Lahat ng Kabanata ng UNDER THE DON’S PROTECTION: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER THE AUCTIONZara’s POVThe atoll is smaller than it used to be.
Not literally—the land hasn’t shrunk, the lagoon hasn’t filled in—but perception does that over time. What once felt like an endless private world now registers as a modest patch of coral and sand, one dot among thousands in satellite maps that schoolchildren zoom past without a second thought. I’m sixty-one. The house has been renovated twice since my mother’s time: solar panels replaced the old thatch roofs, desalination units hum quietly behind the garden, and the medical suite is now a full clinic with tele-link capability to three continents. Still, the bones of the place remain the same. The low stone wall where decisions were made still stands. The frangipani tree—now ancient, trunk thick as three people—still drops petals like pale confetti across the graves.Grandma Elena passed seven years ago. Quietly, at home, surrounded by family. She’d been fading for months—memory slipping in gentle

TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER THE AUCTIONArchivist’s Log – Entry 2479 (Sienna’s great-granddaughter, Elara)The atoll is a name on maps now.
Not even a prominent one just coordinates in a vast digital atlas of protected marine zones, flagged as “historical ecological site, restricted access.” Sea levels have claimed another meter since my grandmother’s time. The beach where Luca once ran at dawn is narrower, the lagoon shallower in places, deeper in others. Storms come harder and more often, but the house endures retro-fitted with adaptive composites, wave-dampening foundations, solar skin that shifts color with the light. It looks almost the same from afar: white walls, wide eaves, the deck still jutting toward the water like an open hand.No one lives here full-time anymore.
The trust rotates caretakers marine ecologists, historians, ethicists who spend months at a stretch maintaining the site, cataloging, teaching small groups of students who come by research vessel. They call it “the M

Elara’s POVGeneva at midnight in late winter is a city of polished stone and hidden edges.
The Cours de Rive district gleams under discreet streetlamps—luxury boutiques shuttered, high-end cars parked like sleeping predators, the lake a black mirror beyond the quay. Marco Bellini’s penthouse occupies the top two floors of a discreet glass-and-steel tower: floor-to-ceiling windows tinted against prying eyes, private elevator with biometric palm scan, two guards on rotation in the lobby, another two inside the residence. Clean. Expensive. Predictable.Our window was the service entrance—delivery bay at the rear, used for catering and maintenance. Viktor’s team had sourced legitimate credentials: a late-night florist van, white lilies in black wrapping (Bellini’s favorite, according to the dossier), driver uniform pressed and authentic. I rode in the back with the flowers, crouched low behind crates, comms earpiece humming soft static.Viktor’s voice crackled once we were inside the loa

Elara’s POVThe executive—Dr. Tariq Al-Mansour—woke up in a safe house outside Amman forty-eight hours after the Riyadh extraction.
No restraints. No guards at the door. Just a soft-lit room, IV drip already removed, a tray of dates and mint tea on the side table, and Sabine sitting in the corner chair reading a tablet like she’d been there for coffee, not a midnight raid.He blinked at the ceiling, then at her.
Voice hoarse, cracked from disuse: “Where…?”“Safe,” Sabine said without looking up. “Jordan. Your memory should be coming back in pieces. The toxin was slow. We reversed most of it. You’ll have gaps. They won’t fill.”Tariq pushed himself up on elbows. Winced.
“I remember the clinic. The injection. Layla Greco smiling like she was doing me a favor. Then… nothing.”Sabine finally met his eyes.
“She wasn’t doing you a favor. You were the proof-of-concept. A rival who blocked one of her family’s pharma deals last year. Memory wipe instead of murder. Cleaner. Deniable. Marketable

Elara’s POVThree months after the depot handoff, the world had already forgotten the name Layla Greco.
Not erased in some dramatic purge—simply sidelined. The family quietly moved her to a private estate in the hills above Taormina, Sicily. Official story: health retreat after a “minor neurological event.” Unofficial reality: the Greco elders had finally decided two centuries of grudge-holding was bad for business. She lived under soft house arrest—gardens, ocean view, personal physician, no devices with outbound capability. She could walk the grounds, read books, stare at the sea. She could not sell power she no longer possessed.Bellini vanished for good.
Last confirmed sighting: a grainy CCTV frame at Tangier port, boarding a ferry to Spain under a name that led nowhere. The market had turned cold. No buyer wanted a legacy protocol that came with instant regulatory heat and public shaming. The neurotoxin vector—once whispered about as the next deniable tool—became a cautionary tal