The King who tried to break the Storm

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• A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   Blood in the Walls

  ValentinaPain isn’t always a scream.Sometimes, it’s the silence after a lullaby. A scent of baby powder in a room that never heard laughter. A rocking chair that sways by itself when no wind blows.That morning, I woke before the sun. Not from a nightmare from a whisper. One I couldn’t name. One I felt in my womb.He kicked.Our son.He kicked like he knew.Like he felt what I hadn’t seen yet.The nursery door was ajar.I never leave it ajar.The hairs on my neck lifted as I stepped closer. One bare foot in front of the other. My robe clung to my skin like armor too thin to matter.I pushed the door open.And my lungs collapsed.The crib was intact. The mobile still spun. But something was wrong. The air was... cut. A strange emptiness sat in the center of the room, like a body had just left it. A stillness that wasn’t peace.There was a letter.Taped to the side of the crib.A single word, written in red ink:"Choose."And beneath it—a lock of my hair.I don’t remember screaming.B

• A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Velvet Revolt

  ValentinaA kingdom doesn't fall in a day.It rots in silence first.In the secrets whispered between walls. In the dead flowers no one dares to throw away. In the halls where ghosts of women like me used to scream but no one listened.I was not going to be a ghost.Not in this house. Not in this war. Not in this skin.The red dress I wore to the council was still draped across the velvet chaise in my room. I hadn’t put it away. I wanted its power to haunt the space, a warning wrapped in silk. A memory of the day I stopped playing queen and became empress.Alessandro hadn’t spoken much since then.He watched me the way men watched fires they couldn’t put out with awe, with fear, with a strange kind of love that smelled too close to smoke.He didn't try to stop me anymore.But he didn't try to stand beside me, either.I was reading. Or pretending to.Books were my mother’s way of hiding blades. Every page a distraction, every chapter a mask. The novel in my hand? Hollow. But I needed s

• A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Serpent in Velvet

  Valentina!There’s something intoxicating about quiet rage.The kind that simmers beneath silk sheets and gold ceilings.The kind that smiles at you in the mirror while sharpening knives behind your spine.I woke up that morning with a calm I didn’t trust.Not because the storm had passed.But because I was the storm now.Alessandro was already gone when I rolled out of bed. His side of the mattress still warm. A half-empty glass of bourbon on the nightstand. His cufflinks scattered on the dresser like bullet casings. He didn’t kiss me goodbye. Didn’t whisper a promise. But that wasn’t what bothered me.What bothered me was the silence he left behind.Because Alessandro De Luca only walks quiet when he’s about to kill something.The air was thick with tension by noon. I could feel it in the way the staff avoided eye contact. In the way Rico snapped at the guards. In the way my own hands trembled when I poured tea I had no intention of drinking.And then he returned.Alessandro.Like a

• A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Belly, The Blade, and The Throne

  {~ Valentina Russo/De Luca}The De Luca council chamber was colder than any battlefield I’d ever seen.Not because of the temperature, but because of the eyes.Twelve men.Twelve wolves in tailored suits.Some younger, some ancient whispers of history in their wrinkles, but none of them looked at me like I belonged.None of them saw a woman carrying a future.They saw a threat.I stood at the center, spine straight, silk black dress hugging the child they all wanted to shape. My heels echoed on the polished marble like gunshots.I didn’t wait to be acknowledged.I wasn't here for permission.“I speak today,” I began, “not as Alessandro’s wife. Not as Lorenzo’s weapon. Not even as the De Luca heir’s mother.”A pause.Just long enough for one of them to raise a silver brow.“I speak as the only person in this family who still believes peace is possible.”The room went deathly quiet.The man at the head of the table Giovanni, the oldest and most feared leaned forward.“And what does peac

• A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Crown Womb

  Valentina ~~~ There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t beg to be broken.It demands to be obeyed.That was the silence inside the De Luca estate the morning after Alessandro returned from his meeting with Lorenzo. No shouting. No gunfire. Just the heavy echo of a kingdom holding its breath.And me?I sat on the cold bathroom tiles, back against the tub, robe open, hands resting against the barely there swell of my stomach. My breath came shallow, uneven like my body didn’t trust the air anymore.I didn’t cry.I couldn’t cry.Because tears were for the innocent. And no matter how many times Alessandro said I was the fire, the truth was simpler than poetry.I was the battlefield.And I hated it.I hated that my body had become the centerpiece of a war between brothers too proud to bleed properly. I hated that every touch, every whisper, every glance between them circled back to me not as a woman, but as a claim.I whispered to the child inside me.Not to bond.To warn.“You are not a swo

• A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss   The Heir and the Hollow Crown

  LorenzoThey say you can’t hear a war coming.That’s a lie.I heard it. In the silence between my brother’s threats. In the way Valentina didn’t flinch when I told her I’d raise her child, whether it was mine or not. In the way Palermo slept lighter these days, like the city was holding its breath.The first fire started at dawn.Not at a port. Not at a warehouse.At a chapel.My father’s chapel.The one where Alessandro and I once prayed before our first blood.Smoke rose in ribbons.No deaths. Not yet.Just a message.He wanted me to know that he chose the battleground now.Fine.Let him light the match.I’d bring the wind."Sir, the De Luca operatives moved through the west corridor of the old vineyards," Enzo reported as he loaded rounds into a matte black Beretta. "No casualties. Just surveillance.""No, not surveillance," I muttered, pulling my coat over my shoulders. "He’s tracing the edges. He wants to see where I bleed.""And what do we give him?"I strapped on a shoulder hol