All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S REJECTED WIFE WAS THE MAFIA HEIRESS: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The safehouse sat in a quiet residential neighborhood two hours north of the city, an unremarkable brick house that Nico assured them had never once appeared in any record connected to the Romano family, purchased decades ago through a chain of shell companies specifically for exactly this kind of emergency.The drive there had passed mostly in silence, Isabella watching the city lights fade behind them through the rear window, exhaustion and fear both settling heavier with every mile that put distance between her and the estate she'd grown up believing was the safest place in the world. Nico had said little, focused entirely on the road, occasionally checking his mirrors with the practiced vigilance that had become second nature to him over the last two exhausting weeks."Nobody knows this place exists outside of myself and Enzo," Nico said, walking them through the house's modest interior, checking windows and locks with the same careful, practiced efficiency he brought to

Nico's phone rang at three in the morning, an unknown number that, when he answered it warily, revealed a voice he immediately recognized and had genuinely never expected to hear again outside the tense confines of a warehouse negotiation.He'd been lying awake anyway, staring at the ceiling of his own quarters back at the estate, running through the endless list of staff and security personnel who might have had access to Salvatore's holding room, when the phone's sudden buzz against the nightstand made him sit up instantly, every instinct honed by the last several weeks snapping immediately to full alertness."Aleksei Volkov," Nico said, sitting up sharply, instantly awake. "This is an interesting hour to be calling.""I keep interesting hours," Volkov said, his tone carrying none of the earlier menace from their warehouse meeting, replaced instead by something more careful, more measured. "I'm calling because I believe we may have a shared problem, Mr. Romano, and I f

Nico's team arrived within eleven minutes of Isabella's frantic call, but by the time the first security vehicle pulled onto the quiet residential street, the car that had been watching the house was already gone, vanished as quickly and quietly as it had appeared.Isabella and Ethan had spent those eleven minutes crouched near the back door exactly as instructed, every creak of the old house and every distant engine sound sending fresh spikes of adrenaline through Isabella's already exhausted system. When Nico finally burst through the front door, weapon drawn, calling out to confirm they were unharmed, she felt relief crash through her so suddenly her knees nearly buckled beneath her."You're certain about what you saw," Nico said, sweeping the small house's perimeter with practiced efficiency while Isabella and Ethan stood tense and alert in the living room."I'm certain," Isabella said. "A face, watching the house directly, and then the car pulled away the moment I s

The answer, when Nico finally found it, was buried in records so old that half the estate's current staff hadn't even been born when the file was first created. He'd spent the entire night in the estate's records room, a windowless space adjacent to the main archive that held decades of legal and financial paperwork nobody had thought to digitize, working through box after box of yellowed folders with the grim, methodical patience of a man who understood that somewhere in this mountain of forgotten documents sat the answer to a question that could determine whether his family survived the coming weeks. By the time dawn broke, his eyes burned from reading faded typewritten pages under poor lighting, and his hands had gone numb from handling paper that crumbled slightly at the edges with every careful turn. "The safehouse was purchased through a shell company thirty two years ago," he said, spreading a stack of yellowed documents across the study's desk the followi

The combined intelligence from Volkov's network and the Romano family's own investigation finally produced a name that felt, for the first time since Draganov had emerged as the true enemy behind everything, like a genuine, actionable target.The study had become, over the last two days, something closer to a command center than the quiet, book lined room Isabella remembered from her childhood, its walls now covered in printed photographs, financial records, and hand annotated maps that Nico had assembled with the same methodical precision he brought to every crisis this family had faced. Isabella found herself, standing among the accumulated evidence of thirty years of patient enemy planning, feeling something closer to focused determination than the raw fear that had defined most of the last several weeks."Dmitri Sorokin," Nico said, spreading photographs and financial records across the study's desk while Ethan, Isabella, and Enzo studied them carefully. "Draganov's prim