홈 / Mafia / He Wants Me Dead Or Alive / 챕터 71 - 챕터 80

He Wants Me Dead Or Alive 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 71 - 챕터 80

110 챕터

The Morning That Shifts

Rosa POVIt was a quiet morning. No crisis, no mafia, no training, no emergency calls or locked doors or any of the things that had filled the last few weeks with tension and fear. Just a Tuesday. Just a kitchen. Just the two of us moving around each other like we had been doing it for years.I was making eggs. He was making coffee. The sun was coming through the windows and the city was waking up outside and everything felt normal in a way that should have been boring but wasn't."Your coffee is too strong," I said."It's not too strong. You just don't appreciate good coffee.""I appreciate good coffee. That is not good coffee. That is engine cleaner."He poured himself a cup and took a deliberate sip, looking at me over the rim with that face he made when he knew he was right and he was waiting for me to admit it."It's perfect," he said."It's aggressive.""Coffee should be aggressive."I shook my head and turned back to the eggs. I could feel him watching me and I didn't turn arou

What Kylie Says

Rosa POVKylie stayed overnight for the first time since everything changed.She had been asking for weeks and I had been making excuses and finally I ran out of excuses and she showed up with a bag and a bottle of wine and the look on her face that meant she was not leaving until she had said everything she had come to say. Raffaele made himself scarce, which was his way of giving me space, which was his way of saying he trusted me to handle my own friends.At two in the morning we were sitting on the couch in the living room with the lights low and the city bright outside and empty wine glasses on the table. Kylie had her feet tucked under her and her hair was falling out of the ponytail she had put in hours ago and she was looking at me the way she only looked at me at two in the morning, when the walls came down and the real conversations happened."I've never seen you like this about anyone," she said.I knew what she meant. I didn't pretend not to."It's complicated."Kylie was

His Final Warning

Raffaele's POVThe message came through Luca at nine in the morning.Mateo had reached out through channels he shouldn't have had access to, asking for a conversation. Not with Rosa. With me. Luca had met him in a parking garage on the south side of the city, two of our men watching from a distance, Mateo alone and nervous and holding information that he said couldn't wait.The Moretti head had decided Rosa was too embedded with me to be extracted. The original plan had been to turn her, to use her connection to Mateo and her family's vulnerability to make her an asset inside my operation. But she had not broken and she had not turned and she had not given them anything they could use. So now the order had changed.She was to be treated as a Navarro asset. Which meant a target.Mateo was breaking ranks to warn us. He said he owed her that much. He said he knew it didn't make up for anything and he wasn't asking for forgiveness and he wasn't planning to come back. He was leaving the ci

Giving Her A Choice

Raffaele's POVI told her she could leave.I had been thinking about this for three days, turning it over in my head, looking at it from every angle. She had come into this under leverage and fear and the deal. None of that was a free choice. She had stayed and she had fought and she had said I love you, but underneath all of it was the truth that she had never actually chosen this. Not freely. Not without something hanging over her head.I found her in the living room. She was reading a book, curled up on the couch with her feet tucked under her and her hair falling over her face. She looked up when I walked in and set the book down when she saw my face."What's wrong?" she asked."Nothing is wrong. I need to tell you something."She sat up straighter. Her eyes were wary but not scared. She had learned to read my moods and she could tell I was not angry and not scared and not any of the things that usually came before bad news.I sat down across from her. I did not sit next to her be

A Long Night

Rosa POVI didn't sleep.I lay in bed for an hour with my eyes open and my hands on my stomach and my mind running in circles. Then I got up and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and walked to the terrace.The city was spread below me, bright and endless and indifferent. The wind was cold and I pulled the blanket tighter and I sat down on the chair facing the skyline and I thought about every single thing that had happened since the warehouse.I thought about waking up in his penthouse with my bag packed and my jaw set and no idea who he was or what I was getting into. I thought about the key card on the breakfast table and the file with my family's immigration records and the way he had said I can protect them or I can't with the same calm voice he used to order coffee.I thought about my father.He had died trying to give us a better life. He had worked jobs that broke his body and he had sent money home and he had never complained and then one day he was gone and I was twelve y

