บททั้งหมดของ CHAMPAGNE FOR THE DAMNED {MxM}: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

༒ ℑ𝔪𝔯𝔞𝔫༒I know something was wrong the moment Pierre stopped joking. That was the thing about him, even when shit was bad, even when the police dragged him into questioning rooms for hours or our lives started looking like the setup to a fucking crime scene documentary, Pierre still joked. It was how he copied. Sarcasm, bad timing, smart comments that usually made me want to punch him and laugh at the same time. So when he walked into the apartment that night looking pale and tense instead of annoying, my stomach tightened immediately. “What happened?” I asked before he could even sit down. Pierre glanced towards the windows first, then towards the hallway behind me like he expected someone to be listening. “You alone?” The question itself already pissed me off.“Yeah.”“And Raffaele?” “Out.”Pierre exhaled quietly through his nose before dragging a hand over his face. “Okay. Good.”I stared at him harder. “Pierre.”“I found something.” That got my attention instantly. Th

༒ ℑ𝔪𝔯𝔞𝔫༒I leaned back in my chair, my eyes fixed on the papers spread across the table while Pierre sat across from me looking just as exhausted as I felt. The apartment was quiet except for the sound of rain hitting the windows and the occasional scratch of Pierre's pen against paper. We had been at this for hours, maybe longer, and my head was starting to throb from staring at numbers.Still, I couldn't stop. Not after everything that had happened. Not after finding out my father had been involved in something far bigger than simple fraud. The file says open in front of me, thicker now than it had been when Pierre first handed it over. We'd added notes, highlighted names, connected dates, drawn lines between people and transactions until the entire thing looked fucking insane. Half the pages were covered in my handwriting now, rushed and messy from trying to keep up with every realization hitting me at once.Pierre rubbed a hand over his face. “Tell me again why we're doing

༒ ℜ𝔞𝔣𝔣𝔞𝔢𝔩𝔢༒The first time I realized I was depending on Imran, it pissed me off enough to ruin my entire fucking day. Not because I thought he was incompetent. That would've been easier to deal with. No, the problem was worse than that. The problem was that somewhere between dragging him into my world, fighting with him, losing control over him, nearly losing him completely, and watching him adapt faster than anyone expected, I had stopped seeing him as someone temporary. Stopped treating him like an outsider I was tolerating. Now, when things didn't make sense, my mind automatically wondered what he would notice.That was dangerous. I stood near the windows of my office, one hand in my pocket while the city stretched below me in blurred lights and rain. The weather has been shit all week, dark skies hanging over everything like a warning nobody could ignore. Thunder rumbled faintly somewhere in the distance while voices carried from the conference room behind me.Marco

༒ ℜ𝔞𝔣𝔣𝔞𝔢𝔩𝔢༒The problem with betrayal was that it never started loudly. People liked to imagine betrayal as something dramatic, something obvious, a knife on a table, a confession, a gunshot in the dark. But real betrayal? Real betrayal was subtle as fuck. It hit itself inside patterns, inside time in, inside information moving a little too fast and the wrong direction. And lately, I had been seeing too many fucking patterns. I stood near the window of my office, the city glowing beneath the rain while Carlo explained the details of the interceptor shipment behind me. His voice blended into the background at some point, my attention drifting towards the papers spread across my desk instead.Dates. Routes. Times. Movements. Too clean. Every hit against us over the last few months had looked random on the surface, but once I started stripping away the noise, something on the next became impossible to ignore. They weren't guessing anymore, they were anticipating, that changed

༒ ℜ𝔞𝔣𝔣𝔞𝔢𝔩𝔢༒Something was wrong.I knew it before I had proof.Hell, I knew it before I could even explain it.For weeks, information had been moving through the family in ways that didn't make sense. Operations that should have remained private were somehow anticipated. Meetings were being watched. Routes were being avoided before we even used them.At first, it looked like coincidence.Then it started happening too often.Coincidences were for idiots.Patterns were different.And I was looking at a pattern.The conference room fell silent as I flipped through the reports spread across the table.Three operations.Three separate teams.Three different leaks.The same result.Someone knew too much.Someone inside the family was talking.Nobody around the table said a word.Vinny's absence still lingered over everything, even weeks later.People didn't mention him.Didn't ask questions.Didn't discuss what happened.But they felt it.The entire organization felt different now.L