Lahat ng Kabanata ng bound to the ruthless mafia king: Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

My mother had arranged it without saying so. My father was somewhere else in the house. Elena was somewhere else in the house. The front room had three chairs and three people and a door that was closed and outside Caruso's men were two streets away and none of that was addressed because none of it was the point of this room right now. Luca stood because he hadn't been invited to sit. That was just how he was. He stood in the middle of the room with his jacket on and his hands at his sides and he looked at my mother in her chair and at me on the couch and at the room in general with the specific quality of a man clocking exits and finding them all accounted for. My mother said, "Sit down." He sat. I watched him register the fact that he'd just done what she said without thinking about it and filing it away without commenting on it. My mother looked at him for a moment. The way she looked at things she'd been thinking about for a long time. Then she started talking. She didn't

He was at the door at six thirty in the morning and I was standing there in yesterday's clothes with my hair loose and my eyes not fully open and he looked at me with an expression that woke me up faster than anything else could have. I stepped back and let him in. He came in and didn't sit. He stood in the hallway and looked at me and said, "Your mother has a government contact." I kept my face still, I was my mother daughter, I know how to keep suppressing my expression, especially in situations like this.I opened my mouth to say something, but he cut me off. He looked at me. "Don't. I know you know. I've known since last night that you were keeping something." He looked at me steadily. "Don't stand there and say what like you're hearing it for the first time." I looked at him. "Come in," I said. "I'm in." "Sit down." "I'm fine here." I sat. He stood. The hallway was narrow and he was filling it and outside the morning was cold and the house was still quiet and I thought

ISABELLAS POVI pushed the motel door open with my heart in my throat, expecting blood, expecting guns, expecting Luca hurt or worse. Instead, I walked straight into hell.He was on the bed, buried deep inside one of them, hips snapping hard while his hand squeezed another girl’s breast, and his fingers worked between the thighs of the third. His eyes rolled back with ecstasy. The room smelled of sex and sweat and the cheap cologne they’d sprayed on. Low music still played. The girl beneath him moaned loudly as he drove into her one final time, then he leaned down and kissed her deep and filthy tongue in her mouth like he owned it, like as if I wasn't standing there. He slapped her ass, pulled out, and looked straight at me.“Get dressed,” he told them, voice rough but steady. He reached for his wallet, peeled off cash, and handed it over without ceremony. “Leave.”"Will we see you again, papi?" the girl he was fucking purred out, tracing his chest with her freshly manicured nai

Third Persons pov The building was the kind that existed in every city and noticed nothing. A front desk with a man who didn't look up. A corridor with fluorescent lighting that hummed slightly. A room at the end of it with a keypad and a row of boxes behind a locked door. Isabella’s mother had decided to move early that morning, guided by nothing more tangible than a feeling in her gut. Thirty years of living in the shadow of powerful men had taught her to trust those feelings when they came. The government contact was already there. A man in a grey coat, mid-fifties, with the patient eyes of someone who had brokered too many quiet deals in too many windowless rooms. He offered a short nod. They exchanged brief words. Logistics. Timing. What happened after. You’re early,” he said. “Better than late,” Isabella’s mother replied. Then her mother opened her bag. She took out the velvet pouch and held it in her palm for a moment. Sixty years of history. Small enough to fit

My mother left at ten in the morning. Luca's man had knocked at nine thirty, handed her a folded note, and left without saying anything. She read it standing in the hallway with her back half turned to me and I watched her face do the thing it did when she was processing something she'd already half prepared for. She folded it and put it in her pocket. I said "what does it say." "He wants to meet," she said. "Just me." "I'm coming." I said. "He asked for just me Isabella." I looked at her. I knew that look. I'd been on the receiving end of it my whole life. Decision already made, being carefully managed before it was revealed, the patience of someone who believed they knew best and was giving you time to arrive at the same conclusion before they told you they'd already decided. I said "what are you not telling me." "Nothing yet," she said. "Let me go and come back and then I'll tell you everything." I looked at her for a long moment. "Everything. You come back and you tell