Lahat ng Kabanata ng Falling for My Husband’s Brother: Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

Lena's POVThe medical facility Salvatore had arranged occupied the top floor of a nondescript building in Midtown.A nurse in crisp white scrubs greeted me at the entrance. "Mrs. Venturi? Right this way. Dr. Chen is preparing the procedure room."I followed her through sterile corridors. Salvatore's sperm sample had already been collected and prepared. All that remained was the insemination procedure that would create the embryo.The nurse led me to a private waiting area. "Please change into the gown on the bed. Someone will be with you shortly."She left, and I stood alone in the small room, my heart hammering against my ribs.This was it.I was reaching for the hospital gown when a familiar figure passed by the open doorway. Dark hair pulled back in a neat bun. A nurse's uniform that didn't quite fit her frame. And eyes that met mine with unmistakable significance.Mia.She made no move to acknowledge me openly—just a subtle tilt of her chin toward the hallway, a silent message I

Lena's POVThe Venturi estate on a Sunday evening was a different creature from its weekday self.By six o'clock, the formal dining room had filled with the particular kind of noise that only a large Italian family can produce. The long mahogany table had been extended to its full length and set with the good china.I had spent twenty minutes in front of the mirror before coming down, arranging my expression as carefully as I'd arranged my hair. Soft smile. Open posture. Nothing to see here.The trouble started before I'd even found my seat.Isabella had warned me a new face would be joining us — her sister-in-law Caitlin's son had just returned from two years in Milan. When a man with deep ash-brown hair and laughing green eyes appeared in the doorway of the dining room, my breath caught. My heart did something embarrassing.I crossed the room toward him on autopilot, some social reflex carrying me forward."It's wonderful to finally meet you," I said, extending my hand. "Isabella's t

Lena's POVThe announcement had been made four days ago, at what Isabella described as "a small gathering".I hadn't been present for the meeting itself. but What I gathered was this: Salvatore had stood before the family's inner circle and stated that in light of the Moretti situation and the possibility of surviving loyalists seeking retaliation, his sister-in-law would be placed under his direct protection until the threat was neutralized.Direct protection. The phrase had sounded almost considerate when Isabella relayed it to me, her hand pressed to her chest with evident relief.Then I met the four men who would be implementing it.Their names, as far as I could determine, were Irrelevant, Also Irrelevant, Still Irrelevant, and Dante — the last one being the one who spoke, who made the decisions, who materialized at my elbow at precisely the moment I least wanted anyone at my elbow. He was somewhere in his thirties, square-jawed, with the polite expression of someone who had been

Salvatore's POVThe call came in at 11:47 PM Rotterdam time.Marco's voice was flat in the way it only got when he was controlling something. "Mrs. Venturi was taken this afternoon. West Village. Dante lost her when she exited through the side entrance. Gabriele and Dante recovered her approximately three hours later. She is physically intact. Minor bruising. Luca Corleone was present at the location."I said nothing for three seconds."Get the plane ready," I said. "I'll be at the airfield in forty minutes."I did not finish the Rotterdam meetings. I left a single message with Lorenzo to handle the remaining two days of negotiations with whatever authority he could project, and I got into a car and went to the airfield.We landed at six twenty in the morning. I was at the estate by seven.Marco met me at the gate. "She's outside," he said. "Garden. She couldn't sleep."I didn't go inside first. I went around the side of the house, through the gate in the garden wall, and found her.Sh

Lena's POVHe gave me a brief tour that first evening, the kind that covered function rather than feeling: kitchen, laundry, the study I was not to enter without reason, the terrace that required a key code, the emergency contact list posted inside the hall closet.My room was at the end of the long corridor, opposite end from his.Dante carried my bags without being asked and set them inside the door. I thanked him. He nodded and left.I stood in the doorway and looked at the room.It was a guest room in the structural sense. Good furniture, clean lines, a window that faced east as Salvatore had mentioned. But I had passed two other guest rooms on the way down the corridor, their doors standing open in the casual way of rooms that are not currently in use, and something about this one was different in a way I could not immediately locate.I stepped inside and stood still for a moment.The light was wrong. Not wrong badly, wrong specifically. The overhead fixture was off and the room