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Lahat ng Kabanata ng A CONTRACT FROM THE DEVIL: Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 108

108 Kabanata

Chapter 101

Conti Massacre The file arrived at 9:14 in the morning.Elena was standing at the kitchen counter of the safe apartment, trying to make herself eat a dry piece of toast, when her phone vibrated against the marble. No name. No number. Only a link and a single line of text underneath it.You said you wanted the truth. Here it is. All of it.She stared at the screen until the toast went cold in her hand.Sandro had left an hour earlier with Luca and two of his men for a meeting he refused to explain. He had kissed her forehead in the hallway, brief and distracted, his mind already on the road. Dante was posted by the front door. A nurse was reading to Claire in the bedroom, her voice soft through the wall. The apartment felt like a held breath.Elena's thumb hovered over the link.Part of her already knew what it was. Three days ago she had watched thirty seconds of it, a grainy clip that spread through the underground channels like poison before Sandro's people scrubbed it. A room. A f

Chapter 102

Public Claim The invitation to the Hartwell Foundation gala had arrived three weeks earlier. Sandro had meant to decline it.Now it was the only move he had."They want to see if you flinch," Luca had said that afternoon in the study, one hand resting on the back of a chair, his voice smooth and reasonable. "Baldini and the consortium. Half the ballroom will have watched that video by now. If you stay home, it is confirmation. If you walk in with your wife on your arm, it is a statement."Sandro had looked at him for a long moment. Luca's face had not changed. It never did. But Sandro watched his hands, and he watched the camera feed from the hallway running in his mind like a loop, and he said only, "Arrange the cars."Elena had been harder to persuade. He had expected resistance. Instead, she had stood in the doorway of the bedroom in the grey light, arms folded, her face pale and set."If I'm the shield," she said quietly, "then I'll be one on my terms. Not because you dressed me

Chapter 103

Escape Temptation Elena did not remember going back downstairs.She remembered the suite, the mirror, the weight of Sandro's hand at her throat. She remembered the sound of the tap running while she gripped the edge of the sink and told herself to breathe. When she opened the bathroom door ten minutes later, Sandro was standing by the window with his phone in his hand and his back to her.He had turned around smiling. It was the polite, practiced smile he wore for photographs.His hands had not been steady.She noticed because she had learned to notice. She had spent weeks studying that man the way a sailor studies weather. She knew the exact moment his jaw tightened before he lied. She knew that when he was truly afraid, he became very still.He had been very still."Is something wrong?" she had asked."No." He had offered her his arm. "Come. Baldini is waiting."She had taken it. She had let him walk her back into the ballroom, and she had smiled at senators' wives and sipped water

Chapter 104

Blood Ties Elena did not lie.That was the first thing Sandro registered, and it unsettled him more than a lie would have.She sat in the corner of the sedan with her hands folded in her lap, her gown pooled around her ankles, her face pale under the amber light. She held his gaze without flinching."Four minutes," she said. "He caught me in the garage. Dante was sent away.""And what did he say?""That you have results from Dr. Hale." Her voice stayed level, but her fingers had gone white. "That you have had them for two hours. That I should ask you why you have not told me."The car rolled up the ramp into the cold night. The driver's eyes stayed fixed on the road, carefully empty.Sandro looked at his wife.She was holding something back. He knew it the way he knew the sound of a safety clicking off. A word withheld. A door left slightly closed. But she was also asking a question with everything in her face, and the question was harder than any threat he had faced in his life."Ye

Chapter 105

Hard Choice The old man lowered himself onto Sandro's leather sofa as if he had paid for it.Elena stood at the edge of the living room with Sandro's jacket pulled tight around her shoulders and her heart beating in her throat. Her dress was a ruin beneath it. Her hair had come loose. She could still feel the cold of the glass table on her back.Vittorio Rossi did not appear to notice any of it. He hooked the cane over the arm of the sofa, crossed one ankle over the other, and looked around the penthouse with idle approval."You have kept the Pollock," he said. "Good. Your mother hated it.""Do not speak of her," Sandro said.The gun was still in his hand. He had not lowered it. He stood a few feet in front of Elena, one shoulder angled to cover her, his voice so quiet it was almost gentle."How did you get up here?""I own half the people in this building. I merely asked them to remember it." Vittorio smiled. "Put that away, Alessandro. If I had come to kill you, I would not have ru

Chapter 106

Siege The first thing Sandro did was put Elena behind the study wall.He did not ask. He caught her wrist, pulled her down the dark hall past Rocco's men, and thumbed a panel hidden behind a shelf of leather-bound ledgers. The bookcase swung inward on a silent hinge. Behind it lay a narrow steel room with its own air supply, its own lights, and a door that could withstand a rocket."No." Elena twisted in his grip. "Claire. Where is Claire?""On her way.""She is in the safe apartment. She is forty blocks from here.""Not anymore." He met her eyes in the amber flicker of the emergency strips. "When my father stepped out of that elevator, I knew the address was compromised. I messaged Dante from the hall. He is bringing her up the service route now."Her face changed. Shock first. Then something he had no time to examine."You did that while he was talking to me?""I did that the moment I saw his face." He pressed the radio into her palm. "Stay inside. Do not open this door for anyone

Chapter 107

Old King Returns Elena woke to an empty bed and the smell of smoke.Gray light leaked through the curtains. Somewhere beyond the bedroom door, men's voices rose and fell in low Italian, and under it the steady beep of a security system cycling back to life. She lay still for a moment, listening, one hand flat on the cool sheet where Sandro had been.Then everything came back at once. The elevator doors. The dark. Claire's small body shaking in her arms.She dressed fast and went to check on her sister first. Claire was asleep in the guest room, curled on her side with the blanket pulled to her chin and her tablet still glowing on the pillow. A guard stood outside the door with a rifle across his chest. He nodded to Elena without a word. She stood in the doorway for a long minute watching the rise and fall of that small chest.Then she went to find her husband.She found him in the study.The ledgers on the hidden shelf had been shoved aside. The bookcase stood open on the empty steel

Chapter 108

Hospital Siege Eight vehicles at the east entrance meant one thing to Sandro.It meant they were meant to be seen."Diversion," he said. He was already moving, one hand on the radio, the other closing around Elena's arm. "A real team does not announce itself with eight cars. They are drawing every man to the east side. The actual strike comes from somewhere else.""Where?" Elena asked."Wherever we are not looking." He turned to Rocco. "Roof. Ambulance bay. Service corridors. I want two men on each. Now."Rocco was gone before he finished.Claire stirred in the bed, her lashes fluttering. The IV drip ticked softly. Her face was wan, but her breathing had steadied. Sandro looked at her small hand lying in the white blanket and felt something old and cold uncurl in his chest."We cannot leave her here," Elena said."No. The fourth floor. There is an isolation ward at the end of the east wing, with a steel door and its own air. Dante will take you." He lifted Elena's chin with two finge

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