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หน้าหลัก / Mafia / The Debt of the Widow / บทที่ 21 - บทที่ 30

บททั้งหมดของ The Debt of the Widow: บทที่ 21 - บทที่ 30

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CHAPTER 21

" Do not you dare die on me, Dante. Stay awake. Look at me!" Bianca shoved the cabin door shut, the wood moaning against the howling wind. Dante drooped against the gravestone domicile, his face the color of wet ash. Blood, dark and thick, pumped steadily from the jagged hole in his shoulder, staining the floorboards. " The tackle. Bianca, the nethermost cupboard," Dante rasped. His jaw creaked as he base his teeth, cold sweat pelleting on his forepart. She climbed across the bottom, knees sinking on the fortitude. She hauled out a black nylon bag, the zipper snagging doubly before it smelled into the air. A twisted needle. Fishing line. A bottle of high- evidence bourbon. " I've to go by," she said, her voice shaking. She smelled her lip until it bled." The pellet is still in there." " Just do it. Ahh! Fuck!" Dante’s head thunked back against the monuments as she poured the bourbon directly into the crack. The swish of alcohol hitting raw meat filled the small room. He dived fo
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CHAPTER 22

"Don't move, you two. Seriously, stay exactly where the hell you are."Sofia’s finger twitched on the trigger of the shotgun. The steel barrels glinted under the dim cabin light, centered right on the blood-soaked bandage on Dante’s shoulder. She looked like she’d crawled out of a storm—hair matted, tactical gear mud-stained, but her eyes were sharp with a manic, jagged edge."Sofia? What the fuck is this?" Bianca scrambled to pull the edges of her torn robe together, her skin still stinging from the rug burn. The heat of Dante’s body was still a heavy weight against her hip, but the air in the room had turned to ice."It's a correction, B. A total rewrite." Sofia stepped further into the cabin, her boots thudding on the floorboards. She didn't look at Bianca. She looked at Dante. "You thought you were so smart, didn't you, Butcher? Marrying the 'disgrace' of the family to get the Vane assets. Too bad you didn't check the plumbing."Dante didn't flinch. His jaw creaked as he ground hi
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CHAPTER 23

"Where the hell do you think you're going, Bianca?"The whisper didn't come from Dante. It was the wind. It hissed through the hemlocks, biting at my bare ankles as I slipped through the cabin’s back window. The wood of the sill scraped my hip. I dropped onto the frozen mud with a wet thud, my chest heaving.The estate was a graveyard of smoke and dying embers. Dante was dead to the world, buried under the weight of a bourbon-soaked sleep and a shoulder that smelled of infection and gunpowder. I didn't look back. I couldn't.I ran.The mud sucked at my shoes, trying to pull me back into the dark. Every snap of a twig sounded like a gunshot. My lungs burned, the cold air scraping my throat like steel wool. I had to reach the North Gate. The Judge promised a way out. He promised a clean slate. No more Butcher. No more blood-soaked ivory dresses."Almost there," I wheezed, my fingers fumbling with the heavy latch of the perimeter gate.The iron was freezing, sticking to my skin. I hauled
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CHAPTER 24

"Sign the papers, Bianca. Stop making this difficult."The Judge shoved a stack of vellum across the cold slate desk. Each page was topped with the Vane crest, but the ink was a dark, crusty brown. Dried blood. The "Blood Ledger" wasn't just a record of debts; it was a lineage of stolen power."I'm not signing shit until you tell me why Arthur is in a cage," Bianca snapped. She stood in the center of the Judge’s reinforced study, the air smelling of ozone and old dust. Her fingers trembled, hidden in the folds of her ruined robe."Arthur was a placeholder. A janitor for a throne he couldn't sit on." The Judge stood, his tall frame casting a shadow that swallowed the desk. He walked around the perimeter, his footsteps silent on the stone. "You aren't a wolfless mistake, Bianca. You’re a dormant weapon. The Vane empire doesn't belong to the men who gamble it away. It belongs to the bloodline that started it. My bloodline.""You're lying. You're just another psycho trying to grab a title
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CHAPTER 25

"Get up, Dante. A King doesn't stay on his knees for long, even in front of a Judge."The Judge’s voice lacked warmth. He stood behind the massive slate desk, tapping the silver ritual blade against his palm. The rhythmic tink, tink, tink was the only sound in the suffocating room. Dante stood slowly, his joints popping. His face remained a mask of bruised stone."The girl is the key, but the key needs a lock," the Judge continued. "She’s the heir. That makes her the most valuable piece of meat in this city. You want the Eastside? Fine. But I want her broken in. I want her to know who her real master is before we bleed her for the ledger."Dante didn't look at the Judge. He looked at Bianca. He moved toward her, his boots heavy and deliberate on the stone floor. He grabbed her by the arm, his fingers digging into the muscle, and hauled her toward the desk."You want a show, Judge?" Dante rasped. His voice was a gutteral wreck. "You want to see how a Vane handles his property?""Dante,
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CHAPTER 26

