All Chapters of MARRIED TO THE MAFIA KING : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO:“Don’t treat them like I failed the clear.”Theo blocked the kitchen at 6:55 a.m. with hospital grit still in his eyes and his backpack already on one shoulder.Lyra turned from the sink. “No one is treating it like a failure.”“You will if I let the air stay like this.” Theo’s voice was fast, tight. “Last week clearly made you proud. Last night came and made the house go quiet in a different way. I can feel the grade forming. I won’t take a grade. It was true. That is the only score.”Dimitri set his coffee down. “Come was true. That is the only score I have.”“Say it like you mean it when you’re not looking at me.” Theo stepped in. “Because the second I leave for school the story becomes he almost protected the empty shift again and then corrected. I don’t need a redemption arc. I needed my sister to get help.”Anna slept on the couch under a blanket, congested and spent. June sat at the table not eating, eyes moving between them.Lyra’s hands went fl

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR:“Don’t open it unless she’s actually in trouble.”Theo’s voice came through the closed door sharp and immediate, before Lyra’s second knock finished.Lyra stood in the hallway with her hand still raised. “I need to know if you heard that cough.”“I heard it.” The reply was fast, furious. “I also heard the hour. A closed door means adults own it. If it’s residual, handle it. If it’s real, say real. Don’t knock me back onto the clock because you’re nervous.”Dimitri came up the stairs two at a time. “What happened?”“Anna coughed harder once,” Lyra said, eyes still on the door. “I checked. She’s sitting up playing. Residual with volume. I knocked anyway.”“Then un-knock,” Theo said through the wood. “My hour is not a courtesy. It’s the only room in this house that isn’t a listening post. You just turned it into one.”Silence stretched in the hallway, tight and embarrassed.Dimitri spoke toward the door. “You’re right. We handle residuals without you. The

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX:“If I’m not needed, I disappear.”Theo said it in the kitchen at 7:15 a.m. before anyone had finished pouring coffee, like the sentence had been waiting under his tongue all night.Lyra turned. Dimitri stopped with the pot in his hand. June’s spoon hung in the air.“You don’t disappear,” Lyra said.“I do in my head.” Theo’s voice was fast, flat, and dangerous. “The hour held. You didn’t knock. The residual stayed downstairs. I sat with music and a ceiling and nobody needed me. And the whole time a part of me felt like I’d been erased from the house.”Anna banged a cup once and went back to chewing. Ordinary. Unimpressed.Dimitri set the pot down. “Not being needed for an hour is not erasure.”“It is when being needed was the only way I knew I was real here.” Theo stepped in harder. “You keep calling it recovery. It feels like falling out of the picture.”June’s voice came small. “I still see you.”“You see a closed door,” Theo said, too sharp. “Everybod

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT:“Not now.”Theo said it before June finished asking if he wanted to sit on the porch with her. No pause. No sorting. Just the hard block.June’s face fell. “It was normal.”“I don’t care what it was.” Theo was already halfway up the stairs. “Not now means not now.”Lyra came into the hallway fast. “Theo. Stop.”He stopped on the third step without turning. “You said decline was allowed.”“Decline is allowed,” Lyra said. “Turning every ordinary invitation into a door slam is not recovery. It’s isolation with better vocabulary.”Theo turned then, eyes bright and angry. “My body can’t tell the difference yet. You saw it with the groceries. Need lands and the post wakes up. If I have to take every normal task while the lag is this bad, I’ll end up back on the roster by accident.”Dimitri appeared from the living room with Anna on his hip. “So your solution is to refuse all contact that isn’t scheduled?”“My solution is to not get spiked into a job I just

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY:“It’s real—come—now.”Theo’s text hit at 1:41 a.m. in the middle of the third protected hour he’d managed to keep in a week. Dimitri was already moving before the second line arrived.Harder than residual. She’s scared.He typed while taking the stairs:Coming.Theo was on the floor of Anna’s room with the nightlight throwing hard edges across both of them. Anna’s coughs came stacked and sharp, her small hands clutching Theo’s shirt, eyes wide and wet. Not the soft residual. Not the maybe. The edge.“I was in the hour,” Theo said, shaking. “Door closed. Music on. I heard it through the wall and I almost didn’t check because the hour is supposed to be mine—then I checked—then I texted—I didn’t freeze—”“You did it right,” Dimitri said, already lifting Anna upright against his chest.Lyra hit the doorway with the bag. “Car. June. Now.”They moved.The ride was all short breaths and streetlights. Theo sat in the back with his fists locked on his knees, hospita