All Chapters of The Chosen Bride: Chapter 81 - Chapter 88

AristideI didn’t speak when we left the cells.Enzo stayed behind with the guards to keep Carlo breathing—barely. Elena kept her silence, though I could feel her eyes on me as I gripped Bella’s arm and guided her out. She didn’t resist, but her steps were too calm, too measured.The weight of her secret pressed against my ribs like a blade.Cipher.The ghost in the dark.The one I had sworn to root out before he could tear apart what we were building.And she had known.We reached the upper hall, and I dismissed the guards with a sharp flick of my hand. Bella stopped then, turning to face me. Her chin was lifted, her shoulders squared, as if bracing for the storm she knew was coming.I closed the distance, my voice low and cutting. “How long?”Her eyes didn’t waver. “A week. Maybe less.”I laughed, bitter and humorless. “A week. A week, Izzy, and you chose to carry it in silence?”“I chose to be sure,” she said, her tone measured, deliberate. “You of all people should understand that

AristideThe salt hit first—cold and bitter on my tongue as we dropped into the shadow of the depot. Floodlights painted the rusting containers a sterile white, turned the yard into sharp shapes and hideous silhouettes. The air tasted like a city that had given up on itself: diesel, old blood, wet wood. It was all too familiar and suddenly not at all.I was on the northern flank, Marco sliding in beside me like a second shadow. Luca and Dante were folded into the darkness at the edges, breathing slow and low. Our comms were a thin thread—enough to keep us honest, not enough to drown us in noise.“Pattern,” Marco mouthed. One, two—he counted without sound. “Three on the wall. Two at the truck. Rotate. Two-minute sweep.”I watched the patrol like a man who’d memorized a clock. Their steps were routine. Too routine. That’s the thing with men who think they’re invisible: they perform their invisibility until something breaks the rhythm. I signaled with two fingers. Luca slid forward, a gh

AristideThe coast was quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence that came before something ugly.I stood on the cliff’s edge as the sun broke over the horizon, spilling gold across the waves and lighting the villa below. The structure had once belonged to an old smuggler my father used for covert shipments—one of Matteo Moretti’s many forgotten outposts. It was the perfect place for Cipher to hide what he’d stolen from us.The sea air stung the shallow cut on my cheek, a reminder of how close we’d come last time. My ribs still burned when I breathed too deep, but I didn’t care. We were here to finish this.Enzo came up beside me, scanning the lower cliffs through his scope. “Three guards outside. One pacing the upper balcony. But that’s it. Too light.”“Too light,” Marco muttered, adjusting his rifle strap. “It feels wrong.”It did. Everything about this mission felt wrong—too clean, too easy. But the signal that Elena and Bella traced last night came straight here, bouncing off an encryp

BellaThe estate was too quiet.That kind of quiet that doesn’t soothe—it presses. Every tick of the clock, every shift of the floorboards sounded amplified under my skin. I’d been awake since dawn, though the sky outside was still gray, the Hudson shrouded in mist that looked like smoke rising from unseen fires.Aristide, Marco, and Enzo were in the lower wing—the old strategy room that Matteo used before the renovations. I could hear them faintly through the floorboards, the muted rhythm of male voices, sharp commands, the scrape of metal. Preparation. Precision. War.I stood by the window overlooking the courtyard, one hand resting absently on the curve of my stomach. The baby had been restless all morning, a quiet, rhythmic movement that seemed to mirror my heartbeat. I wondered if she could feel my nerves. I whispered to her without thinking.“Your father’s coming back,” I said softly. “He always does.”Mabel’s reflection appeared behind me in the glass, a steaming cup of tea in