Semua Bab The Mafia King’s Forced Bride: Bab 1 - Bab 10

The electricity had already gone out twice that night before the cars pulled up outside.Ivy Whitmore didn't notice the second blackout. She was too busy staring at the letter on the kitchen table, the one with the solicitor's letterhead and the word "repossession" printed twice in the first paragraph, when she heard the engines.Not one car. Several. Moving too fast for a quiet street where nothing moved fast except the bin lorries on a Tuesday morning.She heard the shouting before she reached the window."Ivy!"Her neighbour's voice, high and frightened, cutting through the thin walls of the terraced house. Ivy's stomach dropped before her mind caught up to why.She pulled her cardigan tight and ran to the front door, barefoot on the cold hallway tiles, and stopped dead in the doorway.Three black cars sat outside with their engines still running, headlights turned toward the house like searchlights. Men were already out of them. Big men, dressed too well for the street they were s

Her father didn't look back.Ivy watched him walk through the gate at the end of the drive, shoulders hunched, one of Nero's men beside him like an escort rather than a guard. She waited for him to turn. Even once. She waited for some version of him to shout back that this wasn't right, that he hadn't meant for it to go this far.He didn't turn. The car door closed behind him, and then he was gone, and the silence he left behind said more than anything he could have shouted.She stood in the drive a moment longer than she needed to, feeling something in her chest go cold and hard where the fear had been."This way," the housekeeper said, not unkindly, and Ivy made herself walk.---They didn't take her back to the east room.Three women were waiting in a bathroom bigger than her old kitchen, warm water already running, towels folded with a precision that told her someone had known exactly when she'd be arriving. Nobody explained anything. They simply started, hands efficient and imper

Nero didn't sleep.He'd tried, for about an hour, lying in the dark replaying a conversation he should have forgotten by now. A dog assuming every hand is there to feed it. The words wouldn't leave him alone, circling until he gave up and called down for company instead, the way he always did when his own head became somewhere he didn't want to be.Sabrina arrived within the hour, familiar, easy, exactly as uncomplicated as he needed tonight. She didn't argue with him. She didn't call him anything he hadn't asked to be called. It was simple, and it worked, and by the time the sky outside his window had started going grey at the edges, he still hadn't managed to stop thinking about a girl two floors away who'd looked at him like he was something she'd scraped off her shoe.He told himself that meant nothing. He kept telling himself that until the sun was properly up and Sabrina was still there, laughing softly against his shoulder, and neither fact had managed to convince him of anythi

Ivy saw it from the window before she meant to.Down in the courtyard, an older man was on his knees in the gravel, hands raised, mouth moving fast enough that she could tell he was begging even through glass. Nero stood over him, jacket still buttoned, completely unbothered by the rain starting to fall.He hit him.Open palm, hard enough to snap the man's head sideways, and the sound of it must have carried because two of the guards standing nearby didn't even flinch. Like this was Tuesday. Like this happened often enough that nobody bothered reacting anymore.The man kept begging. Nero said something short, cold, and hit him again.Ivy's stomach turned over.She should have looked away. She couldn't. She stood frozen at the glass, hand pressed flat against her own mouth, watching a man twice Nero's age crumple in the mud while Nero stood over him like it cost him nothing at all.Then his head started to turn. Toward the house. Toward her window.She yanked the curtain shut so fast t

She was at his study door at six exactly, dressed plainly like he'd asked, hair still damp from the bath she'd let the staff run for her that morning.He was already at his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled, three phones lined up next to a laptop like weapons he hadn't decided which one to use yet."Sit," he said, not looking up.She sat. She'd learned by now that arguing about the small things wasted energy she needed for the bigger ones."The Castellanos," he said, still not looking at her, "run the east docks. We've had an arrangement with them for six years. Profitable for both sides, mostly quiet.""I don't know who that is.""You don't need to. You need to know that Marco Castellano is hosting a dinner Friday night, and he expects me to bring someone.""Bring someone.""A woman on my arm. It's tradition among people like us. A man without a woman looks unstable. Unstable men get tested." He finally looked up. "I intend to look very stable on Friday."Something cold settled in her