Semua Bab The Angel Who Saved The Mafia Boss: Bab 1 - Bab 8

Before 11pm, Verve was already loud enough to make Catalina forget she was supposed to be working and start dancing along with the patrons.There was something she genuinely liked about nights at Verve—the music, the lights, the ballers with fast money, and the fact that she could dance all night while making good tips. Walking through a room full of wealthy people was hardly a bad way to make a living when a good smile could earn her a few hundred dollars.Some nights, customers could be handy, touching and trying to initiate sexual contact. One had even asked her what her price was for the night as though she were a prostitute. His balls had gotten a direct hit from her pointy heels that night, and when her boss Marcus scolded her afterward, she hadn't particularly cared. She'd been satisfied.She adjusted the tray in her hands and slipped between two tables, making little dance movements as she went while trying to ignore the painful pinching of her open-toe black stilettos.“Excus

The man didn’t look like someone holding fifteen years’ worth of answers. He looked like someone who desperately needed a shower.Catalina stood in the narrow alley behind Rosario’s Diner, her arms folded tightly across her chest as she watched him finish his cigarette. Grease, stale beer, and damp cardboard hung thick in the humid morning air. A dying security light buzzed overhead, barely noticeable beneath the growing daylight as it threw faint shadows across the brick walls. Every instinct told her to leave.The stranger checked his cheap wristwatch before lifting his eyes to her. “You came alone.”“You sound disappointed.”A grin spread across his weathered face. “I expected someone older.”“I expected someone cleaner,” she fired back.His grin only widened. “So you’re Catalina.”Her expression didn’t change. Very few people still knew she was investigating her mother’s death. Most assumed she had finally accepted the official story of an accidental overdose and moved on, but she

Three days had passed since Catalina's disastrous meeting in the alley, and life had settled back into its usual exhausting rhythm. Or at least, it had tried to.Between nursing classes, assignments, double shifts at Verve, and the investigation that refused to give her a single useful answer, Catalina barely had enough time to sleep. The five hundred dollars she had almost wasted on a brown envelope full of garbage still annoyed her every time she thought about it. She had written the man down as another dead end and finally decided to move on with her life, taking down all the pieces of her investigation from the living room she shared with Elena and dumping them in a corner of her room.Then she started noticing the cars.It began on a Wednesday morning. Catalina and Elena had just left their apartment building on their way to campus when Catalina slowed halfway down the pavement. A black sedan was parked across the street. The windows were tinted too dark to see through, and the

One full week. Seven days of the same four walls, the same rattling air conditioner, and the same thin curtains that did absolutely nothing to block the camera flashes outside. Catalina had stopped counting the exact number of times she looked through slits in the curtains. The photographers had thinned out after the first three days, but a stubborn handful still lingered on the sidewalk like they had nothing better to do with their lives. She had learned their faces by now. One man always had a camera hanging around his neck. A woman with oversized sunglasses somehow never seemed to leave. Two younger photographers kept pretending they were just passing by whenever Catalina looked through the window. They were ridiculous. And Catalina was losing her mind. She sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor at four in the morning, a half-empty bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos beside her and her laptop open on her lap. Printed articles and photographs covered every surface she could reach, while