All Chapters of Blood Roses And Bullet Vows: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

The grass felt different beneath my shoes. Softer, like it knew how to hold grief without letting it spill over.I never liked cemeteries. Not because they were haunted, but because they weren’t. Because they were quiet and polite and still, while everything in me stayed loud.The silence didn't match the chaos I kept inside.I followed the narrow path through stone and memory. Most of the headstones had names I didn’t recognize, but that didn’t make them strangers. Death made siblings out of all of us eventually.When I reached her grave, I hesitated.It had been too long since I visited.Too long pretending she was still alive in some parallel world, still stirring soup at dawn, still humming love songs like lullabies, still calling my name like it meant something soft.Angela R. Cruz1974–2013.Beloved wife, mother, dreamer.The letters had faded a little more since last time. The marble was cracked in the corner, like the earth had tried to remember her too hard and broken somethi

The halls were quieter after death.Not the still kind, but the haunted kind. Every step I took echoed too much, like the house was trying to remember where Lorenzo fell.He died in front of me.Matteo killed him in front of me.And now we were back in this silence, walking like nothing had cracked the air hours ago.I sat at the edge of Matteo’s study couch, hands wrapped around a cup of untouched tea. The porcelain felt too delicate for what I’d seen. For what I’d become a part of.Across from me, Matteo poured whiskey. No ice. Just amber and silence.“Why him?” I asked.My voice wasn’t sharp. Just tired.He didn’t look up as he answered. “Because I didn’t think it’d be him.”He took a slow sip, then leaned back, eyes fixed on nothing in particular.“I grew up with Lorenzo. He was two years older. Taught me how to fake a smile during meetings, how to cheat at cards, how to aim a gun without blinking.”He set the glass down.“When my father died, I was sixteen. The day after the fune

e silence between us the next morning wasn’t harsh. It was... still. Like the ocean before a storm. The kind of quiet that made you think everything might be fine until you realized you were just in the eye of it.I hadn’t spoken much since we left Cavite. Matteo didn’t push. Maybe he understood I needed time. Or maybe he was afraid of what I’d say if he forced me to look at him.I sat by the window in his Manila penthouse, legs curled under me, hands wrapped around a cup of tea I hadn’t touched. Below, the city never stopped moving. Lights, cars, people. Like none of them knew that my world had just cracked open.My father.The word tasted unfamiliar now.I grew up thinking of him as a quiet man. Faint laughter in my mother’s stories. A hand on my head in memories I wasn’t sure were real. A photograph on our altar, framed in dust and silence. But last night, he became someone else. Someone who made deals with men like the Valerios. Someone who signed his name beside blood.I didn’t h