All Chapters of He Wants Me Dead Or Alive : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

110 Chapters

After The Patriarch

Rosa POVI sat in my room for an hour after he left.The tea was gone. The mug was on my nightstand. The city was dark outside my window and I was still sitting on the edge of my bed with my hands in my lap, staring at nothing.I wasn't thinking about Don Navarro anymore. I had already picked apart every question, every look, every pause. I had already assessed the threats and filed them away. That part of my brain was done.The other part was not done.The other part was still running something else. Something that had started the moment I walked out of that dining room with my spine straight and my face composed and my hands shaking where no one could see them. I had sat across from a man who could end my family with a phone call and I had not broken. I had not flinched. I had not given him anything he could use against me.I had survived.And now, sitting here in the dark, I felt something I couldn't name. Not fear. Not relief. Something else. Something that made my chest tight and

Confessions

Rosa POVThree weeks of training and I was different.I could feel it in my body. The way I moved. The way I planted my feet. The way my punches landed harder and my kicks came faster and my breathing stayed steady when it used to get ragged. He had done that. He had taken me apart and put me back together and I was better now than I had ever been.Neither of us said it.That was the thing about the training. We didn't talk about why I was improving or who was responsible or what it meant. We just showed up every night at midnight and worked until we couldn't work anymore.Tonight was no different.We had been at it for an hour. Maybe longer. I had lost track. My arms ached. My legs were burning. There was sweat on my neck and my shirt was soaked through and I was breathing hard but I was still standing. That was new. A few weeks ago I would have been on the mat by now.He was across from me. Breathing hard too. His hair was wet. His shirt was dark with sweat. He looked at me with tha

Reasons

Rosa POVI did not sleep.I lay in bed with the lights off and the blankets up to my chin and my eyes open and I did not sleep. The ceiling was dark. The city was quiet. My brain was not quiet. My brain was a courtroom and I was the judge and the jury and the witness and I was putting myself on trial.I love you.Three words. Three little words that had no business meaning as much as they meant.I started the list at two in the morning.I wrote it on my phone, lying on my side, the screen too bright in the dark room. Seventeen reasons I could not love him.One. He was mafia. His family built on violence and control and things I did not want to know about.Two. My father had left. Love did not stay. Love walked out the door and did not come back.Three. The leverage. He held my family's future in a folder on his desk.Four. The control. He had locked me in this building for three days.Five. He made decisions for me without asking.Six. His world was dangerous. People who loved people

Locked Myself Out

Rosa POVI didn't mean to stay late.That's what I told myself on the walk back, my feet moving fast, my bag bouncing against my hip. I didn't mean to. Kylie had wanted coffee and I had wanted to say yes because I had been saying no for weeks and she was starting to get that look on her face. The worried one. The one that said she was about to start asking hard questions.So I said yes. And then coffee turned into sitting on the library steps. And sitting turned into talking. And talking turned into losing track of time.By the time I looked at my phone, it was four thirty.My window was four.I ran most of the way back. Not because I was scared of what Raffaele would say. Because I had told him I would be back by four and I wasn't and that felt like something. A crack in the routine. A small betrayal of the agreement we had silently made.I swiped my card at the elevator.Red.I swiped again.Red.I swiped a third time, slower, like maybe the card needed me to be more gentle. The lit

Locked Again

Rosa POVI told him I was going.That was the rule now. Not asking. Telling. I walked into his office at eleven in the morning and said, "I'm getting coffee with Mateo on campus."He looked up from his laptop. His face didn't change. But something in his eyes shifted. Just a little. Just enough for me to notice."Where?""The café on Grant. The one near the law library.""What time?""One o'clock. I'll be back by two."He nodded. Once. "Okay."That was it. No argument. No questions about why Mateo or why coffee or why today. Just okay.I should have felt relieved. Instead I felt uneasy. Because he said okay too fast. Like he already knew something I didn't.Mateo was already there when I arrived.He was sitting at a table by the window, two coffees in front of him, his phone in his hand. He looked up when I walked in and smiled. That old familiar smile. The one that used to make my stomach flip.It didn't flip now. That was the thing I kept noticing. Every time I saw him, I waited for

