All Chapters of THE MAFIA'S PRICE: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The champagne flute felt like ice in my hand, a fragile prison of crystal and bubbles. Around me, the gala swirled in a symphony of forced laughter, the scent of expensive perfume, and the glint of diamonds that cost more than most people’s homes. My home. The Volkov estate. Tonight, it was just a backdrop for a transaction dressed up as a celebration.“Smile, krasavitsa,” my father’s voice was a low command in my ear, his hand a heavy weight on the small of my back. “The Ivanovs are watching. This alliance is everything.”Everything. The word tasted like ash. Everything meant my future, my body, my freedom, sold to secure a pipeline of drugs and weapons. My fiancé, Alexei Ivanov, was across the room, a handsome, hollow man with a predator’s smile. He raised his glass to me. I forced my lips to curve, a perfect, porcelain smile I’d perfected over twenty-two years.This was my destiny: to be a beautiful, silent asset. A Volkov bride.The string quartet began a waltz. Alexei approached,

Time lost all meaning in the penthouse. It was measured not in hours, but in the slow, agonizing beat of my own heart. I lay in the bed he’d assigned me, a room as opulent and cold as the rest of the place. Silk sheets, a view that could steal your breath, and a door I knew was locked from the outside.The scent of him was still on my skin. My body still hummed with the ghost of his touch, a traitorous echo of the pleasure he’d ripped from me. Shame burned hotter than any fever. I had come for him. On his fingers, against the glass, with the whole city as my witness. I had shattered.And a part of me… a dark, secret part… wanted to shatter again.“No,” I whispered into the silence, clenching my fists. He is your captor. Your enemy. I repeated it like a mantra, a prayer to a god I wasn’t sure was listening.When a sliver of gray dawn light finally pierced the horizon, I rose. My body ached, but my will was a sharp, cold blade. I would not be broken. I would not be his pet.The clothes

The city lights blinked like distant stars, indifferent to the storm gathering beneath them.For two days, an eerie calm had settled over the penthouse. Dante moved through the space like a ghost, present, watchful, but not touching. He took calls in hushed, urgent tones. Men in black suits came and went, their faces hard, their eyes scanning the perimeter. The air hummed with anticipation, like the moment before lightning splits the sky.And I… I existed in a state of suspended torment.Every time he entered the room, my pulse spiked. Every time his gaze lingered on my mouth, my back, the pulse in my throat, my skin burned. I hated him. I needed him. The contradiction was a knife twisting in my gut.He hadn’t touched me since that morning in the kitchen. No forced kisses. No brutal claims. Just glances that stripped me bare, and words that coiled around my mind like smoke.“Sleep well, Alessia?” he’d ask, sipping his coffee.“No,” I’d snap.“Pity,” he’d reply, a ghost of a smile on h

The days bled into one another until I lost track of whether it was Tuesday or Sunday. Time no longer mattered; only the rhythm Dante set mattered. Wake at dawn, black coffee he brewed too strong, then down to the bunker-level three where the air tasted of lead and ozone. The underground range had become our church, and Dante its unforgiving priest.He started me on the Sig Sauer P226 the morning after he’d cooked for me. Said the Beretta had been a warm-up; the Sig was the gun I would carry when it counted. I learned its weight in my sleep. I learned to strip it blindfolded while he timed me with the stopwatch on his phone, his voice a low growl in my ear when I fumbled the recoil spring. “Faster, principessa. Dead women don’t get second chances.”By the end of the first week I could reassemble it in nineteen seconds flat. He celebrated by bending me over the shooting bench and fucking me until my palms squealed against the rubber mat and the only word I remembered was his name.But

I could feel the moment stretching before I spoke, the air tight with expectation, with the quiet challenge in his eyes. In moments like this, hesitation was blood in the water. I had learned that long from Dante, long before this room, this war. Strategy was safer than fear; calculation steadier than emotion. I reminded myself of that as I leaned into the heat of him, into the knife-edge space where power decided who survived.Alessia didn’t flinch under his intense gaze, his body heat radiating into her space. She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was all strategy and no fear.“We don’t go anywhere near her. That’s too crude.”As the words left my mouth, I felt that familiar calm settle over me, the calm that always came when a plan took shape. Violence was easy. Anyone could threaten, kidnap, kill. This required finesse, patience, and cruelty wrapped in silk. The kind of cruelty that lingered.She tapped the screen, bringing up a photo of