Blood Bound Vows의 모든 챕터: 챕터 11 - 챕터 20

The morning light cut through the penthouse blinded in thin silver bars. It was too bright for the headache pounding behind my eyes. I was still half-asleep when my phone started to buzz — then buzzed again, and again, like a wasp trapped inside a jar. I groaned, and dragged it towards me, and blinked at the flood of notifications: news alerts, missed calls, and about fifty unread messages. For one dizzy second, I thought something terrible had happened — then I saw it. “THE CITY’S COLDEST CEO IN A SCANDAL: INTIMATE MOMENT WITH MAFIA HEIRESS SETS HIGH SOCIETY ABLAZE.” Beneath the headline was a photo. Dante’s hand was pressed to the small of my back. My lips parted mid-breath as he leaned down to whisper something in my ear during the gala’s final waltz. The flash of the cameras froze it at the worst possible second — his mouth a breath away from mine, and my eyes locked on his. It looked like a kiss. No — it looked real. My stomach twisted. Every gossip site had copied

The flight to Milan was brief and quiet, as I sat next to Dante it felt never-ending. He spent most of it glued to his tablet. His body was a portrait of distance and a master class in concentration. I just kept telling myself that I didn’t care that he hadn’t said a thing since we boarded. I had been telling myself a lot of bad things lately. After the airport, the car ride was even quieter. Milan slipped by in silver streaks of rain, glass storefronts and the faint aroma of espresso wafted off coffee shops. I leaned my forehead to the window, and pretended to admire its view. Dante spoke one time. It was a short interjection in Italian, taut, clipped, and authoritative. Those were the type of voices people obeyed without realizing the reason for doing so. By the time we reached the hotel, I was too tired to fight over the details. But the look the concierge gave us, we glanced back and forth between the two of us, and it was enough to make me jump off my seat. She was polite;

The rooftop restaurant had the vibe of a different world — too calm, too refined, too far removed from the chaos that followed Dante everywhere. Milan glittered beneath us. Sleek towers, winding lights, wealth and power hummed through the city like a heartbeat. Up above the night stretched endlessly, soft, deceptive. Just one candle flickered between us, its flame tiny but steady in the wind. I watched the way that light painted gold over his razor-edged cheekbones; how it danced in his eyes, with the look that told me nothing of anything. He was impossibly composed, as ever. He sipped his wine like he wasn’t the most feared man in three countries. That he didn’t come close to strangling a man, two nights ago, for touching me. I picked the glass up and left it to swirl and, I held it in my hand, the crimson wine caught the light. “You’re quiet,” I said. “That’s unusual.” “Thinking,” he replied, a low, smooth voice. “About what?” He gazed at me over the rim of his glass, dark,

The air of the auditorium smelled like old wood and ambition. It was the sort of place where voices boomed too loudly and reputations were built through fifteen-minute rounds. I was seventeen and annoyed. I was focused and determined to beat every smug private-school heir who thought winning came with their tuition. Then Dante Romano entered the building. Back then he wasn’t Dante Romano— not yet. No empire. No shadows. No legendary reputation. Just a tall, too-calm, too-confident boy dressed in a pressed uniform as his dark hair hanged into his eyes and he walked like the entire room belonged to him and he was bored of ownership. Of course, I hated him from the get-go. Our schools were rivals — his, the elite, infuriatingly polished academy that dominated every league; mine, the equally fierce but less glamorous competitor intent on toppling them. The friction between our pair of teams was longstanding. Expected. Practically encouraged. But when his eyes locked onto mine across th

I had barely taken three steps when the world behind me erupted. Not a sound at first—just a pressure, a ripple in the air like the universe inhaled sharply. Then a roar spliced the morning apart, metallic and violent. It swallowed the street in a rush of fire.The shockwave hit me before my mind even formed the word bomb. It slammed into my back like a giant hand. It lifted me off my feet. The pavement raced toward me too fast. My palms scraped hard against concrete as I crashed down, and momentum threw me onto my side. My ears rang so loudly it felt like someone stuffed them with screaming static. I didn’t know which hurts more—the burn of the air or the terror that punched straight through my ribs. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The world was spinning, tilting, and blurring, and my eyes stung with dust and smoke. The scent hit me next—burning metal, gasoline, and rubber melted into something acrid and poisonous. Dante’s car—his new armoured black coupe was now a roaring infer