Semua Bab Sold to the Mafia king: The De Luca Bride : Bab 61 - Bab 70

Sophia's POV Bellini ended the interview in four sentences. He did not ask me to explain the call, and he did not tell me to stay. He only pushed back his chair, looked at me for a long moment, and said, "Two officers go with you. Greco goes with you. If you are not back in an hour, I will assume the worst.""My brother stays here," I said."Your brother stays in my office with a locked door and a sergeant who has seven grandchildren and no sense of humor." Bellini's mouth twitched. "Go."I kissed Matteo's hair, and he muttered something about being treated like a child, and I left him with Vincent standing sentry in the corridor and a cup of cocoa going cold on the desk. I did not look back. If I had, I think I would have stayed.The road to Mondello ran along the sea, bright and cruel in the morning light. Greco sat beside me in the back of the unmarked car, sweating into his collar, muttering about procedure. I did not hear a word. I kept hearing Luca's voice. *My father. He says

Sophia's POV The ambulance reached the farmhouse twelve minutes later, and I rode in the back with Tano's head on my knee and my fingers pressed against the hole in his chest. A paramedic with a gray beard and a shaking jaw took over without a word. I stepped out into the yard, where the dog still lay beneath the fig tree and the blue door swung on its hinge, and I realized I had no idea what to do with my hands."He will live," Luca said, coming up beside me. "The medic says the bullet missed the lung by a finger. They are taking him to Villa Sofia.""And my mother?""My men found tire tracks on the lower road. A heavy car, going fast. Toward the city." His eyes were grim. "The old man said the church.""San Benedetto.""It is the only church that makes sense." He took my elbow. "If they wanted her dead, they would have done it here. They took her somewhere they wanted her to be found."I did not ask what he meant. I climbed into the car and held on.San Benedetto stood quiet in th

The call cut off before Enola finished the sentence, but I was already moving before I understood why. Fake doctor. Room. Those two words alone sent me through the mansion's front hall at a dead run, Luca's name leaving my mouth before I even reached the car.He met me at the door with his jacket half on, his expression already hard with the particular stillness he wore when something required action instead of thought. "Tell me while we drive," he said, and I did, repeating Enola's broken words as the car tore out of the gates and onto the coastal road toward the hospital.The ride felt endless even though it couldn't have taken more than fifteen minutes. I kept picturing Enola alone in that room, still weak from everything that had happened to her, with a stranger standing over her bed in a white coat that meant nothing at all. Luca's hand found mine at some point without either of us acknowledging it, and I held on tighter than I meant to.We reached the hospital and I was out of t

The drive back to the mansion passed in near silence, Enola sedated and resting against the seat beside me, her head tipped toward the window, the sedative they'd given her for the move finally easing some of the tension from her face. Luca sat across from us, his phone pressed to his ear in a low, continuous stream of Italian, directing men toward the mansion to prepare rooms, toward the hospital to watch Doctor Ferri's recovery, toward the harbor and the roads out of the city in case whoever had fled earlier tried to leave Palermo entirely.By the time we reached the mansion, it was well past midnight, and the household had been roused into a kind of controlled urgency I hadn't seen since the night of the ambush. Rosa met us at the door, her face drawn tight with worry the moment she saw Enola being carried in rather than walking on her own."She's all right," I said quickly, before Rosa's imagination could run further than the truth. "She's sedated. She's safe."Rosa pressed a hand

I didn't tell Luca right away. I told myself it was because I needed to think it through first, to be certain I wasn't building a case against an innocent man out of exhaustion and fear, but the truth was simpler and uglier than that. I didn't want it to be true, and some part of me hoped that if I waited long enough, the discomfort of what I'd found would fade into something I could dismiss entirely.It didn't fade. By evening, it had only grown heavier, until I finally found Luca alone in the study, the same room where we'd laid out the list the night before, and told him everything. The annotation in Vincent's handwriting. The schedule change made two days before the attack. The careful, disciplined way the attacker had moved, the kind of training Enola's description suggested.Luca listened without interrupting, his expression unreadable in the lamplight, and when I finished, he was quiet long enough that I started to regret saying anything at all."You went through his records wi