Accidentally Yours (Merffy Kizzmet) novel Chapter 180

Chapter 180

Enzo

Enzo heard the words and felt them land like ice down his spine, Clalins. Not permissions.

He closed the space between them in thure long steps, the room narrowing until Balael’s perfume – expensive, faintly metallic–filled his nose. The others fell silent, a held breath in the scrape of concrete and paint. Somewhere behind him a mug clinked as Dom’s fingers tightened on the rim. Nico’s jaw worked; Gino readied, every tendon a taut wire.

“You think you can ledger my woman?” Enzo said, voice low enough to scrape. “You don’t get to write terms on my life and expect the ink to stand.”

Rafael’s smile was a blade with a velvet handle. “I don’t write terms, Maraschi. I collect debts. Names. Actions. The world runs on exchanges, and some exchanges are older than your pride.”

Keep it small. Keep it tidy. Don’t let him see the tremor in your hands, Enzo told himself, the order steadier than any soldier’s bark. If I move wrong she becomes the cost. Not acceptable.

Lola sat between them like a shipwreck, white hair limp against her cheeks, eyes raw and distant. She did not shout. She did not rise. She now cleaved him down the one that had always lit something inside him had nothing left in her to fight with. That raw, hollow look the middle. He wanted to grab Rafael by the neck and fold him in half. He wanted to kneel and cradle her and never leave her side.

Instead he stayed upright. He let what needed he colled and dangerous.

Dom peeled a hand off the table, fingers curling. “You walk,” he warned, voice like gravel, “Now,”

Rafael inclined his head the merest fraction. “I will walk,” he said. “For now.” He took a step back, gloved palms loose at his sides. “Think of this as an accounting.” The word hung there, clinical and cold. “When I call, she answers. It isn’t a favor. It’s recompense.”

Enzo’s laugh was humorless. “You mistake my silence for weakness. You mistake our code for bargaining chips.”

Rafael’s eyes flicked toward Lola, then to Enzo, and something almost like curiosity softened the fury in his face. “You have a different code, yes. But codes bend. Economies shift. No one is exempt. Not even you, Don Maraschi.” He pronounced the title just long enough to remind them all of the world he moved in that marble corridors hummed with ledgers and leverage where blood was only a variable.

–

te small of Lola’s back. Her skin was ice under his palm. He drew in a breath and let it out like an oath. “You want Enzo’s hand rested on the claim? Take the world,” he said. “But not her. Not with some ledger. You hold that debt and I’ll tear your world apart trying to collect”

Rafael’s smile widened, slow and assured. “There’s a difference between tearing and paying, Enzo.” He straightened, pinning Enzo with polite cruelty. “I will not come today with chains. I will leave you time to consider what happens when obligations are called. You should prepare–emotionally, practically.”

“Prepare to die?” Gino spat.

Rafael shrugged as if the idea were a weather report. “Prepare to lose.” He turned to Lolla for a moment. His tone softened a notch, a predator’s caress. “Until next time, piccola volpe little fox.” The nickname landed like a slap.

Lola flinched, as though the word took a piece of her. Enzo saw the way her shoulders tensed, how her fingers dug into his palm. He wanted to rend the room apart for that single syllable

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11:24 Thu, Oct 9

Chapter 180

ARO

“You’ll regret that,” Enan sall, the promise threaded with something older than blood–territory and bone and the kind of loyalty that didn’t need a vote. “I’ll make sure of it”

Rafael gave hint a look that could have been amusement. “Perhaps.” Then he turned on heel, the hem of his coat whispering across the concrete, and walked from the studio with the same smooth, measured steps he’d used to endss the globe buying favors. The door closed behind him with the soft click of a verdict.

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