All Chapters of MARRIED TO THE MAFIA: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

LucaThe bathwater had long gone cold by the time I found the strength to move again.Lila helped me out with gentle, unhurried hands. She wrapped a thick towel around my shoulders, then guided me into the bedroom, the wheels of the chair whispering over the tile.She didn’t say much as she helped me into a clean T-shirt, as if she knew the silence was the only thing holding me together.But when she settled onto the bed beside me, legs tucked under her, her gaze searching my face, I knew she could feel it.The heaviness pressing on my chest.The words fighting their way up my throat.The ghosts of a woman I hadn’t thought about in years.I swallowed hard, staring past her to the open terrace doors where the dusk settled into deep blue.“You ever wonder,” I said finally, “who you would’ve become if one thing in your life hadn’t gone wrong?”She was quiet for a beat.“All the time,” she murmured.I nodded slowly.“There was a time I thought I knew exactly who I was going to be. What kin

RichardI watched the sun sink behind the spires of Florence from my study, the last of its light glinting off the cut-crystal decanter on the sideboard.Forty years I’d spent building an empire out of nothing.Forty years of sacrifice, cunning, and sometimes necessary cruelty.And in the end, it was my own son who thought he could strip it all from me.Fool.He had no idea how deep my roots reached.No idea that while he was busy hiding in that villa with the girl who made him soft, the world he thought he controlled was already turning in my hand again.I reached for the phone on my desk, dialing a number I hadn’t used in over a decade.It rang once. Twice.A gravelly voice answered. “Yes?”“It’s Richard Deluca” I said evenly.A pause. Then a low laugh. “Well, well. I thought you’d decided you were too respectable for my services.”“I don’t need your amusement,” I snapped.“No, I suppose not.”I leaned back in my chair, watching the shadows lengthen across the floor. “I need you to

LilaI’d been to this hospital so many times over the past year it should have felt familiar.But the second I stepped out of the car, something in my chest tightened.The morning was too still. No birdsong, no breeze stirring the leaves along the walkway. Even the security detail Luca insisted on sending two men in plain clothes looked uneasy as they scanned the entrance.“Is something wrong?” I asked quietly.The taller of the two, Matteo, shook his head. “Nothing yet, Signora. Just a feeling.”I nodded, swallowing the cold lump in my throat.Maybe I was imagining it.Maybe I’d spent too long sleeping beside a man who trusted no one, and now I saw threats where there were none.But as I pushed through the revolving doors into the bright atrium, the unease only deepened.The reception desk was empty.That never happened.There was always a nurse on duty, always the soft drone of phones and the shuffle of paperwork.Today, silence.I glanced over my shoulder at Matteo, who lifted his c

LucaIt took me fifteen minutes to sit alone in silence and measure the cost of what I was about to do.I’d always known there’d be a day when I crossed the line and didn’t come back.I just never thought it would come wearing Lila’s grief like a noose around my neck.She hadn’t even cried when I called her after the hospital.Her voice had gone distant. Flat.Like something had shattered inside her and all that was left was the echo.That silence?That was louder than any scream.I wheeled myself into the study and shut the door behind me. No one needed to witness this call. Not Alex. Not Lila. Not even my security team.This wasn’t strategy.This was retribution.I opened the drawer where I kept the numbers only used when there was no more diplomacy left to pretend.Five digits in black ink, etched into a strip of paper.The number didn’t belong to a consigliere. Or a business partner.It belonged to a ghost.One of the last men in Europe who still owed me blood.I punched in the dig

LucaI heard Alex before I saw him.The library door swung open so hard it rattled the glass in the cabinets. For a heartbeat, I thought it might be my father come to finish what he started.But it was only Alex.He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His hair stood up in messy tufts, and there were dark crescents under his eyes. His hands were clenched so tight his knuckles went white.I set the ledger I’d been studying on the table and leaned back in my wheelchair.“Did you find her?” I demanded.He shook his head once. “Not yet.”My jaw clenched. I’d been sitting here for hours, tracing every transaction, every call, every petty cash withdrawal searching for a pattern that might lead us to where they’d taken Lila’s mother. And every dead end just tightened the coil of rage in my chest.Alex took a step forward, hesitating like he was afraid to get too close.“There’s something else,” he said quietly.“Out with it.”He swallowed. “It’s about Mom.”My stomach sank. A hundred scenario