All Chapters of The Mafia Boss’s Deadly Little Secret : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

~~Felix~~My family home was gone. The De Luca underground headquarters gone. My friends gone. What happened in the past one year.The words kept looping through my head, over and over, faster than I could keep up with them, faster than I could breathe around them, standing there in that entryway with ash still crusted under my fingernails and a man in front of me who’d just admitted, out loud, finally, that there was a truth he’d been keeping from me on purpose.“Say it.” My voice didn’t even sound like mine anymore, stripped down to something raw and shaking. “Whatever it is. Just say it.”He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, mouth slightly open, like the words had gotten all the way up his throat and then died right at the edge of his teeth, and something about that silence, that specific, cowardly silence, broke something loose in me that I hadn’t even known was still holding together.“My parents are dead.” I said it myself, because apparently he wasn’t going to. “Aren’t

~~Felix~~I woke up still curled against his chest, and for one disoriented second, caught somewhere between sleep and the ache already settling into my neck from a night spent folded up on a staircase, I forgot everything that had happened the day before. Forgot the burned house. Forgot the flashes, the headache, the ash under my nails. Forgot that my parents were dead and had been dead for eight months while I sat in a garden letting a stranger cut me roses.Then it all came rushing back at once, and my whole body went rigid before I’d even opened my eyes properly.Evans stirred beneath me almost immediately, like he’d been half awake the entire time, monitoring even his own sleep for the moment I surfaced. “Hey,” he said quietly, voice rough with disuse, one hand coming up slow to smooth over my hair. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”“We slept on the stairs.” My voice came out cracked, throat raw from crying myself hoarse the night before.“You fell asleep before I could convince you to

~~Evans~~He fell asleep in the wreckage of that pillow fort, curled against my chest with one hand still loosely fisted in my shirt like even unconscious he wasn’t quite ready to let go, and I lay there for a long time just watching him, listening to the soft, even sound of his breathing, memorizing the particular way the afternoon light caught the side of his face through the gap in the collapsed blanket wall.I hadn’t expected the fort to work as well as it did. Honestly I’d built the thing half out of desperation, some frantic need to give him even one hour that wasn’t soaked in grief or suspicion or the exhausting work of trying to catch me in a lie, and somewhere between the toga and the marshmallow on his nose, watching him actually laugh, really laugh, the sound of it had done something to my chest I hadn’t been prepared for.I forgot what it sounded like, I thought, brushing a piece of hair back from his forehead, careful not to wake him. A year of him hating me, two months o

~~Felix~~Breakfast came out different that morning, one of the other staff, a younger woman I didn’t recognize, setting the tray down with hands that shook slightly, eyes not quite meeting mine, and something about the wrongness of that, the specific, careful avoidance of it, had every alarm bell in my body ringing before I’d even asked a single question.“Where’s Renata,” I said.The girl froze, tray still half in her hands, and that hesitation told me more than any answer could have. “I’m not sure, sir. I think she’s, um. Off today.”“Off.” I set my fork down slow, watching her face the way I’d learned to watch every face in this house since the day I woke up in that hospital bed. “She’s worked every single day since I’ve been here. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who takes days off.”“I really wouldn’t know, sir.” She set the tray down too fast, coffee sloshing slightly over the rim, and left the room quicker than any normal morning would’ve called for.I sat there staring

~~Evans~~ A call came in from the front gate a little after two in the afternoon, Sanders’s voice clipped and careful in a way that told me immediately this wasn’t a delivery or a staff issue. “Sir, there’s a man here asking for master Felix. Says he’s a lawyer. Won’t give a name over the intercom, says it’s confidential business, but he’s insisting on speaking with Felix directly and won’t leave.” “I’ll come down.” I found him standing just outside the gate, an older man in an immaculate gray suit, briefcase in hand, patient in the particular way that told me he’d done this exact kind of waiting before and wasn’t going to be rushed by anyone’s timeline but his own. “Can I help you,” I said, stepping out to meet him. “Mr. Moretti.” He inclined his head slightly, polite, professional, giving away absolutely nothing. “My name is Alistair Grant. I represent a client whose identity I’m not at liberty to disclose without proper verification. I need to speak with Felix De Luca directly