Reborn: I Quit Being the Mafia’s Stand-In Chapter 06
Victor sat at the edge of the bed, wrapping fresh white gauze round after round over my grotesquely swollen fingers.
He didn’t look up. His voice was low.
“Multiple shattered bones. This wasn’t a door accident.”
“It was Alexander,” I heard my own raspy voice say, sounding like a hollowed–out shell. “He hates me.”
Victor’s jawline instantly tightened. A glacial murderous intent flashed in his eyes, but the grip he had on my wrist didn’t tighten by even a fraction.
“Inflicting pain on a wife is the act of a weak man.”
“Don’t cry.” The rough pad of his thumb gently wiped the corner of my eye. Only then did I realize I was crying. “The hands you lost, I will rebuild. I’ll find the best doctors in the world. You will play the piano again.”
Instinctively, I wanted to pull away from his touch, but I froze the second I met his gaze.
Alexander had used cruelty to teach me never to expect anything from anyone. But now, watching Victor so carefully cradle my crippled hands, my dead heart actually reignited with a desperate yearning for a different life–all within the palms of a man I had once considered dangerous.
“Why?” I asked. “I belong to the Rizzo family. Saving me will only bring you massive trouble.”
Victor leaned forward slightly, close enough that I could smell the faint scent of tobacco on his collar.
“A woman as resilient and kind as you shouldn’t die in a sickening cage like the Rizzo estate.”
He paused. “You staying alive is the best reward you could ever give me.”
Right then, the wooden door exploded open with a deafening crash.
Alexander stood in the doorway.
His chest heaved violently, like a cornered, bloodshot- eyed beast. His gaze instantly locked onto where Victor was holding my wrist.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I didn’t pull my hand from Victor’s grasp. I met his stare with pure ice. “Exactly what it looks like.”
Those words completely ignited Alexander’s manic nerves.
“Eleanor.” He stumbled forward, stopping at the edge of the bed. Those eyes, which usually radiated sheer cruelty, were now filled with panic and a sickening,
desperate plea. “I know everything. Chloe lied to me. You were the one who saved me back then. The ruined face was her own doing… I was wrong.”
His gaze dropped to my thick bandages. The color drained entirely from his face, and his breathing trembled. “Come home. I threw Chloe into the water dungeon. I’ll kill her… Our child needs its biological father. I’ll give you both the best of everything.”
A violent wave of nausea churned in my stomach.
The biting, freezing seawater from my past life seemed to flood my mouth and nose all over again. Back then, I had pounded on the cabin door, begging him to save our baby. He hadn’t even looked back.
“Biological father? My child does not need a father who crushes its mother’s hands.”
Alexander looked as if he had just been shot in the face. He flinched in agony, then suddenly lunged forward, trying to forcefully drag me out of bed. “You are my wife! You have to come back with me!”
Victor’s arm shot out, his grip clamping down on Alexander’s wrist like a steel vice.
“She doesn’t want to go with you.” Victor’s eyes were like daggers, his tone an unquestionable, absolute dead calm. “Get out.”
Heavy footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. A full squad of Costa soldiers raised their assault rifles, the dark muzzles aimed straight at Alexander.
Alexander stared dead into my face. Finally, he was forced back by the soldiers.
“You can’t escape, Eleanor.” As he was pushed out the door, his voice twisted into paranoid madness. “You are mine!”
Over the next two days, Victor and I enjoyed a peaceful, beautiful sliver of time.
Because my hands were ruined, I couldn’t even manage to drink water on my own. He dismissed the servants, patiently picking every bone out of my fish, and when I woke up in the middle of the night
drenched in cold sweat from the agonizing bone pain, he would pull me tightly against his chest to soothe me.
But this stolen peace was violently shredded on the third morning by the news of serial explosions at the ports.
Doing the math, that divorce agreement–hidden among routine reports and signed by his own hand- had finally made its way to Alexander’s desk.
I knew Alexander too well. When he realized that he had signed away our marriage himself, that I had decisively orchestrated my escape long ago, his arrogant pride must have been crushed into dust.
News from the dark web quickly confirmed it. The Rizzo family elders had tried to stop the impending war, only for Alexander to shoot one of them through the head right in the meeting hall.
He had completely lost his mind. Locking down ports, cutting off supply chains, washing the streets in blood. Using the absolute iron fist of a Don, he crushed all dissent and launched a suicidal, all–out war against the Costa family, issuing only one lethal order: force Victor to hand me over at all costs.
With the war fully ignited, Victor had no choice but to head to the frontlines to take command.
“Don’t be afraid. Wait for me,” he told me..
Late in the night on the fourth day, my phone screen lit up.
It was a video.
The footage was extremely dark. In a damp water dungeon, a man was suspended by his wrists with heavy iron chains, His black shirt was entirely soaked in blood. His head hung low. He looked dead.
It was Victor.
The camera jerked violently, and Alexander’s face filled the screen. His eyes were sunken, his jaw covered in dark stubble, yet a chilling, manic smile twisted the corners of his lips.
“Costa thought he could swallow the bait I threw out. I sacrificed eighty of my top men just to get him. You have four hours, Eleanor. Come back to the estate. Otherwise, I will slice off his flesh piece by piece and mail it to you.”
The screen went black.
I couldn’t let Victor die.
Three hours later, I pushed open a car door and stood alone before the towering iron gates of the Rizzo estate.
Alexander was already waiting for me at the entrance. When he saw me, the wild ecstasy in his eyes spread like a poisonous weed. He sprinted down the steps, recklessly pulling me into a suffocating embrace.
“I,knew you’d come back.” He buried his face in my neck, inhaling greedily. “As long as you come back, everything can start over.”