All Chapters of MAFIA BRIDE: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The television in Dante's hotel suite showed the burned church for the fifth time.He stood in front of it with a glass of whiskey in his hand, watching the same dust and the same black smoke roll across the screen. A woman reporter stood on the broken pavement of a Brooklyn street, speaking in a shaky voice. *Three people are in the hospital, and police say the blast came from a floral arrangement left at the church door…*"Three," Dante said softly, his knuckles whitening around the glass. "Three people in the hospital."The picture changed to a shaky video taken from a phone, and for two seconds he saw her, a small figure in a black coat, lying under a man's body behind a hearse.The glass cracked in his fist. Whiskey ran down his wrist and onto the carpet, and he did not feel it. He hurled the glass at the wall, and it exploded in a shower of gold and crystal. Then he snatched his phone from the table, and his thumb stabbed the screen so hard that it nearly broke.The call was ans

Luca came home at dawn with the smell of the river on his clothes and no news in his hands.Isabella heard his boots in the corridor long before the door opened. She sat on the edge of the sofa in the east wing, still in yesterday's dress, with Fontana's papers hidden under a cushion beside her. The old man was asleep in the guest room down the hall. Gentile stood outside her door like a post.The door swung open, and Luca filled the doorway. His eyes were red, and the bandage on his neck had slipped, showing a thin line of blood."Rocco is gone," he said, pulling off his coat and throwing it over a chair. "My men tore apart six warehouses and two apartments, and he vanished into the smoke like a ghost.""Sit down, Luca," Isabella said quietly, rising with one hand on her back and taking his wrist. "You are bleeding.""I'm fine," he muttered. But he let her pull him toward the sofa, and that small thing, the way he did not fight her,

The wire felt like a cold finger pressed against her ribs.Isabella stood at the entrance of the Waterline Gallery in Brooklyn, under a glass roof full of soft white lights, and tried to breathe normally. The thin black strip taped beneath her left breast scratched every time she inhaled. Her green silk dress hid it well, and a long wrap covered her belly, but she was sure every person in the room could hear her heart."Testing," a low voice said inside her ear. "Can you hear me, Bella?"It was Luca. He sat in a van two streets away with Carla Benedetti and a bank of screens, and the sound of his voice made her knees weaken for a second."Loud and clear," she murmured, lifting her champagne glass so no one could see her lips move."Gentile is the waiter by the east wall, and Paulo is the man in the blue suit near the sculpture," Luca said, and she could hear the tension under his calm. "If you say the word *red*, we come in, all of u

The cemetery was empty at that hour, and Luca preferred it that way. He drove out alone before sunrise, leaving Gentile asleep in a chair outside Isabella's door and telling no one where he was going. When he reached the iron gates of Saint Raphael's, the old gatekeeper was still snoring in his hut, and Luca let himself in with the key he had carried since the funeral.He walked slowly up the gravel path between rows of crooked stones, his leg still aching from the Bronx, while crows watched him from the tops of the angels. The air smelled of cold earth and rotting leaves, and the whole way up the hill, he heard the voice in his head repeating the same words. *My father is dead. I threw the dirt myself.*At the top of the hill stood the Moretti chapel, a squat building of marble with two stone lions guarding the door. A steep stair inside led down to the family vault, where his father lay. The bronze plate above the lintel read *NICOLA MORETTI. Padre, Marito, Don.* Luca had paid for e

Sofia fell into her arms at seven in the morning, and she did not get up again for a long time.Isabella was standing at the kitchen window with a cup of weak tea, watching the gray light crawl over the garden. She had not slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the black vans on the pier and heard Luca say Gentile's name. Then the swinging door banged open, and Sofia stumbled in with her hair loose and her face the color of paper."Signora," Sofia gasped, and her knees gave way before she could say more.Isabella dropped the cup. It shattered on the tiles, and hot tea splashed her ankles, but she did not feel it. She caught Sofia under the arms and sank to the floor with her, ignoring the sharp pain in her back."Look at me, Sofia," Isabella said, gripping the girl's shoulders and shaking her gently. "Are you hurt?""Not me," Sofia sobbed, clinging to the front of Isabella's robe with both fists. "It's Tomas, signora. They took my little brother."The words went through Isabel