What He Knows

Raffaele POVShe sat down across from me.Not on the couch. Not on the chair by the window. Across from me. At the table. Her knees pointed at mine. Her hands flat on the wood. She looked at me like she was getting ready for a fight.I told her everything.Not about the sealed birth record. Not about the Moretti heir confirmation. That would come later. That was a bomb I wasn't ready to drop yet. But I told her the rest. The inconsistencies. The things that didn't add up."His records are sealed," I said. "Not hidden. Sealed. There's a difference. Hidden means someone is trying to keep a secret. Sealed means someone with authority decided the public shouldn't have access. That takes pull. That takes someone asking a judge for a favor."She blinked. "A judge.""Yes.""Mateo knows a judge?""Mateo's family might."She sat with that. I watched her face. The way her eyes moved. The way her jaw tightened. She looked like she was taking each piece of information and turning it over in her h

Want Me

Rosa POVI lasted four hours.Four hours in my room, sitting on my bed, staring at the wall. Four hours of thinking about Mateo. About the sealed records. About the things Mateo knew that he shouldn't have known. About the way he had looked at me that afternoon, warm and easy, like nothing was wrong.Four hours of feeling the walls close in.At midnight I got up.I didn't knock. I didn't hesitate. I walked down the hallway and opened his door and walked in.He was sitting up in bed, reading. His glasses were on. The lamp was on. He looked at me over the top of the book and his face did that thing where he took me in all at once. My clothes. My face. My hands shaking at my sides."Rosa.""This is still the deal."He set the book down. Took his glasses off. "Okay.""I'm angry. About Mateo. About being locked in. About the information you kept from me. About all of it.""I know.""I want you to do something about it."He looked at me for a moment. His face was calm but his eyes were not.

What To Say

Rosa POVThe day was quiet and I didn't know what to do with that.I did my coursework at the kitchen table with my laptop open and my notes spread out and a mug of tea that went cold twice because I kept forgetting to drink it. He worked in his office with the door open and I could hear him on the phone sometimes, his voice low and even, speaking Italian to whoever was on the other end. We ate lunch together at one, pasta from the restaurant downstairs that came in white boxes with the logo on the side, and we sat across from each other and ate without saying much and the only sound was the scrape of forks on plates.I watched him while I ate. He didn't notice me watching because he was looking at his food, his jaw moving as he chewed, his hand steady on his fork. He looked tired. Not the kind of tired that came from staying up late, but the kind of tired that came from carrying something heavy for a long time. I had seen that kind of tired before. I saw it in the mirror sometimes.I

Quiet

Raffaele POVShe came to me late, not angry this time, just there, and I heard the door open before I saw her because I wasn't sleeping, I was lying in the dark with my eyes open thinking about her, thinking about the way she had looked at me across the table when she asked if I was afraid, thinking about the way she had said I'm not promising to make it easy like she was giving me a gift and a warning at the same time.She stood in my doorway with the light from the hallway behind her and she didn't say anything, she just stood there in one of my shirts with her hair loose and her feet bare and her face quiet in a way I hadn't seen before. No anger, no armor, no deal framing or terms invoked, just her, just Rosa, standing in my doorway in the middle of the night because she wanted to be here.I got out of bed and crossed to her and I didn't say anything either because there was nothing to say. We had already said the hard things earlier and the easy things could wait and right now th

Maybe The Winner Gets It All

Rosa POVThe lockdown lifted at six in the morning and I walked out of the building with my bag over my shoulder and Raffaele beside me and the sun coming up over the city and I didn't look back. I had been inside for three days, three days of the same walls and the same windows and the same view of the same city, and walking out felt like coming up for air after being underwater for too long.The car was waiting at the curb and Klaus was behind the wheel and Raffaele opened the door for me like it was the most natural thing in the world. I got in and he got in next to me and Klaus pulled away from the curb and we drove toward the university gym where the regional qualifiers were being held.I was nervous. Not the bad kind of nervous, the shaky handed can't breathe kind, but the good kind, the electric kind, the kind that made my blood feel fizzy and my muscles feel tight and ready. I had been training for this for six weeks, six weeks of his drills and his corrections and his voice i

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