บททั้งหมดของ Sold to the Mafia king: The De Luca Bride : บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

Luca's POV I read the card standing in the corridor, with the officer's cheap magazine still lying open on his chair, and I understood that someone had just walked a message through four layers of my security as casually as a man delivering bread. *Ho aspettato vent'anni, Rosa.* The handwriting was slanted and economical, the hand of someone taught to write by a man who valued discipline. I had seen that script once before, in the margin of a ledger from my father's safe. I did not tell Sophia that. Not yet."The nurse," I said to the officer. "Who sent her?"He blinked at me. "Signore, she wears a hospital badge. The flowers came from the lobby desk.""Find the lobby clerk. Bring her to me. Now."He ran. Behind me, the door of Rosa's room stood half open, and I could hear Sophia's voice, low and urgent, and Rosa's answering whisper, thin with terror. I did not enter. A woman has a right to hold her aunt's hand without a man's shadow falling across the bed. I stood in the hallway wi

Sophia's POV I did not sleep. I lay on top of the covers in my clothes with the photograph held against my chest, listening to the house breathe around me. Down the corridor, Luca's study light burned beneath the door until nearly four, and twice I heard him pacing, slow and heavy. Once he stopped outside my room. I watched the thin line of shadow beneath the door, my heart beating too loudly, and I did not breathe until his footsteps moved away.At half past five, when the sky was the color of dishwater, I rose. I took the photograph, my father's torn letter, and the iron key from Enola's folder. Matteo slept in the room across the hall with a guard in the corridor, and I stood over his bed for a moment, memorizing the rise and fall of his chest. Then I slipped down the back stairs, through the kitchen where the cook was already kneading dough and wisely looked away, and out into the garden.The wall at the end of the orchard had a gap the gardeners used. I had found it my second we

Sophia's POV "Out," the voice crackled again. "Ninety seconds, Chris. Then I start counting her breaths."I crouched behind the iron stair with Luca's arm locked across my back, my father's diary digging into my ribs, and watched my aunt through the broken window. The wind had torn her braid loose. She stood at the very lip of the cliff with her wrists bound and her eyes shut, her lips moving in what I knew was a prayer. The man behind her wore a black mask and held the pistol steady against her temple."I am going out," Chris said."You are going to die out there," Luca said flatly."Perhaps." Chris did not look away from the window. "But he does not want me dead yet, or he would have shot me through the glass. He wants me standing in the open, where he can see my face. That gives you a minute, De Luca. Use it.""Why should I help you?""You should not." His dark eyes finally met mine, and something passed through them, grief or apology. "Do it for her. She raised the girl who is c

Sophia's POV I read my father's line three times, and each time the ink seemed to darken on the page. *Chi me l'ha data è ancora in questa casa.* The one who gave it to me is still in this house. I closed the diary and pressed it against my knees, and the lemon trees rustled above us as though they were listening."Which house?" I asked. My voice came out thin. "Ours? Because if he meant the Rossi house...""I have asked myself that every night for a year." Chris stared at the dark garden. "Adrian wrote it long before he died, and he never named anyone. Whoever handed him that false proof stood close enough to Rossi walls that he trusted them. I have no name. Only a suspicion that they are still breathing."I looked toward the French windows. Luca had not moved, but I knew he had heard every word, because his shoulders had gone rigid beneath his shirt. I rose from the bench. My legs felt unsteady, and I let them carry me away before I did something foolish, like asking Chris whether

Chi sei?" Who are you? A woman's voice, low and hoarse, with the cadence I had heard in my dreams. "Who is with you, Chris?""It is her, Isabella. It is Sophia."For a long time nothing happened. The shotgun did not waver. Behind it, in the shadow of the doorway, I could see only a pair of dark eyes and a pale line at the hairline where something had once split the skin. The woman who had sung me to sleep had been warm and golden and laughing. The one before me was thin as a rail, her hair threaded with gray and scraped into a knot, her mouth a hard line. She looked at me as though I were a trap."Mamma," I whispered."Don't." The word cracked like a whip. "Do not call me that. Not yet."The shotgun stayed up. I raised both hands, my palms trembling. "I came with Chris. No one else. I swear it.""Anyone could say that." Her gaze raked over my face, my coat, the car behind me. "You look like her. You look so much like her that it makes my teeth ache. But my memory is a broken plate, an