All Chapters of BLOOD & JUSTICE: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Husband and wife.Two words. Dropped between them like a body hitting marble.Elena didn’t blink. She counted. One second. Three. Five.“Explain,” she said.Dante pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the study. Outside, dusk was bleeding behind the oak trees—a composition too beautiful for something this ugly.Elena followed him in. She knew the protocol: walk into enemy territory. Find the landmines before the argument detonates.“Three days ago,” Dante began, “credible internal intelligence. The Rostova clan—Russian Bratva. Three of their Portland–Seattle distribution routes collapsed into Salvatore hands overnight. Eight years of their operation, gone in a single night.”“Who did it?”“That’s the problem.” His gaze broke toward the window, then snapped back. “Someone used the Salvatore name as a false flag. If I can&

Dante’s palm settled against the small of Elena’s back as they crossed the threshold. A light touch. Absolute. What had started as stagecraft had mutated into something more dangerous: habit.Elena didn’t tense. Her shoulders eased. Her stride slowed half a beat, falling into his rhythm. To the outside world, they had long learned to breathe at the same frequency.That was the illusion they had to preserve.Arthur Voronov was already there—corner table, strategic sightlines across the room. Fifty-two. Platinum hair. Eyes that projected warmth like a man who had studied the technique in a dark school. Hard calluses at the middle knuckles. Someone who had once crushed a face with a bare fist and slept well afterward.Elena clocked all of it in four seconds.As Konstantin Rostova’s right hand, Arthur was a lethal filter. The moment Dante drew near, Arthur rose—and his gaze dropped immediately to Elena&rsquo

The villa was a monument to unchecked ego.Three stories. Italian marble on the ground floor. Bohemian crystal chandeliers blazing like darkness was a personal enemy. And a back garden wide enough to land a helicopter—or host a spectacle like tonight’s.The white tent stretched across the lawn. Blue balloon clusters. Children’s laughter cutting through the floodlit air.Elena stepped out of the car as the dashboard clock ticked past seven. The Greenwich wind greeted her without courtesy—cold, sharp, tugging at the hem of her midnight navy gown. She steadied it with one hand. One unhurried motion.To anyone watching, it wasn’t inconvenience. It was a pose.Dante materialized at her side two seconds later. Black suit. Hand settling at the small of her back—a claim of ownership that required no permission.Elena let it stay. Seven pairs of eyes were already watching from behind the terrace, and in this world,

Two days of silence. It had weight now—something Elena could feel pressing against the walls, pooling in the corners of every room.She and Dante moved through the house like planets in separate orbits. Efficient. Glacial. What had started as professionalism had become something far more deliberate: mutual exile, executed with precision.Elena had survived confrontation before. Gunfire. Interrogation. The grinding mechanics of grief. But silence demanded a different kind of endurance. No adrenaline. No clear target. Just the slow hemorrhage of emotional reserve, forty-eight hours and counting.She stared at walls and called it thinking. Her face stayed composed—the expression of someone solving a complex problem. Her brain worked furiously to erase one specific memory: the sound of Dante’s voice when he’d said fine.That tone. A steel door. Locking forever.She didn’t regret staying silent. Truth had territorial limits

Feliks Rostova treated time like a commodity he could discard at will—except for the things that truly mattered.Business meetings? Thirty minutes late was his preferred way of signaling who held the reins. Family dinners? He’d show up after the food had gone cold and the vein at his father’s temple had begun its familiar pulse.But a bedtime story for Vasiliya? That was different. Sacred, even.It was the one ritual in the Rostova household he guarded with the instinct of a man protecting the last ember in a dying storm.✘ ✘ ✘His knock was rhythmic. Twice. Always twice.The room was already dim and golden when he entered. Vasiliya had curled up against her pillows, clutching a purple unicorn whose horn had gone crooked, eyes wide open and refusing the weight of sleep.“Uncle Feliks.” Her voice landed like a judge’s verdict.Feliks raised both palms. Surrendering. “I know. I know. Dinner turned into a negotiation. Forgive your wretched uncle.”He dragged the heavy wooden chair bes