All Chapters of My Boyfriend's Mafia Daddy: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Every instinct in her told her to keep walking, to disappear into the crowd of students still filming her with their phones held low and unashamed. But something in his tone made her stop, some old habit of listening to him that she hadn't managed to unlearn yet.He rose from where he'd been sitting, unhurried, brushing an invisible crease from his shirt before he spoke again, loud enough now that the whole courtyard could hear him."You should all know something," he said, looking past Lia to the crowd that had gathered. "Since apparently we're putting on a show today.""Matteo," Lia said quietly, a warning she already knew wouldn't land.He ignored her."Six months ago, the five of us made a bet." He gestured lazily toward his friends, who were watching him now with a mixture of amusement and mild surprise, as if even they weren't sure where this was going. "Whoever could make the most forgettable girl on this entire campus fall in love with them first would win. No shortcuts. No mo

The silence stretched so long that even the wind seemed to be waiting.Then someone gasped, quiet and involuntary, and it seemed to break something loose, because after that the courtyard filled with the soft, disbelieving murmur of students who understood, even if they didn't fully understand why, that they'd just witnessed something no one would forget.Matteo's jaw worked, his chest rising and falling too fast, blood still trailing thin from the graze at his ear. For a moment, the old arrogance flared back to life in his eyes, his chin lifting, his mouth already opening to say something sharp enough to salvage what little pride he had left.Lorenzo only smiled.It wasn't a large smile. It barely moved his mouth at all. But Matteo had grown up watching that particular expression, had learned as a boy exactly what it meant, and whatever words had been forming in his throat died there instantly.He remembered the second shot. He remembered how close it had come. Slowly, and with visi

The strategy room smelled like cigar smoke and old leather, windowless by design, its walls lined with maps of Italy marked in red pins, family crests pinned beside major cities like pieces on a board only Lorenzo fully understood how to play.A long oak table stretched across the center of the room, and around it sat the men who ran the De Luca empire in quiet, in shadows, in numbers most people never saw.Lorenzo stood at the head of the table. Vittorio stood near the head of the table, composed as always, a folder of documents resting neatly beneath one hand.Beside him, sprawled back in his chair with his boots propped carelessly on the table's edge, sat a mountain of a man named Salvatore Greco, though nobody outside this room had called him that in years. Everyone simply called him Orso the Bear, and he wore the name the way other men wore medals with his fists and scars, with a jagged line across one eyebrow, knuckles permanently swollen from more fights than anyone could count

The phone call reached Nico Romano just after sunrise, and by the time he understood what it meant, he was already pulling his jacket on with one arm and shouting orders with the other."Say that again," he barked into the phone, weaving through the hallway of his estate. "Slower.""Unknown men," his port manager said, voice shaking audibly over the line. "They showed up an hour ago with paperwork, said the whole route's been sold. Our own guards let them through, Don Romano, they had clearance codes, current ones, I don't understand how, ""Get every man you can reach. I want cars moving in five minutes."By the time they tore through the gates of the port, morning light spilling flat and gray across the water, half the Romano family's soldiers were already spilling out with weapons drawn, fanning out across the loading docks like they expected a war to already be underway.Nico stepped out last, gun in hand, jaw set, scanning the scene for whatever enemy had dared to walk onto his t

Lia had learned by now that when Lorenzo said "dress comfortably," it rarely meant what comfortable meant to anyone else, so she stood at the mirror turning sideways for the third time, trying to guess what kind of comfortable a man who owned three separate wine cellars considered acceptable."You're overthinking it," Raven said from the doorway, arms crossed, watching her with the patient exhaustion of a bodyguard who'd already been asked for her opinion twice."I'm not overthinking it.""You changed twice in the last ten minutes.""That's not overthinking. That's diligence."Raven only raised an eyebrow and said nothing else, which somehow felt worse than if she'd argued.By the time Lia made it downstairs, Lorenzo was already waiting by the car, and whatever nerves she'd carried down with her promptly dissolved into something closer to disbelief.He wore no suit. No cufflinks, no tie, nothing pressed or tailored within an inch of its life, just dark jeans and a simple linen shirt w