All Chapters of Blood Wedding: A Mafia Romance: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

THALIAI couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Giulia's face in the garden, heard Dante's accusation in the hallway, felt the weight of being trapped in a house where everyone blamed me for breathing.Around two in the morning I gave up trying. Got out of bed and turned on the lamp at the small desk in my room. If I couldn't sleep, I might as well do something productive.I pulled out my phone and opened a new note. Started writing down everything I knew about Rafael's murder, organizing it into some kind of structure that made sense. The timeline. The disabled cameras. The eleven minute delay in security response. The fact that someone with family access codes had orchestrated the whole thing.It wasn't much, but it was a start.I thought about the security office, about the footage the guards had been reviewing before they switched screens. They'd found something. Something important enough to hide from me.There had to be records somewhere. Logs, reports, something that

THALIAI managed maybe three hours of sleep before giving up completely. By eight in the morning I was showered and dressed, sitting at the small desk in my room staring at my phone. The security log photos were still there but I had no idea what to do with them or who might help me understand what the override code meant.A knock on my door made me jump."Yes?""It's Rosa. Your sister is here to see you."Cristina. I hadn't expected her, hadn't even talked to her since the family dinner where Giulia had her breakdown. I opened the door and found Rosa standing there with that smile that never quite reached her eyes anymore."She's waiting in the garden," Rosa said. "I thought you two might want privacy.""Thank you."I followed Rosa downstairs and out to the gardens where Cristina sat at a wrought iron table under a pergola covered in climbing roses. She looked perfect as always. Blonde hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, makeup flawless, cream colored dress that looked amazing on h

DANTEThe security room was too small and kind of smelled like stale coffee. I'd been sitting here for three hours going through footage frame by frame with Tommy, our tech guy who looked about sixteen but was actually thirty and knew these systems better than anyone."Go back," I said. "That section again."Tommy rewound the footage from camera twelve, the hallway leading to the bedroom wing. We'd been through this specific stretch maybe twenty times already but something kept nagging at me."There," I said, pointing at the screen. "Stop."The timestamp read 8:47 PM. Four minutes after the cameras had been disabled in the bedroom hallway. Sixteen minutes before Rafael died.A figure moved past the camera. Small, definitely female. Dark dress. Hair down."Can you zoom in?" I asked.Tommy enhanced the image. The resolution was shit but good enough to see what I needed to see.Giulia.My baby sister walking past a camera when she was supposed to be in the garden with other guests. The w

THALIAThe meeting dragged on for what felt like hours. Men in expensive suits talking about territories and shipments and percentages like they were discussing stock portfolios instead of criminal enterprises. I sat there with my hand still tingling from where Dante had squeezed it, trying to look engaged while my brain kept replaying the way he'd looked at Paolo. That cold fury. The absolute certainty in his voice when he'd threatened to kill someone for insulting me.It shouldn't have been attractive. It really, really shouldn't have been.But something about the way he'd defended me, like it was instinctive instead of calculated, had flipped a switch in my brain that I desperately needed to flip back off."The Corsini operations in the north have been stable," my father was saying. "No issues with the transition.""Good," Salvatore replied. He looked awful, honestly. Considering he just lost a son, I guess he’s allowed to. "We need stability right now. Any sign of weakness and the

THALIAI woke up tangled in the blanket Dante had given me, warmer than I'd been in days but also kind of annoyed at myself because I'd spent half the night replaying that moment in the hallway. The way our fingers had touched. How his entire expression had changed for just a second before he'd stepped back like I'd burned him.Whatever. I had bigger problems than trying to figure out what Dante Torrisi was thinking.Training with Nico was at eight. I dragged myself out of bed, showered, got dressed in workout clothes that were starting to feel more natural than the fancy dresses I'd been wearing to all these family events. At least at the shooting range I could hit something and pretend I had some control over my life.Nico was already there when I arrived, setting up targets at varying distances. He looked tired, like he hadn't slept much either. Made me wonder if insomnia was contagious or just what happened when you lived in a world where people got murdered at their own weddings.