She Stays

Rosa POVI woke up before the sun and I lay in bed for a long time.The ceiling was gray in the low light and the city was quiet and I could hear my own heart beating. I knew what I was going to say. I had known it last night on the terrace and I had known it when I lay down to sleep and I knew it now. The words were sitting in my chest, heavy and warm and real.I got up and I did not change my clothes. I was still wearing the sweats and the old shirt I had slept in and I did not care. I walked down the hallway and my feet were bare and the floor was cold and I did not care about that either.He was in the kitchen.He was standing by the counter with a mug in his hand and the coffee maker was still running and the light was coming through the windows and he looked up when I walked in. His face gave nothing while holding everything. I could see the fear underneath the calm and the hope underneath the fear and the love underneath all of it.I walked to the counter and I reached into my

It Ends

Raffaele's POVThe settlement took three days and cost more than I wanted to pay.Don Navarro brokered it through a neutral family, the Vallettis, who had no stake in the conflict and no love for the Moretti but who wanted the violence to stop before it spread to their territory. I sat in a room with my father on one side and a Moretti captain on the other and a Valletti elder between us and we negotiated terms like men who had been trying to kill each other were now trying to pretend they hadn't.The Moretti wanted money and territory and the head of the man who had ordered the attack on me. They got money. They got a shipping route they had been trying to take for years. They did not get the man's head because I had already taken it.I gave them the shipping route because it cost me less than the fighting would have cost. I gave them the money because money could be replaced and people could not. I did not give them anything that mattered to me in the long term. What mattered to me

The Night After

Rosa POVThe night after the Moretti resolution I went to him.The threat was gone. The settlement was final. The men who had been watching my mother's building had gone home and the extra security was gone and the lockdown was over. Nothing was keeping me here except my own choice. For the first time since I had walked into this building with my bag packed and my jaw set, that was completely true.I walked down the hallway and his door was open and the room was dark. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, still in his clothes from the day, his hands hanging between his knees and his head bowed. He did not look up when I walked in. He was still wound tight from the past weeks, the way he got when he was carrying something heavy and had not figured out how to put it down.I crossed the room and I climbed into his lap. I put my legs on either side of him and I sat down on his thighs and I put my hands on his face. The way he usually held mine. Palms against his jaw, fingers curled aroun

His Final Word

Raffaele's POVDon Navarro came to the penthouse at noon.He did not call ahead. He did not announce himself. He simply appeared in the lobby and took the elevator up and walked into my office like he owned it, which he probably did, or owned the building it was in, or owned the city it overlooked. It was hard to tell with my father. He had been accumulating ownership for so long that even he had probably lost track.I stood when he walked in because he was my father and because he was Don Navarro and because some habits were too deep to break. He sat down in the chair across from my desk and I sat down across from him and we looked at each other the way we had looked at each other a thousand times before."The family is satisfied with the Moretti resolution," he said."I know.""The Valletti were useful. They will be compensated.""I know.""The shipping route you gave up was expensive.""It was necessary."He nodded. His face was unreadable, the way it always was when he was measuri

Normal

Rosa POVThree days of something that was almost, improbably, normal.I went to class in the morning and took notes and answered questions and walked across campus like a regular student who had not spent the last six months living in a mafia penthouse. The leaves were changing and the air was cold and the world was moving the way it always moved, indifferent to everything I had been through.He worked in his office during the day and I did my coursework at the kitchen table and we ate lunch together when our schedules lined up. Nothing dramatic. Nothing urgent. Just sandwiches and coffee and the sound of his keyboard from the other room.We had dinner together every night. Sometimes he cooked, which was a disaster in ways that made me laugh. Sometimes I cooked, which was getting better. He still ate everything I made without complaint even when it wasn't good, and I was starting to believe that he actually liked it, or maybe he just liked that I had made it. I didn't ask which one it

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