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CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride 131
THE FIRST BIRTHDAY~ANYA POV~It's funny how your perspective on money changes when you're living in an attic and scrubbing floors for cash.A year and a half ago, a thousand euros was a shopping trip with Isidora that I didn't even think twice about. Today, thirteen euros was a mountain. It took me six weeks of skipping my own lunch and walking an extra two miles to work to save it up.Eight euros for a small, round sponge cake from the padaria on the corner. Three euros for a second-hand wooden toy car I found at the flea market—it had chipped red paint, but I'd spent two nights sanding it down until it was smooth. Two euros for three bright yellow balloons.Thirteen euros to celebrate the fact that my son had survived his first year on this earth."Maria, look! I found a blue ribbon for the car," Dona Beatriz said, hobbling into my room with a wide grin.She helped me tape the balloons to the slanted ceiling. We didn't have streamers or a party guest list. We didn't have a photo
CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride 130
THE FIRST MONTH~ANYA POV~They don't tell you that motherhood, at least in the beginning, is just a long, hallucination-inducing blur of bone-deep exhaustion.I'd been back in my tiny attic room for three days, and honestly, I felt more like a ghost than a woman. Marcello was barely a week old, and he seemed to have one setting: screaming. He cried when he was hungry, he cried when he was wet, and sometimes, he just cried because the air in the room felt too still.I hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. My hair was a matted knot at the base of my neck, my shirt was stained with leaked milk, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw the ceiling of that clinic spinning."Please, Marcello," I whispered, my voice cracking as I swayed back and forth in the middle of the room. "Just for twenty minutes. Let Mommy close her eyes."He didn't listen. He just turned a deeper shade of red and let out a shriek that felt like it was drilling into my skull. I sank onto the floor, squeezing him to my
CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride 129
THE GHOST OF MARBELLA~CESAR POV~(Twelve months.)Three hundred and sixty-five days since I felt the cold bite of glass in my side. Fifty-two weeks since the woman I branded as mine walked out into the night and became a ghost.I sat in my study, the only light coming from the bank of monitors that never slept. My empire was a hollow shell. I had liquidated three major shipping ports in the last month just to fund the private intelligence teams scouring the continent. I had spent fifty million euros to find a woman who was probably living on bread and water, and I had nothing to show for it but a stack of digital dead ends.I knew she was here. Somewhere.My teams had tracked her prenatal records up to the fifth month—a clinic in Seville, a midwife in Faro. She had been careful, but she had been visible. And then, at the five-month mark, the trail had gone cold. Flat. As if she and my heir had simply dissolved into the Atlantic air.The door creaked open. I didn't reach for my gun
CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride 128
18 HOURS~ANYA POV~The lunch rush was a blur of clicking heels and the high-pitched whistle of the espresso machine. I was balancing a tray of three pastéis de nata and two double shots of coffee, my lower back feeling like it was being squeezed by a vice. Marcello was heavy today, riding low, his weight making every step an exercise in gauzy willpower.I was three weeks early, but I told myself I just needed to make it through the weekend. I needed that extra forty euros in tips.I reached for the edge of table six, and then, the world shook.It wasn't a sharp pain. It was a dull, heavy pop deep inside my pelvis. For a second, I thought I had just strained a muscle. Then I felt the warmth.A sudden, hot rush of liquid hit the floor, soaking through my sensible black trousers and splashing onto the worn tiles of the café.Clatter.The tray slipped. Porcelain shattered. Dark espresso bled into the puddle at my feet. The conversation in the café died instantly."Maria?" Jorge, my bos
CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride 127
THE DECAY~CESAR POV~SIX MONTH LATER The bright numbers on the big screens in my office used to feel like music. I could watch a green ticker move and imagine the busy activity of a whole continent—the transport of goods in the Mediterranean, the smooth transfer of information through my computers, and the growing wealth of Navarro.Now, the screens were nothing but a collection of jagged, red wounds."Patrón, the Valencia port authorities have frozen our primary loading dock. We're losing four hundred thousand euros an hour in stagnant cargo," Iñigo's voice came from the shadows by the door.I didn't turn around. I didn't even blink. I was staring at a high-resolution satellite image of a small village in the Pyrenees. A place where a woman matching her height had been spotted three days ago. It had turned out to be a dead end—a hiker with the wrong color hair."Let it freeze," I said. My voice was a dry rasp, the sound of wind over old bones."The board of directors is calling f
CALAVERA: The Mafia’s Caged Bride 126
THE SECOND TRIMESTER~ANYA POV ~The air in Lisbon during the day feels different from the chilly night air I was used to. It is thick and smells like roasted coffee and the wet air from the trams.By my seventh month, the night-cleaning shifts became a physical impossibility. My center of gravity had shifted, and my lower back felt like it was being chewed by a dull saw every time I leaned over a scrub brush.So, Maria Santos found a new mask to wear: a waitress at Café do Mar, a bustling tourist trap near the Praça do Comércio.The uniform was simple—unforgiving black trousers that I had to leave unbuttoned at the top, a crisp white shirt that strained against my belly, and a green apron tied high. In the chaos of lunch rushes, I was invisible. To the Germans, I was "the girl with the espresso." To the Americans, I was "the one with the water." I was a moving part in a machine, and for once, anonymity was a luxury I enjoyed."Maria! Table four needs their galão!" my boss, Jorge,
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