"Duck! Move your ass, Bianca!"Dante shoved her shoulder, his palm slick with a mixture of sweat and the blood seeping through his bandages. Lead tore into the walnut paneling of the Judge’s study. Splinters hissed through the air like shrapnel."I'm moving! Fuck!" Bianca gripped the Blood Ledger against her ribs. The heavy leather was warm, absorbing the moisture from her palms.They scrambled through the narrow gap in the masonry, a hidden vein in the house that smelled of lime and ancient dust. Behind them, the roar of the Judge’s security detail echoed. Boots thudded on stone. Voices barked orders. Dante’s breathing was a jagged, wet rasp. He looked like a corpse held together by sheer spite, his face grey, his eyes hollowed out."This way. Down the service shaft." Dante kicked a rusted iron grate. It groaned and gave way, clattering into a dark pit.They dropped. The impact jarred Bianca’s teeth. They were in the Underbelly now. It was a labyrinth built by the old cartels, a damp
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CHAPTER 27

"Put that thing away, Dante. The clicking is driving me insane."The metal slide of the handgun snapped forward. Dante didn't look up from the oily rag. He sat on a rusted equipment crate, his shoulders hunched, the weak beam of the flashlight casting a jagged shadow of his profile against the weeping concrete wall. The Underbelly breathed around them, a heavy, humid draft that smelled of dead air and wet stone."Safety's on, Bianca. Relax." He wiped a smear of carbon from the barrel. His movements were steady. Robotic. The same hands that held the pen twenty years ago. The same hands that signed Elara Vane into a grave.The blue light of the Blood Ledger pulsed against the grit on the floor. The name on the screen stayed burned into the backs of the eyelids. Elara Vane. Executed. Signature: D. Vane. The man cleaning his pistol three feet away was a walking tombstone.Bianca stood up. Her legs were shaky, but a different kind of heat was crawling up her spine now. It wasn't fear. It w
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CHAPTER 28

"Key's not working, Dante. Move."Bianca shoved him aside, her shoulder hitting his bruised chest. The North Woods air bit at her skin, smelling of pine needles and wet rot. Dante grunted, a hand clamping over his leaking bandage, but he stepped back. She didn't look at the keypad. She pressed her thumb to the scanner.The heavy iron hatch hissed. Hydraulics groaned, spitting out decades of stale, canned air. It was a fallout shelter, a concrete tomb buried under three tons of dirt and granite."Stay behind me," Dante rasped. He drew his sidearm, the metal dull in the grey morning light."Like hell." Bianca stepped into the dark. "My blood opened the door. I’m going first."The stairs were steep, slick with condensation. At the bottom, a fluorescent light flickered, humming with a high pitched buzz that set her teeth on edge. The air down here was different. It didn't smell like the Underbelly's rot. It smelled like bleach and hospital rooms.They rounded the corner into the main cham
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CHAPTER 29

"Check his pulse later, Dante! Get your head down!"Bianca lunged over a fallen server rack, the metal biting into her palms. A spray of plaster choked the air as a bullet shattered the concrete pillar inches from her skull. The bunker was a chaos of strobe light flashes and the deafening, rhythmic hammer of suppressed rifles."I’m pinned!" Dante spat. He punched a fresh mag into his pistol, his movements jagged and forced. Blood from his thigh wound was painting the white linoleum a sickening, glossy crimson. "The glass, Bianca! Protect the glass!"Elara sat behind the reinforced panes, her vacant eyes reflecting the muzzle flashes like a spectator at a movie. She didn't blink.Bianca didn't look at her mother. She didn't look at the mercenaries swarming the upper catwalk. Her hands were already on the Blood Ledger, the screen glowing a toxic neon blue. Her thumb pressed into the scanner. The sharp prick of the needle was a needle of clarity."Accessing system architecture," she mutt
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CHAPTER 30

"Does it taste like blood, Dante? Or just cold iron?"Bianca stood by the kitchenette counter, her fingers curled around a small glass vial hidden in the palm of her hand. The safe house smelled of stale cigarettes and the copper tang of Dante’s open wounds. Rain hammered the corrugated roof, a relentless drumming that drowned out the quiet ticking of the wall clock.Dante didn't look up from the topographical maps spread across the scarred oak table. He grunted, his pen scratching a jagged path across the North Woods border. "It tastes like victory, Bianca. Drink your bourbon."He reached for his glass, his knuckles swollen and bruised. He took a heavy swallow, the amber liquid catching the light of the flickering overhead bulb.Bianca moved. It was a quick, silent tremor of her wrist. The clear liquid from the vial hissed into his second glass as she poured the refill. She watched the poison vanish, a invisible death settling into the oak aged spirit."You did good back there," Dant
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