MARRIED TO THE MAFIA KING

CHAPTER TWO: Lyra didn't sleep. She sat on the edge of her bed until the window went gray, turning Dimitri Voss's offer over in her hands like a stone she couldn't put down — marry me by the end of the week — until the words stopped sounding like words and started sounding like a verdict.By morning she'd made a list. She always made lists when the world stopped making sense; it was the one thing she'd learned from her father that actually worked. Pros and cons of marrying a stranger who may or may not have had Dad killed. The cons filled half a page. The pros were one line, written so hard the pen had nearly torn through the paper: Theo and June stay alive.There wasn't a column wide enough to argue against that.She found June at the kitchen table, still in pajamas, scrolling through her phone with the particular blankness of someone who hadn't slept either. Theo was at the stove, badly attempting scrambled eggs, because twelve-year-old boys processed grief by doing the most normal

CHAPTER FOUR:The ring was too big.Lyra noticed it the moment the officiant stepped back — a heavy gold band that kept sliding toward her knuckle, threatening to drop onto the courthouse floor. Dimitri had noticed too. He'd reached over without a word, pressed it back into place with two fingers, and held it there for exactly three seconds before letting go.That was the whole ceremony.No flowers. No music. No one on her side of the aisle. June had wanted to come, had grabbed Lyra's arm that morning with wide, frightened eyes and said please don't go alone, and Lyra had kissed her forehead and told her to stay home and watch Theo and not open the door for anyone. She'd said it like it was nothing. Like she was leaving for the grocery store.She had not cried. She was very proud of that.Now she sat in the back seat of Dimitri's car, watching the courthouse steps disappear behind tinted glass, the ring still spinning slowly on her finger. The city moved past in streaks of grey and ye

CHAPTER sIXThey arrived a little after ten the next morning — June first, dragging two suitcases she'd clearly overpacked, then Theo trailing behind her with his backpack and the stuffed fox he pretended he'd grown out of and never actually let go of. Lyra was on the front steps before the car had fully stopped.Theo hit her at a run. She caught him, felt the solid weight of him against her ribs, and for a second the whole house — the lock, the photograph, Calder Mace's face in black and white — receded to something manageable."You have a gate," Theo said, muffled against her shoulder. "With, like, actual guards.""I noticed that too."June came up slower, scanning the front of the house the way she scanned everything now — for exits, for tells, for the thing that didn't fit. She'd been doing it since their father died. Lyra hated that she recognized the habit so well, because it was hers."You look tired," June said, which was June's way of asking if Lyra was okay."I'm fine. Come

CHAPTER EIGHT: The dress was already laid out on the bed when Lyra came out of the shower — black, simple, the kind of expensive that didn't announce itself. She hadn't picked it. Rosa hovered near the door with an expression that was trying hard to be neutral and not quite managing it."Mr. Voss has guests tonight," Rosa said. "He'd like you to join.""Would he like it, or does he expect it?"Rosa's mouth twitched — not quite a smile. "With him, ma'am, there's rarely a difference."Lyra dressed anyway. Not because she'd been told to. Because she wanted to see who came through that door badly enough to make Dimitri clear his own schedule for them.There were three of them, seated already by the time she came down — the study doors thrown open, the long table set with more silver than Lyra had ever seen outside a magazine spread. Dimitri stood when she entered, and something in the room shifted with him, three sets of eyes recalibrating around the fact of her."My wife," Dimitri said.

CHAPTER TEN:The call came at 5:40 in the morning, and Lyra knew before she was fully awake that something had gone wrong, because Dimitri never raised his voice, and through the wall she could hear him raising it.She was in the hallway in under a minute, still in the shirt she'd slept in, and found him already dressed — fully dressed, at that hour, like he hadn't gone to bed at all — standing at the top of the stairs with his phone pressed to his ear and an expression that made her stomach drop before he said a single word she understood."Where," he said. Not a question. A demand. "How long ago." A pause, and something in his face went to stone. "Get the house locked down. Now. I want eyes on every entrance before the sun's fully up."He hung up. I looked at her standing there in the hallway. For a second she thought he wasn't going to tell her anything at all, that the door she'd seen open in him last night in front of the mountain photographs had already swung shut again."One of