All Chapters of The mafia king’s substitute husband: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

STAYINGThe staff come and go quietly, clearing the last of the glass, dressing the shallow cut across Salvatore's heel with the same brisk efficiency they bring to everything in this house. Salvatore waves them off once it's done, and it's only once the door clicks shut behind the last of them that the room finally settles back into quiet.He turns his attention to Elian's hand, cleaning the cut properly this time, wrapping a thin strip of gauze around his palm with more care than Elian expects from hands that size, from a man capable of the things Salvatore is capable of. Elian watches him do it in silence, still trying to work out where to put everything he's feeling."There." Salvatore sets the kit aside once he's finished. "That should hold until morning. Try not to open it back up.""Thank you." Elian says it quietly, and means it more than the two words let on.Salvatore doesn't answer that directly. He simply nods once, stands, testing his own bandaged foot with a careful shif

THE CHAINELIAN'S POV I wake slowly, the room already gone gold and warm around me, morning light spilling through the tall windows in a way that tells me it's later than I meant to sleep. There's no confusion about where I am. I know exactly whose ceiling I'm looking at, whose sheets I'm tangled in, the whole strange shape of last night still sitting close enough to the surface that I don't need a moment to place any of it. I remember watching him sleep. I remember telling myself, firmly, uselessly, not to feel what I was already feeling."Good morning. How are you feeling today? Breakfast is ready."The voice isn't Salvatore's. I turn my head toward it and find one of the staff standing a careful distance from the bed, a tray balanced in her hands, not quite meeting my eyes the way none of them ever quite do. Somewhere beyond the far door, I can hear water running, steady and steamed, and I understand without needing to be told that Salvatore is in the shower."Good morning," I man

ALONEELIAN'S POVI hear the car pull away before I let myself believe it's actually happening.It takes a while after Salvatore leaves the room for the house to settle into whatever passes for quiet in a place like this, footsteps in the hall, a door somewhere below, the low murmur of staff going about the business of a morning I'm not part of. But eventually even that thins out, and when I finally hear the distant sound of an engine turning over in the drive, then fading, then gone entirely, something in my chest loosens that I hadn't realized was wound so tight.He's gone.I lie there for a moment just testing the feeling of that, half suspicious of it, the way you test a bruise to see if it still hurts. No footsteps coming back for a forgotten phone. No voice calling something down the hall at the last second. Just quiet, actual quiet, the kind I haven't had since I arrived in this house.I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, and something almost like a laugh nearly s

WHAT I ALMOST SAIDELIAN'S POVThe phone keeps ringing, insistent, bright against the quiet of the room, and I'm halfway to my feet before I've properly decided to move, my body understanding before my mind catches up to why. There's only one person who has that number. Only one person from the whole life I used to have who I trusted enough to hand it to before everything about my days stopped being mine to arrange, and hearing it ring now, after weeks of silence long enough that I'd started to wonder if I'd ever hear from him again, does something to my chest I don't have a name ready for.I cross the room quickly, faster than Ferrara would probably like, my bare feet cold against the floor, my hand already reaching for the phone lit up and buzzing on the small table by the window. My fingers actually brush the edge of it, close enough that I can feel the faint vibration traveling up into my palm, close enough that another half second would have had it pressed against my ear.The doo

THE KISSELIAN'S POV Salvatore lets go of me first, stepping back just enough to reach past me for the phone still buzzing insistently on the table. I watch him do it, too stunned by how close we'd just come to something neither of us said out loud to stop him, and by the time I think to protest it's already too late. He looks at the screen for a long moment, jaw tight, and then, without asking, without so much as glancing at me for permission, he swipes to answer and ends the call in the same motion, silencing it mid ring. His thumb moves again, deliberate, and I realize a second too late exactly what he's doing."What are you doing," I say, my voice sharper now, some of the warmth from a moment ago curdling fast into something closer to fury. "Salvatore, don't.""I'm blocking it." He says it flatly, like it's the most obvious, most reasonable thing in the world, already setting the phone back down on the table, out of my reach now in every way that matters. "Whoever that number bel