Lahat ng Kabanata ng Captive To The Mafia Lord: Kabanata 181 - Kabanata 190

Lorenzo's POVI lunged toward the sound of his voice, hands out in the dark, hitting nothing but air and then the edge of a desk that cracked hard against my hip. "Jovan!""Someone's got my arm—" His voice was moving, being pulled, panic climbing fast. "Lorenzo—""Let him go!" I threw myself in the direction of the struggle, blind, and my shoulder collided with a body — not Jovan's, too broad, too strong — and I swung without thinking, felt my fist connect with something solid enough to make a man grunt in pain.The grip on Jovan must have loosened because his hand found my jacket a half second later, fisting hard into the fabric, and I hauled him behind me on pure instinct, putting my body between him and whatever else was moving in that dark."Dante!" I shouted. "Lights, now, anything—""Working on it—" His voice came from somewhere near the doorway, followed by the scrape of a phone screen flaring to life, weak light spilling across chaos — Marcus flat on the floor where he'd appar

Lorenzo's POVFor a second I couldn't make the words land. "You've had them?""Since Marcus came to me terrified out of his mind, begging me to hide them somewhere you'd never think to look, because he didn't trust anyone left standing close to you." Lena's voice shook, but she didn't stop, didn't let the shake slow her down. "I said yes because I loved you like a brother long before Derek ever came into my life, and because I could see what was happening even when you couldn't.""You should have told me.""And said what?" Her eyes flashed, furious now, the same fire that had made her flinch away from that man's hand over her mouth back in the warehouse instead of going quiet and small like he'd wanted. "That the man managing your money for nine years was being blackmailed and didn't trust his own crew? That I was hiding the one thing that could get us all killed in a shoebox under my floorboards? You had enough on you, Lorenzo. I was trying to carry something so you didn't have to."

Lorenzo's POVI turned around slow, note still clutched in my hand, and looked at Marcus the way you look at a man standing on the edge of something he can't walk back from."Talk," I said. "Now.""I—" His mouth opened, closed. His eyes went to Lena, guilty in a way that made my stomach drop before he'd said a single real word. "The ledgers I gave you weren't complete."Lena went white. "What?""I gave you most of it. Real pages, real numbers, everything that would matter if it ever got out — except the last section. The one with the actual names. The people your father made arrangements with before you ever took over, Lorenzo. Judges. Two councilmen. A name in the department that still signs off on cases that touch us." His voice cracked. "I kept that part separate because it was the only leverage I had left that was mine. The only thing keeping him from just killing me the second he had everything."The warehouse lot went very quiet."You've been sitting on the most dangerous part o

Lorenzo's POVI didn't remember getting back in the car. One second I was staring at that photograph, at the shape in my own doorway, and the next Jovan was in the passenger seat beside me and the engine was roaring and the city was blurring past too fast on either side."Lorenzo, slow the fuck down...""I can't." My hands were locked white-knuckled on the wheel. "If he's in my house—""Then we go in smart, not fast." Jovan's voice cut through the panic clean and sharp, the same voice he used when a kitchen fire needed someone thinking instead of screaming. "You taught me that. Remember? You taught me that, back when I wanted to run into every fire instead of putting it out first."I forced my foot off the gas half an inch. Not much. Enough.Behind us, Dante's headlights stayed locked in the mirror, Lena and Marcus crammed in with him, the four of them close enough to reach us in seconds if it came to that."Who was in the doorway," Jovan asked quietly. "Could you tell?""No." My jaw

Lorenzo's POV"Jovan." I set the gun down on the counter, hands shaking now for reasons that had nothing to do with the man who'd just walked out my front door. "Talk to me.""I don't know." His voice was barely there, thin, lost. "I rescheduled the appointment because of Lena, because of everything — I told myself it was stress, I told myself the tiredness was just stress, I didn't let myself think—" He broke off, pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. "God, Lorenzo, if it's true, I found out from him. I found out something like that from the man who mailed us Derek's head.""Hey." I crossed to him, pulled him in, felt him shaking against my chest the same way he had back at the safehouse, except this time it wasn't fear alone underneath it — it was something bigger, something neither of us had room to hold yet on top of everything else tonight had already asked of us. "We don't know anything for certain. Not from him. Not until you see an actual doctor, somewhere safe, on ou