All Chapters of MAFIA CEO'S OBSESSION: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Valentina ReyesThe desert stretched out like an endless, mocking grave, the sand cold under my bare feet as I limped forward, each step sending sharp pains up my legs from the cuts and bruises. The hoodie clung to my skin, damp with sweat and blood, and the purse bounced against my hip with every uneven stride, the $11,800 inside feeling heavier than it should, like a curse rather than salvation. The gunshots from the border still echoed in my ears, a constant reminder that I’d left the group behind and the woman’s scream as she shielded her baby, the kid’s terrified cry, the men’s curses as they scattered into the night. Javier’s van had been a fireball when I’d glanced back, his body slumped against the wheel, the guide sprawled in the dirt. I was the only one who made it through, or at least the only one I could see in the chaos, and the guilt twisted in my gut like a knife, mixing with the fear that kept my eyes darting to every shadow, every rustle in the wind.I had no plan bey

Alessandro RossiBy noon we were in a hangar outside Tucson with the doors rolled shut and a laptop balanced on an oil drum.Kira’s face filled the screen, pale from three nights without sleep, hair knotted on top of her head. Behind her I could see the dark glow of the war room in Manhattan, the walls of monitors, the cold coffee she’d been feeding herself like medication.“The number belongs to a prepaid line,” she said. “Medellín exchange, registered under a name I think is fake. Maria Cardona. Cardona is the most common surname in the city. It’s like searching for a Smith.”“Address?”“A rental in Laureles. Third floor, no building name. I pulled a few street photos.” She flicked something across the shared screen. A pale apartment block, balconies crowded with laundry and plastic chairs. A woman’s shape in one window, indistinct. “That’s all I’ve got on the line itself. But the money is more interesting.”I leaned closer. “What money?”“Valentina Reyes has been wiring cash

Valentina ReyesThe first thing a pickpocket learns is that nobody watches their own belt.They watch your face. They watch your hands, if they’re smart. But the weight at their hip, the jingle of keys, the wallet in the back pocket they’ve touched a thousand times, all of it fades into the body like a limb. After an hour, it isn’t an object anymore. It’s part of them.That’s the gap. That’s where I live.The guard’s name was Beto. I’d learned it from the other guard, who yelled at him twice an hour. Twenty-two, maybe, soft around the middle, with a sparse mustache he kept touching like it might fall off. He carried a ring of keys clipped to his belt loop by a carabiner, and I’d spent six hours memorizing the sound it made.Three notes when he walked. Two when he stood still. One when he leaned.It was the sound of the way out.They fed us twice a day. Flatbread and beans, a plastic cup of water, a bucket changed when the smell got too bad fo

Isabella RossiI had four hours of sleep, a cold coffee, and a hundred and forty pages of access logs on my laptop when Mateo walked into the safe house and locked the door behind him.I knew something was wrong before he turned around.Mateo Garcia never locked doors behind him. He was six foot three of trained paranoia, a man who checked windows the way other people checked their phones, and he left every exit open, every angle covered, every line of sight clear. A locked door was a trap, he said. A locked door meant you’d already decided to die in the room.He stood with his back to it now, shoulders squared, one hand flat against the wood.“Isabella,” he said.Not Miss Rossi. Not Bella, the name he used only in the dark. Just my name, quiet, like a man laying a weapon on a table.I closed the laptop.The apartment was the one in Queens: two rooms over a dry cleaner, a mattress on a bare frame, a window facing an alley and a brick wall. We’d met here six times in three mont

Alessandro RossiVictor Salcedo kept me waiting for an hour and ten minutes, which told me he was either insulted or curious.I took the wait as a courtesy.The hacienda sat in the dry hills outside Hermosillo, a long white house with a red tile roof and a courtyard where a fountain whispered to itself in the dark. Armed men stood at every wall. They didn’t bother to hide their rifles. They’d searched Gino twice, taken my pistol, patted me down with the thoroughness of men who’d been told that I was dangerous, and then left us in a room with two leather chairs and a pitcher of water.Gino had stopped sweating around the half-hour mark. I’d have been proud of him, if I wasn’t thinking about a pair of bare footprints in the dust.I had slept for two hours on the drive. Dreamed of nothing. Woke with my hand in my jacket pocket, around a strip of gray cloth that no longer smelled of her.The door opened.“Alessandro.” Victor’s voice came ahead of him, warm and unhurried, a smooth b