Todos los capítulos de MAFIA BRIDE: Capítulo 91 - Capítulo 100

Gianna Vitale did not sleep that night, and she did not touch the lilies again.She sat in the high-backed chair by the window until the copper light left the sea and the harbor lamps came on one by one. The bouquet lay on the table where the maid had left it, white and perfect in the dark. The card lay beside it, face up. She had read it forty times.*For the mother of a dead boy.*"Nico is in the ground," she said aloud, her voice cold and steady, her eyes fixed on the petals. "I read the death notice myself. I sent a wreath."The lilies said nothing.She had been a young woman when she first met Nico Moretti, and a fool. She had loved him, and he had sent her white lilies the day he left her. A year later, he had sent one more, a single bloom laid on the lid of a small coffin, with no card at all. She had understood the message. Nico sent lilies before he killed something, and he sent them after, so that the dead would know whose hand had done it.Now, nineteen years later, a dozen

The compound in the Hamptons stood at the end of a long gravel road, with the gray sea crashing on three sides of it.It was a low house of old stone, with deep windows and a slate roof, built by Luca's grandfather in the days when a man in his line of work wanted a place to disappear. A high wall circled the garden, and iron gates stood at the only road in. By evening, Luca's men had walked the grounds twice. Isabella sat on a wide sofa in the front room with her feet on a cushion, watching the waves through the glass, and for the first time in weeks, her shoulders had come down from around her ears.It lasted until nine o'clock.The secret phone buzzed in the pocket of her robe while she stood at the bedroom window with a cup of tea, and she knew before she looked who it was. Her stomach went cold. She had kept the phone hidden in the lining of her suitcase, and she had told no one in this house that she had brought it."Do not hang up, Bella," Dante said softly, when she answered,

Isabella did not turn around. She raised her eyes to the mirror on the dresser instead.Sergio stood in the bedroom doorway, framed in the glass. He held a pistol low against his thigh, and the barrel shook a little. His coat hung open, and the burgundy lining showed in the lamplight. He looked like a man who had carried something heavy for a very long time and had just been told where to set it down."Please do not scream, signora," Sergio said softly, in a voice so gentle that it frightened her more than a shout. "There is no one left to hear it.""The gate guards," Isabella said, keeping her hands flat against her belly, her eyes still fixed on his reflection. "What did you do to them?""I sent them to the boat house, and I told them the Don wanted a closer watch on the water." He swallowed. "They will be there until morning. The radio is in my pocket. It is a small box, and it eats every signal within a mile.""Gianna gave it to you.""She gave me many things." His mouth twisted.

The Council house stood dark when Luca reached it, and he knew before the car stopped that he had been fooled.The doorman in the lobby, an old man in a gray cap, looked up from his newspaper with sleepy surprise. "Nobody called a meeting tonight, Don Luca," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Don Ferrante went to bed at eight. He has not written a letter in a week."Luca stood there with the forged page crushed in his fist, and the blood left his face. "Paulo, the car," he said hoarsely, already running. "Now!"They drove the whole way back with the engine screaming and the speedometer past a hundred. Paulo gripped the dashboard with his good hand and said nothing. Luca tried the radio every minute, and every minute it gave back nothing but hiss. Then, twelve miles from the compound, it crackled once, and a faint, ragged voice cut through the static."Don Luca," Gentile gasped, so weak that Luca barely knew him. "Come home. Please, come home.""Marco, what happened?" Luca shouted, gri

Dante came to the nursery at sunset with a bouquet of red roses and a smile that belonged in a church.Isabella sat in the rocking chair by the barred window with a blanket over her knees, watching the light turn the sea to copper. She had spent the whole day doing what her father had taught her to do in a room full of enemies. She had counted. Two guards stood at the top of the stairs, and two more at the nursery doors. A fifth walked the terrace below every ten minutes, and a sixth sat at the end of the corridor with a radio on his knee. She had not yet found the kitchen or the cellar, and she had not found a window without bars."Bella," Dante said softly, stopping in the doorway with the roses held against his chest, "you look rested.""I look like a prisoner, Dante," Isabella answered, folding her hands over her belly without rising."A guest," he corrected gently, crossing the floor and kneeling in front of her chair. He laid the roses in her lap, and his eyes shone with somethi