Semua Bab A Substitute Bride For The Mafia Boss: Bab 51 - Bab 60

ValentinaI didn’t sleep. Again.The weight of the De Luca name had never felt so heavy. Not even on our wedding night. Not even the day I bled for this family, kissed its ring, buried its enemies.Now, the only thing that haunted me wasn’t the mafia.It was uncertainty.Alessandro hadn’t touched me in two nights. Not like a lover. Not like a king. He spoke in clipped orders. Ate in silence. Watched me like I might erupt into betrayal at any moment.And maybe I would.The child inside me had made me quiet. Made me dangerous. I wasn’t just a De Luca bride anymore.I was the bridge between legacies.And bridges got burned.I found him in the war room, shirtless beneath his suit jacket, bloodstained gloves tossed on the table. Maps everywhere. Coffee gone cold. Guns lined like rosaries.He didn’t look up when I entered."Are we doing this?" I asked.He peeled off a glove. Tossed it."What part of 'this' do you mean? The part where you disappear to Marconi compounds without explanation, o

LorenzoThey say you can’t hear a war coming.That’s a lie.I heard it. In the silence between my brother’s threats. In the way Valentina didn’t flinch when I told her I’d raise her child, whether it was mine or not. In the way Palermo slept lighter these days, like the city was holding its breath.The first fire started at dawn.Not at a port. Not at a warehouse.At a chapel.My father’s chapel.The one where Alessandro and I once prayed before our first blood.Smoke rose in ribbons.No deaths. Not yet.Just a message.He wanted me to know that he chose the battleground now.Fine.Let him light the match.I’d bring the wind."Sir, the De Luca operatives moved through the west corridor of the old vineyards," Enzo reported as he loaded rounds into a matte black Beretta. "No casualties. Just surveillance.""No, not surveillance," I muttered, pulling my coat over my shoulders. "He’s tracing the edges. He wants to see where I bleed.""And what do we give him?"I strapped on a shoulder hol

{~ Valentina Russo/De Luca}The De Luca council chamber was colder than any battlefield I’d ever seen.Not because of the temperature, but because of the eyes.Twelve men.Twelve wolves in tailored suits.Some younger, some ancient whispers of history in their wrinkles, but none of them looked at me like I belonged.None of them saw a woman carrying a future.They saw a threat.I stood at the center, spine straight, silk black dress hugging the child they all wanted to shape. My heels echoed on the polished marble like gunshots.I didn’t wait to be acknowledged.I wasn't here for permission.“I speak today,” I began, “not as Alessandro’s wife. Not as Lorenzo’s weapon. Not even as the De Luca heir’s mother.”A pause.Just long enough for one of them to raise a silver brow.“I speak as the only person in this family who still believes peace is possible.”The room went deathly quiet.The man at the head of the table Giovanni, the oldest and most feared leaned forward.“And what does peac

ValentinaA kingdom doesn't fall in a day.It rots in silence first.In the secrets whispered between walls. In the dead flowers no one dares to throw away. In the halls where ghosts of women like me used to scream but no one listened.I was not going to be a ghost.Not in this house. Not in this war. Not in this skin.The red dress I wore to the council was still draped across the velvet chaise in my room. I hadn’t put it away. I wanted its power to haunt the space, a warning wrapped in silk. A memory of the day I stopped playing queen and became empress.Alessandro hadn’t spoken much since then.He watched me the way men watched fires they couldn’t put out with awe, with fear, with a strange kind of love that smelled too close to smoke.He didn't try to stop me anymore.But he didn't try to stand beside me, either.I was reading. Or pretending to.Books were my mother’s way of hiding blades. Every page a distraction, every chapter a mask. The novel in my hand? Hollow. But I needed s

LORENZOI dreamt of her again.Not as she is now, fierce and flaming, cloaked in vengeance and motherhood.No. I dreamt of her in white. Simpler. Smiling.The version of her I could have loved.The version I never deserved.But even in my sleep, the truth seeps through. She never belonged to me. She never even belonged to Alessandro. She belongs to fire, and fire doesn’t wear chains—it melts them.I stood at the edge of the Marconi vineyard, dusk bleeding into my suit sleeves. My hands were cold, but not from weather.From absence."She will kill you, you know," Enzo said beside me."Let her try," I murmured."You underestimate what a mother will do when she's afraid.""No, I don't. I count on it."He shifted nervously. I watched the horizon. The skyline had changed since our father died. The empire wore a new silhouette. Valentina's."It's not about the boy," I said.Enzo blinked. "Isn't it?""No. It's about memory. Legacy. Power. She's rewriting our history, and no one's stopping he