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CHAPTER 24
publish date:
2026-03-21 18:37:08
Latest chapter
SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 115
Andrea's POVNot saying anything specific. Just watching me the way he sometimes did when he thought I wasn't paying attention—with that particular focused attention that never felt intrusive, just present. Like I was something worth watching.I let myself be watched. Stopped deflecting from it the way I would have done weeks ago.After dinner, we cleared the table together and moved to the kitchen. He washed, I dried—an arrangement that established itself without discussion, the way comfortable things do. The radio was on somewhere in the apartment, low enough to be ambient rather than intrusive, something slow and melodic that I didn't recognize.The domesticity of it settled around me like something I'd been cold without and hadn't realized.This kitchen, this man, this ordinary evening that felt extraordinary specifically because of how ordinary it was. No crisis. No hospitals. No holding ourselves together through sheer force of will. Just dishes and warm water and his arm occasi
SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 114
Andrea's POVHe was in the kitchen, his back partially to me, attending to something on the stove. He was wearing dark sweatpants that sat low on his hips and absolutely nothing else. The full landscape of his tattooed back and shoulders was on display, the ink catching the warm kitchen light as he moved—shifting, reaching, the muscles beneath responding with that effortless fluency that his body always had.I stood in the doorway and simply looked at him for a moment. This man who had held me together through the worst weeks of my life. Who had stood in hospital corridors with his jaw clenched and his fists at his sides trying to contain his own grief so there would be room for mine. Who had whispered reassurances in the dark when the panic attacks came and never once made me feel weak for having them.He turned, sensing me there.The smile that crossed his face was immediate and unguarded in a way that I still wasn't fully used to. Dante didn't smile carelessly. When he smiled like
SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 113
Andrea's POVI believed in God because He heard my prayers.Not in some abstract, theological sense that I could articulate clearly in a conversation. Just personally, viscerally, in the specific way that people come to believe things through lived experience rather than argument. I had sat in that hospital chapel more times than I could count, in those uncomfortable wooden pews with the artificial flowers and the flickering electric candles, and I had prayed with the desperate sincerity of someone who had nothing left but asking.And eventually, inexplicably, improbably—the answer had come.Luca got better.And then, one ordinary night at home after his discharge, he got all the way better.Dahlia had called me the next morning, and I'd known from the sound of her voice before she'd said a single coherent word that something had shifted fundamentally. She'd been crying, but the right kind—the kind I recognized now as relief rather than grief, the kind that had a different texture ent
SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 112
Andrea’s POV"Then we'll be there to help him figure it out. Dahlia." I turned to face her fully. "Whatever we walk into in that room, we walk into it together. Okay? You're not doing this alone."She nodded. Looked back at the window.I believed everything I'd said. I believed it completely.The hospital doors slid open and I felt it—that familiar rush of antiseptic air that had come to mean so many things over the past weeks. Fear, mostly. Hope, sometimes. The smell of waiting.But today it smelled different somehow. Or maybe I was different.Dahlia was already moving through the lobby before I'd fully processed walking through the doors. Dante fell into step beside me and I glanced at him, and he looked back at me with an expression that was still carefully controlled but had something lighter underneath it now."He made it," I said quietly, just to say it out loud."He made it," Dante confirmed.We reached the ICU corridor. The nurses who'd come to know us by now looked up with sm
SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 111
Andrea’s POVWeeks passed like this. Slow and heavy, each day much like the last.And then everything changed on a Thursday afternoon.I was in the kitchen when the call came through.Dante was at the table across from me, working through a stack of documents that Luca's organization had generated in the weeks since the explosion. Someone had to keep things running, and that someone had quietly, inevitably become him. He hadn't complained once. Hadn't talked about the weight of it, hadn't acknowledged the exhaustion that showed itself only in the slight tension around his eyes and the way he sometimes sat very still for a moment before turning the next page.I'd been watching him more than I was watching my own laptop screen, which had a half-written chapter on it that I hadn't touched in forty minutes.My phone lit up on the table between us.Unknown number. Hospital prefix.We both saw it at the same time.I grabbed it so fast I nearly knocked over my coffee."Hello?""Is this Andre
SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 110
Andrea’s POVI tried to be optimistic in front of Dahlia, who woke up after the explosion to find herself in a hospital bed with the man she loved fighting for his life two floors above her.When Dante and I told her about Luca's condition, she'd broken down completely. Sobbing so hard she couldn't breathe.She believed that if she'd just been more careful, if she'd been better at defending herself, if she'd somehow figured out a way to escape on her own, Luca wouldn't have had to risk his life to save her. If she hadn't been taken in the first place, he wouldn't be lying in that bed now.And on top of the guilt, she was dealing with the trauma of being kidnapped and held captive by her own twin sister. Of being tied up and used as bait. Of watching the building explode while knowing Luca was still inside.And the pregnancy hormones that made everything more intense, more overwhelming, harder to process and cope with.So when I was with her in Luca's hospital room during visiting hour
SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 98
Dahlia’s POVI drove to the bank with my stomach twisting the whole way. My hands were tight on the steering wheel, so tight my knuckles looked white. When I pulled into the parking lot, I just sat there for a moment, breathing slowly, trying to calm myself down.I looked at the gun in my bag and h
Last Updated : 2026-03-24SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 102
Dahlia’s POVTwo days later, the house felt like it was buzzing with movement. Suitcases rolled across the marble floors, the maids were double-checking lists, and Luca’s guards stood outside like statues. My stomach twisted with nerves and excitement at the same time.Andrea followed me to the doo
Last Updated : 2026-03-24SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 107
Dahlia’s POVI groaned a little. “Because you don’t trust me?”He shot me a serious look that made my stomach flip. “It’s not about trust, baby. It’s about safety. I don’t take risks with you.”There was no arguing with that tone. It was the kind of voice that warned me not to push further.“Okay.
Last Updated : 2026-03-24SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON CHAPTER 106
Dahlia’s POVHe smiled at me politely, then immediately turned back to Luca—like I wasn’t important enough to look at twice. Somehow that bothered me more than it should have.The elevator doors closed, shutting out the rest of the world. My stomach fluttered a little.We went all the way up, and w
Last Updated : 2026-03-24
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