Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Don Learned to Love Me After I Died: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

Ten years later.Pier Three, Brooklyn, New York.Bang! Bang! Bang!Gunfire shattered the quiet."Protect Mr. Bellandi! Fall back!" I shouted, firing into the darkness again and again.I was 20 now. In ten years, I'd gone from a girl who couldn't fire a gun to a personal bodyguard for the Bellandi family. I was content to be Luca's shadow and to carve a bloody path for him through anyone who stood in his way.Luca, 22, wore a black trench coat. Even in a hail of bullets, his face stayed calm.Just as we fell back to the armored car, a red dot flashed on the top floor of the warehouse.Sniper!The red dot settled right over Luca's heart.Luca sensed the danger, but there was no time for him to get out of the way.My mind went blank. I threw myself at Luca.Thwack!The bullet tore through flesh.The impact slammed me to the ground, and blood soaked through my shirt. A searing pain spread out from my left shoulder."Mara!"Luca's voice came out raw and frantic. He pulled me into his arms,

On our second day trapped in the ranger's cabin, hunger gnawed at my stomach.I looked at the last ration bar and swallowed. Fighting through the pain in my ribs, I broke it apart and held the biggest piece to Luca's lips."Mr. Bellandi, you need to eat something." I tried to keep my voice steady.Luca stared at the crumbs left in my hand. His voice was hoarse. "What about you? Mara, you can't make it on just that.""When I went out for firewood earlier, I found some wild berries under the snow," I lied, forcing myself to smile. "They were really sour, but they filled me up. I'm still stuffed."Luca knew there was no way berries could be growing in all that ice and snow. He knew my face had lost its color because I was bleeding inside. But he was too weak, so he chose to believe my lie. He ate the piece I'd given him, and I turned my head away to wipe off the blood seeping from the corner of my mouth.On the fourth day, Luca took a turn for the worse. His wound was infected, and he was

Celeste was like a white rose blooming at the very peak of power. She wasn't just beautiful. She had a sharp, savvy mind that no one could ignore.She'd only been in New York for three days when she got the Bellandi family's overseas accounts unfrozen. The FBI had kept them locked for three months. She pulled it off through the Laurent family's connections at Swiss banks. A full five hundred million dollars flowed back into the Bellandi coffers, and the elders who'd been reserving judgment on her started looking at her with something close to worship.Luca had told his father to his face that he was against the match. But I knew how ambitious he was. Faced with Celeste's vast resources and her head for finance, he had no choice but to take her seriously.I'd assumed that a high-and-mighty aristocrat like Celeste would pick up on what was going on between Luca and me, and then do whatever it took to humiliate me and put me in my place.But I was wrong.That afternoon, I was on duty in t

The wound in my stomach got infected, and I spent two full weeks in the hospital.During those two weeks, Luca was dealing with the fallout from the assassination attempt, caught up in a vicious power struggle with rival families. He hardly ever found time to come see me.Instead, it was Celeste who came. His "fiancée," the woman who by rights should have seen me as a thorn in her side, showed up at the hospital every day with soup she'd made herself. She even insisted on changing my dressings herself, no matter what the nurses said.During one of our talks, Celeste happened to find out that I wasn't a sworn member of the Bellandi family. All I had was the small security stipend Don Bellandi paid me, and there was no way I could afford an expensive private hospital room like this.The next day, I was told that a large sum had been deposited into my medical account. Celeste told me, as if it were nothing, that it came out of the Bellandi family's "security budget" for the year. But I kn

Three days into my icy standoff with Luca, someone I never expected showed up in New York.Gabriel Costa, the Don of the Corsican mafia.In a discreet tea room below street level in Manhattan, I met the man whose name was known all over the Mediterranean. Gabriel wore an expensive, perfectly tailored gray suit. His eyes were as sharp as a hawk's, and he had the steady authority of a seasoned leader."Ms. Quinn." Gabriel poured me a cup of black tea himself and got straight to the point. "I've seen the security footage of you taking down three top-tier assassins at the InterContinental. Your combat instincts and judgment are the best I've ever seen in a security professional."I held my cup and watched him warily. "Don Costa, I'm guessing you didn't come looking for me just to pay me compliments."Gabriel smiled, not bothering to hide how impressed he was. "On behalf of the Costa family, I'm formally offering you a position. Head of security for the Port of Marseille and our Mediterrane