บททั้งหมดของ MARRIED TO THE MAFIA KING : บทที่ 91 - บทที่ 100

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE:“Don’t put your hands on me in the dark.”Theo’s voice was low and lethal, the kind of quiet that was worse than shouting. He stood halfway down the stairs at 1:17 a.m., one hand on the banister, body angled away from Dimitri like the touch had burned.Dimitri froze three steps below him, hands already raised and empty. “You were sleepwalking. You were about to miss the step.”“I wasn’t sleepwalking.” Theo’s chest rose and fell too fast. “I was awake. And you came out of nowhere and put your hand on my shoulder like you still get to steer me.”Lyra appeared at the top of the stairs in an old T-shirt, the baby monitor clutched in one hand. “What happened?”“He grabbed me,” Theo said.“I touched your shoulder,” Dimitri corrected, voice tight. “That’s all.”“In the dark. Without warning. After weeks of rules about not making me feel managed.” Theo’s eyes were bright with anger and something close to betrayal. “You don’t get to decide the exception in the middle of the

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE:“I said your name twice.”Dimitri stood at the bottom of the stairs in the dark, hands open at his sides, voice low and controlled. Above him Theo was frozen on the landing, back pressed to the wall like the air itself had become unsafe.“I heard you,” Theo said. “I still don’t want you coming up.”“I’m not coming up.” Dimitri didn’t move. “You’re standing near the top step again. I said your name so you’d know it was me. That’s all.”Lyra’s bedroom door opened. She appeared with the monitor in her hand, already braced for whatever version of the night this was. “What now?”“He was near the stairs,” Dimitri said. “I talked first. I didn’t touch him. He’s telling me to stay downstairs anyway.”Theo’s voice came harder. “Because talking first doesn’t erase the fact that you keep appearing in the dark like something’s about to go wrong. I can’t keep waking up to that energy.”The tension pulled tight enough to feel in the teeth.Lyra came to the railing and looked d

CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE:“I can’t keep living in a house with an invisible wall through the middle of it.”Lyra said it the second the kids were out the door for school, voice low and shaking with the kind of anger that had been stored too long. Dimitri stood at the sink with a coffee mug in his hand that had gone cold an hour ago.“It’s a hallway rule,” he said. “Not a wall.”“It functions like one.” She dropped her keys on the counter hard. “You sleep on the first floor half the time. You stop at the bottom step like you’re crossing a border. Theo tracks the sound of your feet even when you’re following the rule. June asks me every morning if the house is still in the same shape it was when she went to bed. This is not sustainable.”Dimitri set the mug down. “He needed the line.”“I know he needed the line.” Lyra’s eyes flashed. “I stood in that kitchen and helped him draw it. What I’m saying is that a line meant to protect him is starting to reorganize the entire family around his fear

CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN:“June asked if I was going to make Daddy live downstairs forever.”Theo said it standing in the kitchen doorway the next afternoon, backpack still on, face hard. Lyra looked up from the pile of mail she hadn’t opened. Dimitri, on the living room floor with Anna, went still with a block in his hand.“What did you tell her?” Lyra asked.“I told her no.” Theo dropped the backpack. “Then she asked why the upstairs feels weird at night if the answer is no. And I didn’t have a clean answer for that.”Dimitri set the block down carefully. “The upstairs feels weird because the rule is real. Rules change the shape of a house.”“That’s not what she was asking.” Theo’s voice climbed. “She was asking if I’m the reason the house feels split. And I am. I know I am. You can say the rule is temporary as many times as you want. From her height it just looks like I drew a line and everyone else has to walk around it.”The tension snapped into place immediately.Lyra set the mail a

CHAPTER NINETY-NINE:“I left it open on purpose.”Theo stood in his doorway at 12:55 a.m. with the hall light off and the door ajar behind him. Dimitri had frozen at the bottom of the stairs at the sound of the floorboard, exactly where the rule said he had to stop.“I can see that,” Dimitri said quietly. “I’m still not coming up.”“I know.” Theo’s voice was rough, like it had been scraped raw from the inside. “That’s not why I left it open.”Lyra’s bedroom door opened a few inches, then closed again when she heard the tone. She stayed out of it. This one wasn’t hers to hold first.Theo sat down on the top step, elbows on his knees, looking down through the dark at the shape of his father below. “June thinks upstairs is weird because of me. She’s not wrong. I made a rule so I could sleep, and now the whole second floor feels like it belongs to my fear. I hate that.”Dimitri didn’t move from the bottom step. “You can hate it and still need it.”“I’m starting to need it less than I need