All Chapters of MARRIED TO THE MAFIA KING : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWELVE:Lyra found him in the study before she'd decided what she was going to say, which was probably a mistake, because the words that came out weren't the careful ones she'd rehearsed on the walk down the stairs."You lied to me."Dimitri looked up from the papers on his desk, and whatever he saw on her face made him set his pen down slowly, deliberately, the way a man moves when he senses the ground shifting under him and doesn't want to spook whatever's causing it."About what.""My father." She crossed the room and didn't stop at the desk this time — she came around it, into the space he usually kept guarded, close enough that he had to tilt his head up to hold her eyes. "You told me he owed you money. A debt. That's the word you used. Debt."Something moved behind his eyes, fast and involuntary, gone before she could name it. But she'd seen it. That was the thing about learning to read a room with her hands instead of her eyes — she'd started reading him the same way, a

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:"So is yours."The words sat in the room like something spilled, spreading before either of them could stop it, and Lyra heard herself ask the only question that mattered before she'd fully processed the first one."What ledger?"Dimitri stood, crossed to a section of the bookshelf she'd walked past a dozen times without noticing, and pressed something she couldn't see. A panel gave way, quiet and smooth, like it had been oiled recently, like it was opened more often than she'd have guessed. He came back with a leather-bound book, worn soft at the corners, and set it on the desk between them the way he'd set down the photograph of Calder Mace four days ago."This is what your father died protecting," he said. "This is what Mace has been trying to get his hands on for three years."Lyra didn't touch it right away. She looked at it the way you'd look at something that might be hot, something that might change the temperature of the whole room if you got too close too f

CHAPTER SIXTEEN:She didn't say anything at first. She just stood there behind him in the dark hallway, close enough to hear him breathing, and let the silence stretch until he was the one who finally broke it."I know you're there," Dimitri said, without turning around. "You're quieter than most people. Not quiet enough.""I wasn't trying to hide.""No." He turned then, and his face in the low lamplight looked older than she'd ever seen it, all the careful architecture of control worn thin. "I don't think you know how to hide anything anymore. Not from me."She came to stand beside him, facing the photograph instead of him — the small wooden house, the smoke curling from the chimney, a life so far removed from marble floors and locked gates that it looked like it belonged to a different man entirely."Tell me," she said. Not a demand this time. Just an opening, the way she'd have left a door ajar for June when she was small and scared and needed permission more than she needed to be

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:“You don’t get to steal my family from me!” Lyra’s voice cracked like a whip through the marble entryway, raw with fury and terror. “Not June. Not Theo. Not ever, Dimitri. Tell me where they are right now or I swear I’ll burn this entire empire down myself to find them.”Dimitri stood like a statue carved from storm clouds, his broad shoulders rigid under the dim lights. The man who had kissed her so tenderly by the mountain photograph mere hours ago was gone, replaced by the mafia king who commanded fear across half the city. His dark eyes locked onto hers, unflinching, but she caught the flicker—regret, maybe, or the strain of a man unused to explaining himself.“They’re at the lake house on Blackthorn Ridge,” he said, voice low and controlled, each word precise as a loaded gun. “Thirty miles north. Off-grid. My best men—Viktor and his entire team—are guarding them with their lives. No one gets close. I moved them three hours ago the second I learned about the car

CHAPTER TWENTY:“Send out the girl and the journalist, Voss, or we turn this mill into your tomb!” Mace’s enforcer’s voice boomed through the megaphone, cold and mocking. Bullets chewed into the rusted machinery around them.Dimitri fired back twice, precise shots that elicited a scream outside. “Over my dead body, you bastard!” He reloaded with lightning speed, eyes blazing. “Lyra, stay low. Elena, if you have any other tricks, now’s the time.”Lyra crouched behind the heavy metal press, the unlocked burner phone burning in her grip. “The files are open—Anna’s folder, the ledger fragments. We can’t let them get this!” Her voice cracked with adrenaline. “Dimitri, your sister’s proof is here. Mace ordered the hit to keep you in line. My father knew it all.”Elena pressed a hand to her bleeding arm, face pale. “He’s right about one thing—we’re trapped. But the phone has a distress beacon. I can activate it, send the data to my secure server. It’ll buy us time if we survive the next five