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CHAPTER 38

Author: Nancy Grey
last update publish date: 2026-04-03 18:28:31

Andrea's POV

We finally arrived at Dante's apartment building, and of course it was a freaking penthouse. The building was all glass and steel and modern elegance, the kind of place that screamed wealth and power. A doorman greeted Dante with a respectful nod as we entered the lobby, his eyes carefully not lingering on my disheveled appearance or the way Dante's hand was possessively gripping my waist.

Dante opened the car door for me, and I stepped out on legs that felt unsteady. Whether from
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    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

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    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

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    Luca’s POVWhen I pushed the bedroom door open, the first thing I noticed was the silence. The room was wrapped in it, heavy and almost sacred. My eyes landed on her instantly. Dahlia. She was lying in the middle of the bed, curled slightly on her side, her chest rising and falling with every quiet

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-18
  • SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON   CHAPTER 28

    Dahlia’s POVI left the library with my head full of thoughts and my chest heavy. No matter how many articles I read, no matter how much I searched, the truth was simple—I was married to a man I didn’t understand. And if I didn’t figure out how to survive in his world, I was going to get swallowed

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  • SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON   CHAPTER 33

    Dahlia’s POVThe hum of voices dipped lower the second Luca stepped into the room. It wasn’t silence, but it was close enough to feel strange, like someone had turned down the volume of the world just for him. Heads turned, conversations slowed, and I could feel the shift in the air. Some people whi

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  • SUBSTITUTE BRIDE FOR THE MAFIA DON   CHAPTER 8

    Luca’s POVAs I stepped out of my bedroom, the heavy door clicked shut behind me, the sound echoing down the long, quiet hallway. But even with it closed, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. My new bride.She had been lying on my bed like a scared little thing, curled up with her knees close to her

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-17
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