All Chapters of Marry Mafia King or My Fifth Fiancés Dies: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

“The last person seen with him.” I repeated the words slowly, my eyes locked on the ruined face in the photograph, that violent scratch where a man’s identity should have been. “You need to tell me everything now. All of it. Who are these people, Maximilian?”He set the photograph on the desk between us, smoothing its worn edges with careful fingers, as though handling something fragile enough to shatter.“This is my father,” he said, tapping the older man’s image first. “And this is yours.” His finger moved to my father, younger, brighter, his arm still slung around the shoulder of the man beside him. “They knew each other long before either of us was born.”“Knew each other how?”“Business.” Maximilian’s jaw tightened slightly. “A partnership neither of them ever spoke about publicly. Your father wasn’t just a businessman, Emery. He and my father built something together, decades ago, something that operated in the shadows of legitimate industry.”My stomach twisted. “What kind of s

“He knows exactly what we’ve been discussing tonight.”The words hung in the air between us, and I watched Maximilian transform in real time, the shaken man from a moment ago hardening back into something colder, sharper, every trace of vulnerability locked away behind sheer necessity.“Lucas!” His voice cracked through the house like a gunshot as he moved toward the door. “Lucas, now!”Footsteps thundered down the hallway almost instantly, and Lucas appeared in the doorway, alert despite the late hour, his hand already resting near the weapon holstered at his side.“Sir?”“Lock down the mansion. Every entrance, every exit. I want every window sealed and every guard doubled at the perimeter.” Maximilian’s voice had gone flat and commanding, with nothing left of the man who had just admitted fear to me minutes ago. “Now, Lucas!”Lucas didn’t hesitate, pulling out his radio and barking orders down the hallway as he moved. Within moments, the mansion around us shifted into something aliv

The words hung in the air of Maximilian’s office long after they’d left the speakers, and I found myself frozen, my hand clutched so tightly around Maximilian’s that my knuckles had gone white. The room felt smaller suddenly. The shelves of books, the heavy curtains, all of it pressing closer, as though the walls themselves were leaning in to listen.“Emery.” His voice came low, careful. “We can stop. You don’t have to hear the rest right now.”“No.” My voice cracked, but I shook my head firmly. “I need to hear it. All of it. I’ve waited eleven years for even a fraction of this. I’m not stopping now.”He didn’t argue. He simply reached forward and let the recording continue, and my father’s voice filled the room again—thinner than memory, but unmistakably him. It had that particular cadence he’d always used when he was choosing his words with extra care, the same voice he’d used explaining difficult things to me as a child.“I don’t have much time,” my father continued, his breathing

“Your father asked something of me, before he died.”The sentence hung between us, heavy enough that I felt it settle physically against my chest. I stared at Maximilian, waiting, my whole body coiled tight with a dread I couldn't quite name yet, some instinct already bracing for whatever came next.“What did he ask?” My voice came out steadier than I expected, though my hands had begun trembling again at my sides, betraying the calm I was trying so desperately to project.Maximilian didn’t answer immediately. He turned slightly away from me, his gaze drifting toward the window, toward the darkness pressing against the glass, as though the words waiting behind his teeth required somewhere else to look before he could finally release them. The silence stretched long enough that I nearly repeated the question, my patience fraying with every passing second.“He asked me to protect you,” he said finally. “If anything ever happened to him.”The room seemed to tilt beneath me. “Protect me.

“If you want to hate me, you should at least understand exactly why I destroyed them, one by one, before you decide that hatred is deserved.”I stared at the folder, my chest tight, torn between the desperate need to reject everything he was showing me and the sinking suspicion that rejecting it would only be easier, not truer.“Fine.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “Show me. All of it. Don’t leave anything out this time.”Maximilian nodded once, sliding another page toward me, this one containing what looked like a corporate registry, names and dates typed in stark, clinical rows.“His name wasn’t really Daniel Whitmore,” he said quietly.I blinked. “What?”“The man you were engaged to,” Maximilian clarified, his voice careful, watching my reaction closely. “That wasn’t his real name. He’d been operating under it for nearly six years before he ever approached you.”“That’s not possible.” I shook my head, disbelief hardening into something closer to denial. “I met his family.