All Chapters of The Mafia Boss’s Deadly Little Secret : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

~~Evans~~We were still at the safehouse, waiting for Marcus to confirm the road ahead was clear before we pushed on toward the warehouse property, and Felix had been quiet since the attack, sitting across from me in the small sitting room with a cup of coffee he hadn’t touched, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite place.“I don’t understand why you keep underestimating me,” he said finally, setting the cup down harder than necessary. “I lost my memory of one year, not my ability or my strength. I’ve killed people in the past. I know how to use a fucking gun. So why are you staring at me like that? Like, oh, this is all new? Like you’re surprised I can actually handle myself?”“I’m not underestimating you.”“You are.” He crossed his arms, that same sharp, assessing look I’d been on the receiving end of for two weeks now aimed squarely at me. “I watched your face in that car, Evans. You looked at me like I’d grown a second head. Like the version of me who just shot out a mov

~Felix~"Reyes did," he said, not looking into my eyes.It felt like he was hiding the real person from me, something in the way his gaze slid just slightly off to the side, something in the careful flatness of his voice that didn't match the weight of what he was supposedly confessing. I'd caught that same tell before, dinner table, garden, every single time he handed me a piece of truth with something else buried underneath it."Say that again," I said quietly. "Look at me this time."He looked up, and I watched him force it, watched the effort it took him to hold my eyes steady. "Reyes shot you. During the confrontation. I wasn't able to stop it in time.""You weren't there.""I was there." A pause, just a fraction too long. "I tried to intervene. I didn't get to you fast enough."I studied his face, every line of it, searching for the crack I knew was there somewhere, the same way I'd searched for it at that dinner table, in that garden, standing in his study with a folder of surv

~Felix~The drive to the warehouse was silent, Evans sitting beside me with his jaw tight, phone finally tucked away after whatever call had kept him out on that balcony long enough that I'd started counting the minutes. I didn't ask what it was about. I was too tired, too wrung out from everything that had already happened that day, to chase one more thread I didn't have the strength to pull on yet.The building came into view as the car slowed, and something in my chest tightened before I'd even consciously registered why.Old. Industrial. Harbor road, salt and rust in the air even through the closed windows, the kind of structure that had clearly been abandoned long enough for the paint to peel and the signage out front to fade past legibility. Ordinary, by every outward measure. And yet something in me recoiled the second it came fully into view, some old animal instinct flinching before my conscious mind had caught up to why."You feel it too," Evans said quietly, watching my fac

~Reyes~"Turn him," I said, standing at the window of my office, watching the city lights spread out below like a map of territory I intended to eventually redraw entirely. "I want Felix remembering exactly how much he hated that man before any of this amnesia nonsense happened. I want that hatred sitting right back where it belongs, sharp and personal, and I want it there fast."My right hand stood near the desk, arms crossed, turning the instruction over before responding, which was one of the reasons I kept him close. He didn't just execute. He thought first."You want us feeding him memories directly," he said slowly. "Or you want us creating conditions that trigger what's already in there.""Both, if we can manage it." I turned from the window, pacing back toward the desk. "We already know proximity to familiar places does something to him, the estate, apparently the warehouse too, based on what our people saw from a distance before the attack. His own mind is doing half our work

~Felix~"It started small," Evans said, sitting across from me, hands clasped like a man trying to hold himself together through sheer physical pressure. "You hated me. I know you already understand that part, but I need you to understand how much. You tried, more than once, to have my operations shut down. We crossed paths at a gala, maybe eight months before the amnesia, and you spent the entire evening making sure every single person in that room knew exactly how little respect you had for me."I nodded along, keeping my face arranged into something open, attentive, the exact expression of a man hungry for any piece of his missing life he could get his hands on.I'm done believing anything anyone tells me, I thought, watching his mouth move, watching the careful, rehearsed quality behind every word even now, even in a conversation he claimed was finally, completely honest. Not him. Not James. Not even my own body, apparently, since it's been keeping secrets from my own mind this en