Todos os capítulos de He Broke Vows, I Left: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 10

That day marked both the third anniversary of Isabella's disappearance and the memorial Mass at which the Moretti family would formally lay her to rest.When Isabella walked into the hall, her funeral portrait stood on the dais, and directly beneath it sat the man she had once been willing to die for, Matteo De Luca.Beside him sat information broker Bianca Verdi and their two-year-old twins, Leo and Clara De Luca. Bianca wore the formal gown of a Donna and rested her head on Matteo's shoulder as if no one else existed, utterly unconcerned with who might be watching.The instant Matteo recognized Isabella, the color drained from his face. He lurched to his feet, his lips trembling violently, and blurted out the nickname that had always been his alone to use:"Bella..."She thought he would come running. She thought he would hold her the way he had three years ago, ask how much she had suffered, ask whether the bullet wound in her shoulder still hurt. He did not.Thunder cracked dully o

To shore up her children's claim before the Mafia Council convened, Bianca moved the twins' christening forward.On the day of the ceremony, Matteo, dressed in a tailored black suit, bent over Leo to fasten a silver christening medallion around his neck."Bella, come help me with the clasp." Matteo did not even look up, his tone as natural as if they were still a devoted married couple. "This is the Moretti family's blessing on the next generation. It's their legacy."Isabella walked forward stiffly. When her eyes landed on that silver medallion, every drop of blood in her body seemed to drain away at once.An iris pattern had been engraved so faintly around the edge of the silver medallion that it was almost invisible. No one else would have known it, but how could she possibly be wrong? Her mother, Elena Moretti, had commissioned it three years earlier, full of hope, when Isabella was pregnant! The back even bore the pet name for Isabella's unborn child, a name only she and Elena had

Inside the sealed transport van bound for the psychiatric clinic, Isabella made her move.Isabella knew the van's layout inside and out. With a tiny metal tool she had concealed, she severed the cabin's main control line, triggering a brief but total system blackout. During the ten seconds the guards spent scrambling to restore power, she leaped from the compartment and vanished into the rain and mud.She did not care that she was soaked through. She went straight for the abandoned warehouse where her parents had died in that horrific crash.The warehouse stank of rust and rot. Beneath a beam that looked ready to collapse, Isabella found Luca on the floor. The old guard had been shot in the abdomen, and blood seeped steadily from the wound, staining the dust around him red. Her father's old wooden rosary was clamped in his fist."Miss Isabella... the evidence..." Luca's words broke apart between breaths.Isabella's eyes were bloodshot. She twisted open the rosary's largest bead and fou

The emergency lights came on with a click, and cold white light cut through the dim Council hall.Julian stepped forward and projected two court-certified electronic documents onto the large screen. The recording that had once branded Isabella a traitor was broken down frame by frame. "Here is the recording's cryptographic hash and the tamper-proof timestamp the former Don registered with a Swiss bank." Julian's cool, steady voice carried through the hall. "Acoustic analysis confirms that the route confession Signor Matteo heard three years ago was maliciously edited. More important, technicians flagged evidence of waveform splicing three separate times. Signor Matteo, angry and eager to secure control of the port, refused to authorize a review."Strangled gasps and low murmurs swept through the hall. The Mafia Council ruled on the spot. Given the authenticity of the stop-payment order and the severity of the violation, Matteo's command authority was temporarily suspended, and Bianca's

When word spread that Camila had been registered, Bianca panicked. She publicly offered a $500,000 bounty for the electronic signature reader, and overnight the Marseille docks filled with mob scouts posing as reporters and armed killers.Matteo, stripped of his command, arrived at the neutral boundary with a handful of loyal men.A black armored car stopped outside the safe zone. Matteo climbed out, haggard and bloodshot, and strode straight toward Isabella. "Bella, I have the schedule for Bianca's attack. She's hired people to storm this place, and the neutral port police can't hold them! Get in the car. The De Luca family's private underground shelter is the only safe place left!"Isabella stood behind the glass door and looked at him coldly. "You can leave the intelligence with Nora. As for you, stay away from here.""Why would you rather trust these outsiders than me?!" Matteo lost control, convinced that Julian had been pulling every string behind the scenes. With a contemptuous