Alle Kapitel von HAUNTED BY THE MAFIA KING : Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 9

HAUNTED BY THE MAFIA KINGBy Ann E.Chapter 1: The Candle Nobody SawLila POV The kitchen was dark and smelled of lemon polish, and I was crouched in front of the third cupboard like a thief.Behind the flour tins, where the housekeeper never looked, sat a single cupcake in a paper case. I'd bought it yesterday from the bakery on Aldrich Street, paid in coins, and hidden it before anyone could ask what it was for. I set it on the counter, pushed one candle into the frosting, and struck a match.The flame shook, then steadied.Five-forty in the morning. Twenty-two years old.I closed my eyes. I'd made the same wish for as long as I could remember, and it embarrassed me how simple it still was.*Let them see me.*I blew out the candle. Smoke curled up, thin and grey, and the kitchen went dark again.I ate the cupcake standing up and washed the plate before anyone came down.By breakfast the dining room had been dressed for a party. Ribbons on the chair backs. A banner that read HAPPY B

HAUNTED BY THE MAFIA KINGBy Ann E.Chapter 3: The Door I Shouldn't Have OpenedLila POV I cooked all afternoon, and I told myself it wasn't an apology.Lamb, because it was his favourite too, though he'd never said so. Roast potatoes. A lemon tart from the bakery on Aldrich Street, in a white box tied with string. By six, the whole kitchen smelled like the dinner I'd imagined us having in the flat he'd talked about, and I packed it into two containers and carried them to the door.I stopped at the dressing table on my way out.The hairpin lay where I'd left it. I didn't know why I picked it up. For luck, maybe. Or out of stubbornness, because it was mine, and tonight I wanted something on me that nobody had given back with a smile and forgotten.I pinned it above my ear, took the silver key from my coat pocket, and went.Jason's building smelled of floor cleaner and somebody's takeaway. I rode the lift to the fourth floor with the containers warm against my chest, rehearsing.I'm no

HAUNTED BY THE MAFIA KINGBy Ann E.Chapter 5: Before the Morning Finds UsThe car smells of leather and rain, and neither of us says a word.The driver doesn't look at me once. His eyes stay on the road and the mirror, and I notice that he never lets them drift to the back seat. The stranger sits beside me with a careful hand's width between us. His phone lights up on his knee. He glances at the screen, turns it face down, and then switches it off entirely."You can do that?" I say. "Just ignore it?""Tonight I can."The city slides past the window in wet gold streaks. I watch it and don't think. It is the strangest relief of my life, to sit in the dark with someone who is not asking me for anything.We stop beneath a building of dark glass. A man opens the door without a word, and another, standing by a private lift, looks at the floor as we pass. The stranger says, very quietly, to someone behind me, "Nothing from tonight leaves this building.""Understood," a voice says.I almost

HAUNTED BY THE MAFIA KINGBy Ann ETyler POVChapter 7: The Empty Side of the BedI wake at the sound of the latch.It is a small sound, a click no louder than a pen set down on a desk. In another life it would not have reached me. But I have spent twenty years sleeping like a man who expects to be woken, and my eyes are open before the door finishes closing.The room is grey. The curtains hold a thin line of dawn. The bed beside me is still warm in the shape of her, and then, as I lie there counting my own breaths, it is not.I could follow.I know exactly how long it would take. Four seconds to dress, the lift, the lobby, the street. She is on foot, in heels, in the rain. I would reach her before she found a taxi.I stay where I am.I expect nothing from you, I told her. Not gratitude. Not tomorrow. Not your name. I said it so smoothly. I meant it, which is the irritating part. A man who gives his word and breaks it at six in the morning because he doesn't like how the room feels is

Chapter 9: The Promise Chloe MadeOn Tuesday morning my mother pours my coffee, and I tell her I'd prefer tea."Since when?""Since yesterday."She hesitates, then reaches for the pot. She is wearing the green cardigan again, and her hair is pinned perfectly. If I hadn't heard her voice rising and falling behind the study door last night, I would think nothing had happened in this house at all."Mr. Hale will ring tomorrow," she says, to the teapot. "And Friday at ten, the archive. You needn't trouble yourself with any of it.""You've said.""Because it's true."Across the table, Vanessa turns a page of her magazine without reading it. Dad's paper rustles. Nobody looks up. It is the most ordinary breakfast in the world, and every sentence is a door being closed very gently.I drink my tea. I say nothing. I'm learning that silence is a kind of answer, and that in this house, nobody has ever bothered to listen to mine.At the shop, Mr. Abara holds out a peppermint, and the smell of it m