All Chapters of THE DON WHO COULDN'T LOVE : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I would rather die than marry him.That thought had lived in my chest for three weeks. Now it sat in my throat, choking me, as the car rolled slowly toward the Moretti estate.My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the white silk of my dress so no one would see."Isabella." My father's voice was low. Careful. "Sit up straight."I sat up straight. I always did what my father asked. It was the only thing that had kept us alive this long.***The Moretti estate rose out of the fog like something from a nightmare dressed as a fairytale. Iron gates. Marble columns. Men in black suits standing so still they looked like statues, except for the guns hidden beneath their jackets.I had grown up in a world of danger. I knew what armed men trying to look harmless looked like.The car stopped. My father reached over and took my hand."This clears our debt," he said quietly. "Remember that. Whatever happens today, whatever he says to you — this clears our debt."I wanted to scream that

I woke to a house that didn't feel like mine.The ceiling above me was unfamiliar — high, carved with patterns I didn't recognize, nothing like the low, water-stained ceiling of my childhood bedroom. For one disoriented moment I forgot where I was. Then the weight of the ring on my finger reminded me, cold and unyielding, and the events of the previous night came flooding back all at once: the vows, the kiss, Marco's bloodied face, Dante's hand gripping mine like I was the only solid thing in a room full of chaos.I sat up slowly, the sheets pooling around me, and looked around the room properly for the first time in daylight. It was even larger than I'd registered the night before — dark wood furniture, heavy curtains now pulled back to let in gray morning light, a fireplace cold and unused on the far wall. Someone had left a robe draped over the chair by the window. Someone had also, I noticed, left the door slightly ajar, as if whoever had checked on me during the night hadn't want

Enzo found me three days later, in the small library off the east hallway where I'd taken to hiding between meals, and told me Marco was finally ready to talk."Ready how?" I asked, setting down the book I hadn't actually been reading."Ready like a man who's run out of reasons not to." Enzo leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, none of his usual easy humor in his face. "Dante's with him now. He asked me to bring you, if you still wanted to hear it."I was on my feet before I'd fully decided to be.***They'd moved Marco to a room in the east wing I hadn't seen before — smaller than I expected, plain, more like an office than the cell my imagination had built over the last three days. He sat in a chair by the window, his injuries healing but not healed, one arm still bound close to his body. He looked smaller than he had at the wedding. Smaller than the man who used to bring my father his morning coffee and complain, every year without fail, about the heat.Dante stood near the

I didn't get the chance to confront Dante that night.By the time the car pulled through the estate gates, the house was already lit up in a way that made my stomach drop before I'd even stepped out of the vehicle — every window blazing, guards doubled along the drive, the particular controlled chaos of a household bracing for something. Even the dogs in the kennels near the garage were barking, an unfamiliar sound in a house that usually kept its tension so carefully contained behind smooth marble and smoother smiles.Enzo met me at the door before I'd finished climbing the steps, his usual loose, easy stride replaced by something clipped and purposeful."Where's Dante?" I asked."Study. He's been waiting for you." Enzo's face, usually so quick to smile, was drawn tight. "Isabella, before you go in — Luciano was here an hour ago. Uninvited."***I found Dante standing exactly where I expected him, behind the desk this time, a glass of something dark and untouched at his elbow, the ic

The morning of the dinner, I found a single white flower waiting on my breakfast tray, its stem cut clean, its petals already beginning to brown at the edges.I stared at it for a long moment before I understood why my stomach had gone cold. It was the same variety that had filled the garden the day of my wedding — the same heavy, funeral-white blooms Marta had walked me past on my way to be married to a man I'd never spoken to.There was no note. There didn't need to be.***"Who left this?" I asked, when Marta arrived to collect the tray, holding the flower up between two fingers like it might bite me.Her face went carefully blank in the way I'd learned to recognize as fear dressed up as professionalism. "I don't know, Signora. It was already on the tray when I brought it up from the kitchen.""Someone had to have placed it there.""The kitchen staff rotates. Deliveries come and go all morning." She wouldn't meet my eyes. "I can ask, if you'd like. Quietly.""Quietly," I agreed, th