The Don Learned to Love Me After I Died のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

Three years later. The Port of Marseille, France.The sea wind blew in, damp and salty.In the biggest underground fight gym and security base in Marseille, I was dressed in fitted black tactical gear. A heavyweight fighter had tried to provoke me, and I'd just slammed him onto the mat. Now my boot was on his throat, and my eyes were as cold as a blade.The crowd around us erupted in wild cheers. "Chief Quinn! Chief Quinn!"Three whole years had gone by.Three years earlier, after I left New York, Gabriel had offered me the job again. This time, no one could stop me.In those three years, with the marksmanship and fighting instincts I'd honed while crawling out of piles of bodies, I'd led the Costa family's security teams in bringing the three most dangerous smuggling routes in the Mediterranean under control. We'd taken out more than 12 enemy bosses.I was no longer that lowly bodyguard who hid in the dark and took bullets for the heir. Now I was the Costa family's most trusted head o

"That's impossible! Gabriel would never send people after Celeste!"In the Costa family's temporary command post, I slammed my hand on the table and shot to my feet.As head of security for the Costa family, I knew Gabriel's strategy inside and out. We badly needed a partnership with the Laurent family on the Mediterranean shipping routes. Attacking Celeste would do us nothing but harm!Someone was framing us! They wanted to start an all-out war between the Costa, Bellandi, and Laurent families!Gabriel tried to talk me out of it, but I didn't listen. I knew every inch of New York, so I armed myself and went alone into the slums where the attackers had disappeared.After six straight hours of bloody hunting and four dead street informants, I finally dug out the truth.The people behind it weren't the Costa family at all. It was the old guard inside the Bellandi family, led by Luca's uncle! Those old-school elders were afraid Celeste would bring Europe's new rules to New York, and even

In the two years after Celeste left, Luca acted like a man possessed. When the Laurent family pulled its money out, the Bellandi family was thrown into the worst crisis it had ever faced. Luca's father was so furious he had a stroke and ended up bedridden, and the Bellandi family was under attack from inside and out. But even so, Luca spent most of his energy trying to win me back.He'd drive straight into a firefight in the middle of one of my jobs, not caring if he died, just to take a bullet for me. He'd stand outside my apartment building late at night in the pouring rain like a stray dog, all night long. He even ignored death threats from the Bellandi elders and stood up at a joint meeting of the underworld to announce, in front of everyone, that I was Luca Bellandi's one and only love.He knew perfectly well that all of this would put me right in the line of fire. But he didn't care. All he knew how to do was drown out the panic inside him with grand gestures that moved no one bu

I knew I shouldn't go back. I'd sworn to myself more times than I could count that even if Luca died in the streets of New York, I would never set foot in that mess again.But when I heard his ragged, desperate breathing on the other end of the line, the instinct I'd suppressed for five years broke loose in an instant. I couldn't stop myself from wondering if he was shivering alone in the dark again, the way he had when we were kids.Three days later, I led 30 handpicked Corsican fighters loyal only to me into Brooklyn. The borough was under tight lockdown, and we slipped in like ghosts.The men behind the coup had cut off every route in and out of the Bellandi estate. In the pouring rain, I snapped the necks of three sentries myself and blew up the power room. Then, reeking of gunpowder and soaked in blood and rain, I kicked open the door of the underground bunker where they were holding Luca.In the corner of the bunker, Luca was tied to a chair with his hands behind his back. Five y

The night Mara died, a storm of blood swept through the entire New York underworld.Luca led the enforcers himself and wiped out every elder who'd taken part in the coup, along with Dante, the adopted brother who'd betrayed him. But in the end, he honored Mara's last request. When he stood with his gun in front of Dante's daughter, a trembling five-year-old, he closed his eyes and lowered the gun. He didn't take his revenge out on the traitor's innocent family.Three days later, Mara's funeral was held at a quiet cemetery on Long Island.A light rain was falling. Celeste, dressed all in black, came to the grave with her husband, Thomas, at her side. The white rose who had once been so proud and untouchable now stood at Mara's headstone, sobbing too hard to speak.When the funeral was over and the mourners had gone, Celeste walked up to Luca, who was standing in the rain like a stone statue.She stood there without an umbrella and let the rain soak her hair. Then she shoved a heavy wood