Alle Kapitel von The Mafia Boss’s Silent Bride: Kapitel 31 – Kapitel 40

Amber’s POVI didn’t go to work that day. I told Denise I wasn’t feeling well, which wasn’t entirely a lie, since my stomach had been in knots since the moment I woke up and decided today was the day I’d actually follow through.I spent most of the afternoon staring at the kidnapper’s phone where I’d hidden it, turning my plan over so many times I’d nearly talked myself out of it twice before dinner. I kept thinking about the boutique, about the dress still hanging in my closet, about how easily this whole plan could unravel if I let myself remember his face in that mirror for too long. I made myself think about the other things instead, the silence, the closed doors, the call where he’d been so certain I was safe that fear hadn’t even touched him.Every time I pictured handing Nikolai the phone directly, explaining everything myself, signing out the whole story with my own hands, something in me recoiled. If I did it that way, as myself, he would see me. He would read every flicker o

Amber’s POVThe next morning I woke up before my alarm, lying there staring at the ceiling for a while before I even bothered getting up. My stomach was already in knots and it wasn’t even seven yet.I got dressed slowly, went through the motions of making tea without really tasting it, and somewhere in the back of my mind the clock was already counting down toward evening even though work hadn’t started yet. I hated that about myself a little. One phone call and already my whole day was bending around it.Work didn’t help much either. I interpreted a parent-teacher meeting that dragged on forever, then a hospital consult right after, and I kept catching myself drifting, losing the thread of what someone was saying because my mind had wandered off to seven o’clock again. Denise gave me a look at one point, the kind that said she’d noticed, but she didn’t say anything, and I didn’t offer an explanation either.I left early, told her I had an appointment I couldn’t move. It wasn’t reall

Nikolai’s POVI stopped at a flower shop on the way home, which wasn’t something I’d ever done in my adult life, not once, not for anyone.I almost talked myself out of it twice, sitting in the car outside the shop longer than necessary, running through every reasonable objection my mind could produce. It was a small gesture, maybe too small to matter after everything I still hadn’t properly fixed between us. It might look like an apology for something specific, when really it wasn’t about any one thing, just an accumulation of small failures I was finally trying to address one at a time, the way Pavel had described it, consistency instead of grand gestures.I went in anyway. I picked something simple, white and pale green, nothing ostentatious, because I didn’t want this to feel like another performance, another calculated move designed to achieve a specific outcome. I just wanted her to come home to something that said I’d been thinking about her during a day that had nothing to do

Amber’s POV The Kowalski Foundation gala was held in a hotel downtown I’d never actually been inside before, the kind of building that announced its own importance through sheer scale rather than anything as simple as a sign out front. Nikolai pulled the car up to the entrance, and valets appeared almost instantly, opening doors, taking keys, the entire operation moving with the practiced efficiency of people who did this exact dance every single night for people exactly like him. I was wearing the green dress. I hadn’t planned to, not at first, some stubborn part of me resisting the idea of giving him that particular satisfaction tonight of all nights, but when I’d stood in front of my closet that evening, nothing else had felt right for what we were about to do, and some quieter, more honest part of me had wanted to wear something that was actually mine, chosen because it fit who I was becoming rather than who everyone else expected me to be. Nikolai glanced at me once we stepped

Nikolai’s POV The first twenty minutes of the gala passed in the particular blur of obligation I’d grown used to over the years, handshakes, careful smiles, conversations that required just enough attention to seem genuine without actually costing me anything real. Amber stayed close beside me through most of it, composed, quietly observant, handling the sudden weight of public attention with more grace than I’d expected even though I knew by now not to underestimate her. I noticed the way people’s eyes lingered on her a beat too long before shifting back to me, the particular curiosity of strangers finally putting a face to months of quiet rumor, and I found myself unexpectedly protective of her through it, aware of how exposed this kind of attention must have felt after a lifetime spent learning to disappear. I introduced her to the Kowalski family first, the foundation’s namesakes, elderly and sharp-eyed, the kind of people whose approval mattered more than I wanted to admit in r