All Chapters of After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The first three days without anywhere to be were worse than any training session Nicoletta had ever put her through.Blair hadn't expected the shapelessness of it — no lectures, no rotations, no exams to dread, and instead just long stretches of daylight she didn't know what to do with, training sessions that filled a few hours and left the rest of the day standing open like a room with no furniture in it.She'd catch herself reaching for a textbook that wasn't there anymore, or glancing at a clock out of habit for a class she no longer had to be at, and each time the small absence would land freshly, as if she hadn't already grieved it once.Nicoletta noticed on the fourth day, watching her stare at nothing between drills instead of resetting her stance, her hands still half-raised from the last combination, eyes somewhere past the garden wall."You're somewhere else today.""I don't know what I am today." It came out more honest than Blair had planned, the words arriving before she'

Nicoletta had rigged something new to the range by the time they arrived — a length of rope and pulley strung between two posts, a paper target swinging at the end of it in an unpredictable arc, the whole contraption creaking faintly in the morning air."Moving, this time.""You're joking.""Renato's men don't stand still for you. Neither will Andrew, if it comes to that." She gave the target a push, sent it swinging in a lazy, uneven arc, watching it with the flat patience of someone who'd already run this drill a hundred times in her head. "Adjust or miss. Those are the only two options today."Blair missed. Extensively, embarrassingly, for the first twenty minutes, the target mocking her from every wrong angle imaginable, swinging low just as she corrected high, drifting right just as she'd settled her aim left, her shots going wide enough that Nicoletta stopped even offering commentary and let the failures speak for themselves. By the fifteenth miss her arms had started to shake f

She woke before he did, which almost never happened, and spent a long, unhurried minute just watching him sleep — the furrow between his brows gone for once, one arm still thrown loosely over her waist like even unconscious he hadn't quite let go of the habit of keeping her close.He looked younger like this. Ordinary, almost. Nothing in his face right now belonged to a don at all.She must have shifted, because his hand tightened reflexively before his eyes even opened."You're staring.""You're handsome when you're not scowling at paperwork. I'm allowed to notice.""Mm." He pulled her closer without opening his eyes fully, unwilling, apparently, to actually start the day yet. "Five more minutes."She gave him ten, mostly because she wasn't in any hurry to leave either.* * *He attempted eggs again downstairs, with exactly the same confidence and exactly the same result as the last time, and Blair took the pan out of his hands before the smoke alarm could get involved."You could ju

Blair spent most of the walk to Sofia's street rehearsing a version of this conversation that stayed calm, reasonable, investigative — the kind of conversation Lorenzo might have approved of, if Lorenzo approved of anything she did anymore. By the time she reached the door, she'd abandoned all of it. There wasn't a calm way to ask someone whether they'd handed you to a man who'd once locked you in the dark.Sofia opened the door herself this time, no mother hovering behind her, and something in her face — already braced, already exhausted — told Blair before either of them said a word that whatever this conversation was going to be, Sofia had been expecting it for longer than the last twenty-four hours."You should go.""I know about the prisoner." Blair kept her voice even, the way she'd learned to keep everything even lately. "The one from the harbor. He gave them your name, Sofia. What you wore the day you gave me the Marsala lead. That you asked me not to say where it came from. T

Neither of them spoke on the drive back, and it wasn't the comfortable kind of silence — Blair sat with her hands folded too tightly in her lap, replaying the exact moment Sofia's voice had gone steady and said okay, wondering how many different ways that single word could still end in a grave.Alessandro didn't take her home. She didn't ask him to.* * *He poured them both something dark and didn't bother pretending it was for celebration."You saved her life in there.""I gambled with it." Blair turned the glass without drinking from it. "There's a difference, and I'm not sure I like which one I actually did.""Both, probably." He said it without flinching from the truth of it, which she'd come to understand was simply how he handled everything ugly enough that flinching wouldn't help. "Most choices worth making in my world come apart like that if you look closely enough. Clean hands are a luxury for people who never have to decide anything that matters.""That's a bleak way to liv