The Mafia's Forced Bride

( Aria's point of view )I walked into the Moretti's den expecting it to be a cage but it was actually a house filled with ghosts. Then, there was a man who looked at me like he saw a virus.We rode in an SUV to the Moretti estate. In the car beside me, was Dante Moretti sat like a statue. It was difficult for him to even look at me once since my father’s guards shoved me into the backseat. He just stared at his phone, tapping the screen.I looked down at my hands. I was still wearing the same green dress from the wedding. It was wrinkled now, a mocking reminder of the very night my life had been traded away like a piece of property. My thigh holster was gone. My father’s men had stripped me of all my weapons before we left. They really thought they had disarmed me. They didn't know about the micro-chip hidden in the hollow heel of my designer shoe they didn't dare to touch."You can stop glaring at the floor, Aria," Dante said with a heavy voice. "It won’t open up and swallow you, yu

( Aria's point of view )Trust is a luxury I could never afford, but tonight, I was forced to buy it with the only currency I had left; my survival.Dante had been gone for exactly two hours, but i still felt his presence in my bedroom with a constant reminder that my life was no longer my own. I paced around the room. My mind was a whirlwind of binary code and blood.Dante Moretti knew everything but hadn't turned me in. He hadn't called for the Butcher to finish the job. Instead, he had offered me a deal that sounded like a fucking suicide mission.A knock at the door made me freeze, but this time, I didn't wait for him to announce himself. I opened it to find Dane having with rolled-up sleeve that made him appear even more dangerous. He held two glasses of bourbon whiskey."We need to set the terms," he said, walking past me without an invitation. He set the glasses down on the small table near the balcony and sat, motioning for me to join him.I sat across from him with my back st

(Aria’s Point of View)The engine of the SUV roared so loud like a wild beast. But inside the car, the air was as dead as a grave.I leaned my head against the cold glass of the window. My chest felt hollow, as if someone had reached inside and scooped out my heart with a dull knife.Every street lamp we passed threw a flash of light onto Dante’s face, revealing the hard, unyielding set of his mouth.He was the man I had kissed. The man I had started to trust.Also, he was the same man who had been watching me in a cage for weeks."Say something," Dante said. His voice with low vibration. "Don't just sit there and bleed in silence, Aria.""What is there to say?" I asked. My voice sounded flat, even to my own ears. "You caught your GHOST, Dante. Congratulations. You played the hero, you played the lover, and all the while, you were just waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger.""It wasn't like that," he gritted out. He swerved the car around a sharp corner. "I knew there was a

(Aria’s Point of View)My mind was a fractured mirror, reflecting images I didn't want to see: Dante standing in the flames, my father’s cold eyes, and the charred petal of a rose.The ocean was a vast, churning throat of black ink, and we were sliding right down it.I sat on the floor of the powerboat, my fingers white-knuckled as I gripped the cold metal railing. Every time the hull slammed against a wave, a jolt of pain shot through my abdomen, reminding me of the secret life curled inside me. Viktor Petrov stood at the helm, his back to me like an unmovable mountain. To me, he looked like a storm not a savoir."You said Dante hasn't told me the worst secret yet," I shouted over the roar of the engines and the lashing wind. "What could be worse than using me as bait while I'm carrying his child? What could be worse than tracking me like an animal?"Viktor didn't turn around. He adjusted the throttle, sending the boat leaping over a massive swell. "The Moretti boy is a strategist,

(Aria’s Point of View)The world didn't end with a bang. It ended with the sound of a thousand mountains grinding together.The explosions from Isabella’s detonator sent a shockwave through the quarry that knocked me off my feet. I fell hard, the sharp gravel biting into my knees as the air was replaced by a thick, suffocating curtain of limestone dust. High above, the entrance to the pit vanished behind a massive curtain of falling rock. Thousands of tons of stone sealed the exit, the roar of the collapse drowning out our screams until there was only a terrifying, ringing silence.I lay on the ground, gasping for air that was more dust than oxygen. "Dante?" I choked out, my hands sweeping over the dirt in the pitch black."I’m here."His voice came from my left. A second later, a beam of light cut through the haze. Dante was holding a tactical flashlight he’d scavenged from the ground. His face was full of gray dust and blood, but his eyes were still sharp. He lunged toward me, his a