Todos los capítulos de MAFIA BRIDE: Capítulo 101 - Capítulo 110

Concetta came at dawn with a tray of bread and honey, and she did not look at the portrait on the wall.Isabella sat on the edge of the bed in the north tower, with a blanket around her shoulders and the last of the night's cold still in her bones. She had not slept. Through the barred window, the sea was a long gray sheet under a pale sky. Four guards stood outside the nursery doors, and she had learned the sound of every pair of boots in the corridor. She had learned something else too, in the dark. The old woman who brought her meals had never once spoken to her, but every morning her hands shook a little when she set down the tray."Thank you, Concetta," Isabella said quietly, as the old woman laid out the plates."It is my work, signora," Concetta answered, without lifting her eyes, wiping her flour-dusted fingers on her apron. She was small and bent, with white hair under a black kerchief and a thin silver cross at her throat. Her forearms were corded like old rope, and a long w

At eleven forty, the sea beneath the Villa Vitale went black.Luca crouched in a smugglers' cove at the foot of the cliff, with cold water lapping around his boots and the taste of salt on his lips. Above him the rock rose in a wall of wet shadow, and somewhere at the top, behind twelve feet of stone and thirty armed men, his wife was lying in a nursery that belonged to a dead boy. He pressed the gold bracelet against his chest through his jacket and did not say a word."The bricks are here, Don Luca," Marco Gentile whispered, running his scarred fingers along the face of the cliff, a dim flashlight cupped in his other hand. "Old mortar, just as the Inspector said.""How long?" Luca asked, his voice low and rough."Ten minutes, if Paulo's hammer is quiet.""It will be quiet," Paulo Ricci muttered, kneeling at the base of the rock with a cloth wrapped around the head of a sledge. "Hold the light still, old man."Behind them in the darkness, six of Leone's carabinieri waited in a silent

Luca saw the muzzle flash before he heard the sound.It was a small white star in the dark at the far end of the cellar. Something punched him in the chest, and his lungs emptied in one hard breath. The second shot came before the first had finished echoing. He took a step backward, and his boot slid in Sergio's blood, and the whole vaulted room tilted around him like a ship in a storm."Luca!" Isabella screamed."Dante!" Gentile roared, whirling with his pistol raised. He pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell on an empty chamber, because he had spent his last bullet on Sergio. He cursed in Italian and hurled the useless gun at the wine rack. It smashed a row of bottles, and dark wine ran across the floor like blood.Luca's legs gave way. He dropped to his knees on the cold flagstones with his gun still in his hand, and he looked down at his own chest in mild surprise. Two dark, wet holes had opened in his white shirt, side by side, just left of the breastbone. They did not hurt yet

"Clear!" Santoro shouted, and the paddles slammed down on Luca's chest.His whole body jumped on the stretcher, and Isabella screamed through her own pain, one hand gripping the rail and the other clamped over her belly. The monitor shrieked on. The medic charged the paddles again, her square face white and set, and struck a second time."Come back," Santoro hissed through her teeth, pressing down hard. "Come on, come back to your wife, you stubborn devil."One slow green hump rose on the screen. Then another."Pulse," Santoro gasped, sagging against the wall with the paddles still in her fists. "Faint, but it is there. Marco, how far to Cefalù?""The Inspector is on the radio, Santoro!" Gentile bellowed from the cab, his voice cracking as the truck swerved around a bend. "He says the cartel's trucks have reached the hospital doors. Three of them, with men inside the lobby.""Then we cannot stop there.""There is a monastery above us on the mountain," Gentile shouted back. "San Benede

Isabella woke to the sound of a pen scratching on paper, and for a moment she thought she was back in her father's study.Pale light lay across a whitewashed ceiling. She was no longer in the infirmary. Sister Agata had moved them in the night to a small stone cell at the end of the east cloister, with two narrow beds pushed together under a crucifix and a window that looked out over a terraced hillside of olive trees. The bed beside hers held a very still figure under a gray wool blanket. Luca's chest rose and fell, slow and even, and a thin tube ran from his arm to a bag of clear liquid hanging from a nail in the wall.Matteo slept in the crook of her arm, with one small fist pressed against his cheek."Good morning, signora," Leone said quietly.He sat in a wooden chair beside the door, with his raincoat folded over his knee and a stack of papers balanced on a monk's prayer stand. He had washed the soot off his face, but his eyes were red-rimmed, and a bandage showed under his coll