symbol of her rite. The proof that she would walk through fire, not for forgiveness, but dominion.Matteo stood just behind the circle of elders, his dark suit unbuttoned, his face carved in shadow. He had tried to speak to her before the ceremony to tell her she didn’t have to do this but Bianca had silenced him with a look that made the air between them ache. Now, as the torches hissed in the wind, she didn’t glance his w