All Chapters of Married To The Wrong Brother: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

He had gone straight to the Don of the De Laurentiis. Unfortunately for me, whatever happened that night was buried and folded for political reasons and the illusion of peace among powerful allies. The Capellos had no real power to push back, especially not when their daughter’s marriage was the last thread tying them to safety and freedom.And my father was still bound to the family. No matter how loudly his heart must have screamed, he belonged to them.After realizing Davina had only confessed about the ambush and left out the rest, I was relieved. She had even arranged for me to see a secret therapist, Matteo had been forced to play along with the hiring since he too knew something happened, though he’d never learn the whole truth. Journaling became my escape, even if I had to write about anything but what really haunted me. Davina kept me disciplined, guided me through checkups, guarded me like I was her patient rather than her sister. And it worked, a little, at least the night

“...breaking now out of Queens – local authorities are investigating a three-day inferno at an East River shipping terminal with suspected ties to the Milan-based Salvatore syndicate. The site is believed to have housed a weapons cache seized last month. Witnesses claim a masked gunman sparked the blaze before vanishing by boat. No casualties have been confirmed, but the NYPD has cordoned off the site…”“No casualties indeed.” Irritation prickled at the base of my neck.My name wasn’t on it yet but someone was casting dirt on our map. And they’d made sure the world would look where we could not blink.Dominic had fought Alessandro over Rosalia Capello, knowing full well the code of Cosa Nostra forbade that two siblings both marry from the same family, least of all the Capellos. Yet Dominic, reckless as ever, believed he could bend centuries of law.It reminded me, years ago, when he’d decided to take matters into his own hands. I can still smell the gun oil from Palermo. Dominic storm

PRESENT The last week became a string of little victories and teeth-baring setbacks. We burned a safehouse in South Philly where we'd thought Vito hid his family, instead, we found out his associates kept false passports there. And that led us to intercept a courier for shipping crates to Milan front. Hit a dealer in LA and found more of Moretti’s fingerprints. Slippery bastard.Two days before I boarded the plane to Cremona, my best friend handed me a laminated map. “You’ll like what we’ve put together.” He wasn't all preening, which meant it was good.Eight hours over the Atlantic felt like punishment. The hours make enemies of you when you’re stuck with your thoughts unless you give them something to do. For all of that excruciating time, my mind fed on the same delicious possibility of burning the Salvatores down to ash and watching their empire get exsanguinated like cheap rats. I imagined the docks on fire and their men scrambling. I imagined Vito on his knees, begging for the

“It might,” my voice was low. “It might also make him exile the people who gave him shelter. He’s not as blind as you think.”Her eyes darted to the boy, then to me, then back again. In that tiny flicker I saw the math she’d been doing in her head, what she could trade, how much time she had left, what price the world might offer for a lie. I could see what years of needle tracks and throttled promises had done to her face. The child’s pulse fluttered against my palm when Marc handed him to me for a second, and I’d seen the lab reports in Marcello’s folder. Two bastards. A mother who feeds her poison to a child makes every broken thing she touches complicit.“Get him warm,” I told Marc, and he bundled the boy in a blanket.The woman shrieked different sounds shifting through a single insane orbit. She spoke a hundred words that meant nothing, a tide of ugly accusations aimed at whatever god or man she thought would answer as she clawed at the cord and scratched at the chair.Marc he

My head snapped up, and there she stood by the brick column to the right of the bar where the wall met an old arcade machine and a cracked mirror that reflected only half her body. The soft amber light slid over her flushed olive skin. Her long toffee-blonde hair fell over one shoulder, the strands dancing on her collarbone. Those pale grey with flecks of blue locked on mine, and I didn’t breathe because I didn’t want her to vanish.“You drink too much,” her soft, hoarse voice threaded with the reprimand I used to hate yet love sternly.I turned slightly, tilting my glass. “And you don’t drink enough. I hope you get to understand me.”She smiled. A slow, ruinous curve that always meant I’d lost before I even touched her. “Understanding you would mean losing myself, Domenico. I was never brave enough for that.”The sound of my name in her mouth was a confession and an accusation.“Maybe it is.” I swirled the glass, watching the amber shiver. “Maybe that’s why you keep haunting my peace