The mafia king’s substitute husband

THE CORRIDORElian freezes where he stands. His whole body has gone cold, shaking in a way he can't stop, and some part of him is genuinely waiting for the ground to open up and take him, because that would be easier than what's happening instead.Salvatore already knows about Matteo. He's known since the first hour the wedding started falling apart, though nobody in this house has any idea of that yet, and he has no plans to say so. He isn't losing a groom today. He's getting the one he actually wanted, the boy who once saved him on a schoolyard and grew, without ever meaning to, into the only person Salvatore decided he would marry. None of that reaches his face. He keeps it buried under something colder, something that looks, to everyone watching, like a man reacting to bad luck instead of a man watching a promise finally come true.What are you still waiting for?" His father's voice, clipped, already moving past the moment like it costs him nothing. "Go in and get dressed. Mr. Sal

THE VOWSHe can feel every eye in the room, the staff, the hired witnesses, his father standing too straight, his mother refusing to look at him at all. None of it feels real. It feels like something happening to someone else, someone standing exactly where he's standing."Say it," Salvatore mutters, low, only for him. "Now."Elian's mouth opens. Nothing comes out.Salvatore's hand closes around his, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make the point without a single word attached to it. Say it."I…" Elian's voice cracks. He forces the rest out before it can fail him completely. Salvatore says his own vow the way he says everything, flat, fast. The ring goes on. "Done," Salvatore says, to no one in particular. He's already checking his watch again. "Good. Now we can go."He doesn't wait for a reaction. He takes Elian's hand, and pulls him straight toward the door, out past his father, out past his mother.Elian is pulled into the car. They pull away from the house, toward Salvatore

THE WAREHOUSEA knock lands on the study door, sharp and quick."Enter."The man who steps in doesn't waste time on pleasantries. "They're here, sir. Brought in twenty minutes ago. We're holding them at the warehouse, not the house, like you said."Salvatore sets his glass down, untouched since the second pour. "All three of them?""All three.""Good." He's already reaching for his jacket off the back of the chair. "Get the car."The drive is short and silent. Salvatore doesn't ask questions on the way, doesn't need to. He already knows what he's going to find when he gets there, three men who thought a bag of stolen cash was worth the risk of crossing him, and he already knows exactly what's going to happen to them once he's finished asking his questions.The warehouse sits at the edge of the district, unremarkable from the outside, the kind of building nobody looks at twice. Inside, the lights are already on, harsh and industrial, throwing everything into a flat, ugly white. Three m

WAITINGSalvatore doesn't remember making the decision. One moment he's moving down the corridor with Elian limp against his chest, staff scattering out of his way, and the next he's already through his own door, already crossing to his own bed, laying Elian down against sheets that have never held anyone but himself. He doesn't stop to ask why he brought him here instead of to Elian's own room down the hall. He doesn't have the space in his head right now to interrogate it. All he knows is that Elian needed to be somewhere Salvatore could watch him, close, within reach, and his own room was the first place his feet decided that was possible.He sits on the edge of the mattress, one hand still curled loosely around Elian's wrist, fingers pressed there less to check the pulse now and more because he can't make himself let go of it entirely.Elian doesn't stir. His face is pale in the low lamp light, lips parted slightly, chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths that Salvator

THE FALLElian's eyes open a little before five, the room around him lit low and warm, a lamp left burning somewhere near the door. For a long moment he doesn't move at all. He just lies there, blinking slowly, trying to make sense of a ceiling that isn't the one from the room he was locked in, sheets that don't smell like his own, an ache settled deep in every muscle he owns.He doesn't remember how he got here.He turns his head, slow, and that's when he sees him. Salvatore, folded into the chair angled toward the bed, head tipped back against the cushion, one arm hanging loose over the side, asleep in a way that looks nothing like the controlled, upright man Elian has come to expect. An empty glass sits on the small table beside him. Something about the whole picture, Salvatore Moretti asleep in a chair beside his own bed instead of anywhere else in this enormous house, doesn't fit with anything Elian understands about him yet.He doesn't have long to sit with it. His body reminds