Chapter 61: The Weight of Everything

Isabella couldn't sleep later that night. She lay on her side facing Luca who had insisted on staying and fallen asleep, watching him breathe, and thought about how easy it would be to just reach over and shake him awake.She believed him now. About her father, about the execution order, about all of it being his father's doing and not his. That part had settled somewhere in the last few hours. What hadn't settled was everything she still hadn't told him.The deal with Dante was still open. She hadn't given him anything real yet, but she also hadn't ended it. There was a listening device behind the curtain across the room, small enough to miss unless you knew where to look, and she'd known about it for days. Sofia's eyes seemed wrong whenever Isabella reached for something too fast… And Riccardo kept talking to Marco and Paulo in that low, patient voice of his, planting doubt about her one sentence at a time.She hadn't told Luca any of it.She lifted her hand and held it over his sho

Chapter 62: Empty House.

The house felt different by mid-afternoon. Smaller sounds travelled further now that half the usual noise was gone…no radios in the security office, no low murmur of men passing each other in the halls, and no engines idling out front while somebody waited on someone else.She used the silence to move through the house properly for the first time in weeks. Not wandering, not the aimless drifting she usually did when she wanted to look harmless. This time she walked with purpose, taking mental note of who was actually still on the grounds and where.Two guards at the east gate. One at the garage. Marco somewhere near the front hall, probably still standing where she'd left him that morning. Rosa in the kitchen. The rest of the staff thinned out to a skeleton crew, most of them given the evening off once word went around that the house would be running lean.She passed the east stairwell twice, once going up and once coming back down, and both times the same two guards nodded at her wit

Chapter 63: What Sofia Knows.

Isabella waited until the house had gone properly quiet, the kind of quiet where even Rosa had stopped moving around in the kitchen, before she finally decided to go looking for Sofia.She found her in the small laundry room off the east wing, folding towels she didn't need to fold at that hour, which hinted at a busywork people did when they wanted an excuse to be somewhere and nowhere at the same time. Sofia looked up when the door opened and instantly went still, all the muscles locked and waiting to see which way this would break."Don't stop," Isabella said. "I just want to talk."Sofia's hands kept moving, but slower now, folding the same towel twice and unfolding it again.Isabella pulled a stool over from the corner and sat down across from her, close enough that there was nowhere for either of them to look except at each other. She didn't say the word spy. She had decided that on the way down the hall, that the word itself would slam a door shut, and she needed this one to st

Chapter 64: A Different Kind of Weapon

The footsteps stopped just past the door and didn't move again.Isabella held Sofia's eyes and pressed a finger lightly to her own lips. Sofia nodded and reached for the towels again, hands shaking but moving, giving the room something ordinary to look at if the door opened.It didn't open. A minute passed, long enough for Isabella's pulse to settle, and then the footsteps continued on, still unhurried, fading toward the far end of the hall.She let out a slow breath and turned back to Sofia, and in the space of that minute something in her had already finished deciding what came next."Listen to me," she said, quiet and fast now. "I'm not going to tell Luca anything about this tonight, okay."Sofia was still too shocked to believe her. "But I thought…""If I tell him now, what's going to happen? He'll pull you out, hand you to security, and Dante will find out within a day that his source has gone quiet. If I know him as much as I think I do, he'll adjust. Find another way in. Maybe

All Chapters of MAFIA BRIDE: Chapter 61 - Chapter 64

Chapter 61: The Weight of Everything

Chapter 62: Empty House.

Chapter 63: What Sofia Knows.

Chapter 64: A Different Kind of Weapon