Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 281 - Chapitre 290

IreneAlive.The word echoed in the dark apartment, louder than the distant traffic, louder than the frantic beat of my own heart. Camilla wasn’t dead, and my chest ached for him in a way I couldn’t even name… like watching someone realize they had been surviving inside the wrong version of their own life for years.He hadn’t just lost her; he had lost certainty.The Galantes were powerful, but Camilla’s mother had been something else entirely in that moment—just a woman refusing to let her daughter be found. I understood his walls now, understood why they existed at all, but understanding didn’t stop the dread crawling up my spine.A ghost is a closed ending. A ghost can be mourned, processed, laid to rest.But a living woman… gone, hidden, still existing somewhere in the world—that wasn’t grief. That was an interruption. A story that could restart at any second.She could walk into his clinic tomorrow, she could say his name like nothing had ended, and everything I had built besid

RomeoI kissed her again, slower this time. Deeper.My hands moved with the practiced, meticulous precision of a surgeon, but driven by the feral devotion of a man possessed. I traced the edge of the black lace against her chest, my knuckles brushing the sensitive skin swelling above it. She arched her back into my touch, a soft, breathless moan escaping her throat.The sound went straight to my head, intoxicating and lethal.I unhooked the front clasp of her bralette with a simple flick of my fingers, pushing the lace aside. I lowered my head, my lips trailing down the center of her chest. I mapped the architecture of her ribs with my tongue, savoring the taste of her skin, before my mouth finally closed over her peak.“Romeo!” she cried out, her back bowing off the mattress.I laved the tight bud, sucking hard, using my teeth to graze the sensitive nerve endings. I knew the human anatomy perfectly. I knew exactly how the nervous system functioned, how the synapses fired, how pleasur

IreneThe cold woke me up.Not a sudden drop in temperature, but the distinct, hollow absence of the heat that had anchored me to the mattress all night.I opened my eyes slowly. Pale gray morning light filtered through the terrace windows, carving long shadows across the bedroom floor. The apartment was completely silent.No heavy breathing.No shifting weight beside me.Nothing.I turned my head.The space next to me was empty. The sheets were tangled, still marked with the faint imprint of his body, but the warmth was already fading into cold linen.I sat up slowly, pulling the duvet tighter around my bare shoulders. Every muscle in my body ached with every movement, a physical receipt of the absolute devastation he had dragged me through only hours earlier.My gaze drifted toward the bedroom door.His ruined shirt was gone from the floor.The watch he had discarded in the hallway was missing too.I slid out of bed, my bare feet meeting the cold hardwood, and walked quietly into th

Irene Coffee was supposed to be a tactical reset. I sat in the corner booth of a small, unremarkable café three blocks away from the Galante estate. The Americano in front of me was entirely black, entirely bitter, and entirely untouched. It was my day off. A scheduled twenty-four-hour mandatory rest period that Dante had forced onto my roster after catching me staring blankly at a surveillance monitor for ten uninterrupted minutes the day before. But distance from the control room didn’t equal peace. My brain was still trapped in the same repeating loop it had been running for a week. The heavy weight of his body pinning me down. The cold, clinical tone of his voice on the phone. The absolute, suffocating silence of the aftermath. I rubbed my temples, closing my eyes against the dull throb of a migraine. The café was relatively empty. Just the hiss of the espresso machine and the low murmur of rain against the glass. Then, the chair across from me scraped violently ag

IreneThe bell above the café door violently jingled as I shoved it open.The sky had completely opened up, unleashing a steady, freezing downpour that instantly soaked through my thin sweater. I blinked against the rain, scanning the gray, crowded sidewalk.A charcoal overcoat. Tall. Moving with an infuriatingly relaxed stride.He was half a block away, slipping through the sea of umbrellas with the effortless grace of a ghost. I didn’t hesitate. I tightened my grip on my bag and broke into a sprint, my boots splashing heavily against the flooded pavement.“Hey!” I yelled over the sound of the traffic.He didn’t stop. He didn’t even flinch. He just kept walking at that smooth, leisurely pace, completely unbothered by the rain ruining what was undoubtedly a five-thousand-dollar bespoke coat.I caught up to him just as he reached the corner of 5th Avenue. I stepped directly into his path, forcing him to halt.“You don’t get to drop my name like a live grenade and just walk away,” I sna