All Chapters of THE MAFIA'S FATAL ATTRACTION BOOK 2: A PRINCESS'S CHALLENGES: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

ArianeHis lips leave mine. They leave an imprint of salt and despair. The kiss was a closed tomb. But in my veins, something ignites. A devastating contradiction.The sadness is still there, a black ocean deep inside me. But on its surface, a sudden storm rises. Anger. Pain. An animal, furious need to feel him as broken as I am. Not to be alone in this fall.I see in his eyes that he reads this change. The mute pain is overlaid with a savage gleam. The mourning is not over. It has simply become incendiary."You want to wash me?" I say, my voice hoarse, almost a growl.I don't wait for his answer. My hands on his hips tighten, my nails dig into his skin. Not a caress. A reclamation. A mark."Wash me of this."AuracioHer nails are blades. The pain is sharp, precise. A shock that cuts through the torpor of despair. Her eyes no longer weep. They burn. Defiance, hatred, desire inextricably mingled.It is the spark I dared not hope for. Anger, I know what to do with it. I know how to turn

TaraThe bourbon left a trail of cold fire in my throat, a semblance of warmth that cannot melt the glacier that has settled inside me. The silence, after the muffled sound of the door, has thickened into a malevolent presence. There is still no sound of water. Nothing but a void taut to bursting, more disquieting than a gunshot.It is this absence of sound that pushes me. A defiance. It is no longer desire, which died in the solitary waiting. It is a more primitive, more desperate need: to touch in order to exist. To affirm myself as something other than a painting in his private museum, a trophy in his armored display case. To ensure that this flesh, this presence that hovers over my life like a threatening shadow, still exists for me. That the crumpled restaurant receipt, the echo of foreign perfume, the lies flat as blades, have not yet erased even my most basic right: that of being his wife.I set the glass down with contained force. The heavy crystal strikes the black marble wit

TaraThe bed is a sea of cold satin. I lay down on the edge, near the border, as if I could, at any moment, slide out of this universe, fall into the dark void between the skyscrapers. His back, turned to me, is a black mountain against the paleness of the sheets. A living frontier.I hold my breath to better hear his. He sleeps. Or feigns it. It is a deep, measured breath, too perfect. The man who calculates even his sleep. Each exhalation is a murmur of rejection repeated, tirelessly, in the silence of the room.My thoughts circle, hungry vultures around a carcass. Not a mistress. Death. The relief would be almost sweet if it were not more bitter than jealousy. At least a flesh-and-blood rival, I could hate her, despise her, imagine defeating her. But how to fight a ghost? Against the smell of blood he claims to have in his mouth? I am competing with shadows, with the memory of muffled cries in cold warehouses. I share my bed with corpses.I close my eyes, but I see only the reflect

MikeThe bedroom door hissed. A rustle of silk, a muffled click of heels in the hallway. Then silence again. Heavier. More absolute.I got up.I didn't turn on the light. Darkness is my element. I dressed in turn: dark jeans, a black sweater, soft-soled shoes. A shadow preparing to follow another shadow.I knew where she would go. Not the precise location, but the instinct. The need. She wouldn't flee toward calm, toward a park, toward a friend. No. She would go toward noise. Toward the artificial warmth of packed bodies. Toward the immediate and empty validation of covetous looks. Tara doesn't know how to flee. She knows how to burn.I took the Range Rover, black on black. I spotted her two streets away, her taillights glowing like embers in the damp night. She drove fast, but not recklessly. A cold determination in every turn. I kept my distance, a ghost in her wake.The Labyrinth. A cheap place for nouveaux riches in search of thrills. Music escaped from it, the sick heartbeat of t

MikeThe whisky bottle is heavy, cold against my palm. I lift it to my lips, drink straight from the neck. The liquid burns, cleanses the bitter mouth. But it washes nothing away. The image is branded in red-hot iron behind my eyelids. Her hip rolling against the bar. Her smile offered to that guy with greasy hands. The raw light of The Labyrinth on her skin.I am at my desk. The house is silent. A heavy, crushing silence, pressing on the temples. Downstairs, she is still crying. I hear it. Muffled sobs, as if she were biting into a cloth to stay quiet. Each moan is a punch in my gut. Anger. Shame. Fear.Fear is the worst. A coldness that tightens the ribs. She opened the door. She looked outside. And she found what she was looking for: the attention of strangers. Their desire, raw, simple, without the weight of our history. She breathed it in, she got drunk on it. And now that I've brought her back by force, what's to stop her from leaving again? Finding another bar, another man, les