All Chapters of After Death, I Chose The Mafia Don: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Marco turned out to be the kind of guard who treated conversation like a currency he only spent when necessary, which left Blair with a great deal of quiet and nothing useful to do with it.She tried reading. She tried helping Nicoletta with the wash, until Nicoletta gently took the basket back from her and suggested she sit before she wrung something the wrong way. By midafternoon she'd given up pretending to be calm and was simply sitting at the kitchen table turning a teacup in slow circles, mind picking back through seven years she'd hoped never to need again."You've got the look of someone doing arithmetic she doesn't like the answer to," Nicoletta said, settling across from her with her own cup."I keep trying to remember if I ever heard anything." Blair chose the words carefully, the way she'd learned to say true things without saying all of them. "Growing up. Gossip, mostly. About anyone who might have a grudge against your family.""That's a longer list than you'd think for

Nicoletta hugged her goodbye at the door like they'd known each other for years instead of days, and pressed a small jar of something into her hands that turned out, on later inspection, to be a salve for bruised wrists."For next time," she said, entirely too cheerfully for the subject matter."There isn't going to be a next time.""No," Nicoletta agreed, patting her cheek, "but keep it anyway. I like knowing you have it."Alessandro drove her home himself again, and this time the silence in the car had a different texture to it entirely — less like two people guarding separate secrets, more like two people who'd already traded theirs and were still deciding what to do with the quiet that was left over."Your mother thinks I need a bruise salve on standby.""My mother thinks everyone needs a bruise salve on standby. She keeps four kinds." A pause, something almost like amusement pulling at the corner of his mouth. "She also asked me, this morning, entirely unprompted, whether you pre

Alessandro came to the house himself the next evening instead of calling, which told Blair before he'd said a single word that whatever he'd found in Marsala hadn't been simple."He was there."Blair set down the dish towel she'd been holding for the last ten minutes without actually drying anything."Was?""The stove was still warm when my men got inside. Food in the sink, not even rinsed yet. A jacket still hanging on the back of a chair." Alessandro's jaw was tight in the way she'd learned meant he was working very hard to report facts instead of frustration. "He left in the last hour before they arrived. Maybe less.""How is that possible? Nobody knew we were looking there except—"She stopped herself before the sentence finished, and from the way Alessandro's eyes sharpened, he'd heard exactly where it had been headed anyway."Except who?""Nobody." It came out too fast to be convincing, and she hated herself a little for how naturally the deflection still came when it mattered.

Sofia was waiting by the church steps when Blair came down from the pharmacy two days after the Festa, standing well back from the crowd like she'd been rehearsing whether to actually stay."I need to tell you something." No greeting, no preamble, straight into it before Blair had fully registered who she was looking at. "And I need you to actually listen instead of just being polite about it.""Okay.""Don't trust everyone around Alessandro." Sofia glanced past her, once, toward the street, the way people in this town had started doing without seeming to notice they did it anymore. "Not all of them are who they look like.""What does that mean? Who, specifically?""I can't say more than that.""Sofia—""I can't." Something closed over in her face, fast and final, the way a door does when someone's decided the conversation on the other side of it isn't safe to keep having. "Just — watch who's standing closest to you. That's all I'm going to say.""How would you even know something lik

Alessandro showed up unannounced the next afternoon with a paper bag of pastries from the place near the harbor Nicoletta swore by, which was such an ordinary, domestic thing for him to do that Blair nearly laughed out loud at the sight of him standing on her porch holding it."You brought me sfince.""My mother insisted. Apparently I don't feed you enough." He handed over the bag like it embarrassed him slightly to be caught doing something this soft. "I told her that was an insane thing to say to the man keeping you alive, and she told me those were two entirely separate jobs.""She's not wrong.""She rarely is. It's infuriating."They sat on the front step together, the closest thing to an ordinary afternoon either of them had gotten in weeks, and for almost twenty full minutes Blair let herself believe it might just stay that easy.Then his phone rang.She watched him check the screen, watched something in his posture change before he'd even answered it — not alarm exactly, someth