Lahat ng Kabanata ng Married to the devil of valtieri: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

Chapter 11: What Marco SaidThe clinic smelled of antiseptic and silence.Marco's room was exactly as they had left it, except that the bed was empty. The sheets had been thrown back. A torn bandage lay on the floor. The window stood open, and a cold wind lifted the curtains like a slow, wrong breath."Where is he?" Isla's voice cracked. "Where is my brother?"A nurse sat on a plastic chair in the corridor, holding an ice pack to her head, as pale as paper. "I found her in the supply closet," one of Dante's men said. "She was drugged. She remembers a man in a doctor's coat. She says he wore a gold ring."Isla made a sound she didn't recognize. Her knees buckled.Dante caught her before she hit the floor."I've got you," he said fiercely, gathering her against him. "I've got you.""He's all I have," she sobbed. "He's the only family I have left. If they hurt him...""They won't." His arm tightened around her. "Look at me. They won't, Isla."He carried her out of the clinic himself, ign

Chapter 13: Before Midnight"No," Dante said for the fourth time. "Absolutely not.""You haven't heard the plan.""I've heard enough to know I hate it."They stood in the study at ten o'clock that night, in front of a spread of blueprints, with the Moretti inner circle watching from the doorway. Luca Bellandi leaned against the wall with his arms folded and his silver hair gleaming under the lamp. Enzo Ricci was not there. Vittorio lounged in a chair near the window, turning a pocketknife over in his fingers.Isla set both palms on the table. "They told me to come alone. If I walk in with a dozen men, Marco dies. If I walk in by myself, I get to see what they want, and I get to see my brother. You and your men wait outside. You'll hear everything.""I'll hear everything," Dante said flatly, "while you stand in a room with a man who has already killed your father.""Then give me a way to call you."A long silence. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Luca cleared his throat."Boss, the girl is

Chapter 15: The Secret I KeptThe drive back to the estate was silent. Marco rode in the second car with two guards and a doctor. Isla rode with Dante, her fingers laced tightly in her lap, her brother's whisper circling in her skull like a trapped bird.Dad is alive.She wanted to scream it. She wanted to turn to the man beside her, the man whose mouth she could still feel on hers, and tell him everything. But outside Bellavista, as the guards pulled them apart, Marco had gripped her wrist and breathed one more thing into her ear."He told me not to tell Dante. Not until you've seen for yourself who he is when he thinks no one is watching."So she said nothing. She watched the dark city slide past the window and hated herself for every silent mile."You're not speaking," Dante said quietly."I'm tired.""That's not the reason."She turned. He was watching her, not with suspicion, but with a kind of careful, aching patience that made her chest hurt. A streetlight slid across his face

Chapter 17: The Gun and the HeartbeatFor one endless second, nobody in the chapel breathed.Dante stood in the open doorway with the grey dawn behind him, his face the color of old paper. He looked at Tomas Vance's raised finger. He looked at the white hair, the scarred cheek, the cane. And then, very slowly, he looked down at the pistol hanging from his own hand as if he had never seen it before."You're alive," he said. It came out as a whisper. "I felt your hand move. I knew it. God, I knew it.""Don't," Tomas said coldly. "Don't speak to me like we're friends.""Tomas, I never shot you.""You were there.""I was standing next to you!" His voice cracked across the stone. "My father's men had taken the gun from my belt the moment I stepped between you and him. I had nothing in my hands but my own blood. I was eighteen years old, I'd never fired at a living thing, and I have heard that gunshot every night for eighteen years.""Then why do you still have my key?""Because you put it

Chapter 19: What a Father SoldThey brought him back to the estate under guard, in the last car of a silent convoy.Isla rode in the first, with Dante's arm around her shoulders and her head against his chest. She did not cry. She had run out of tears somewhere between the chapel and the gates. She only watched the grey morning go by and listened to his heartbeat, the one thing in the world that had not lied to her.Tomas Vance was settled in a quiet room in the east wing, with a doctor, a locked door, and two of Dante's most trusted men outside. Luca had been politely asked to wait in the library. He had gone without protest. That, more than anything, bothered Dante."He knows how to be patient," Dante said in the corridor, his voice low. "My father used to say the most dangerous man in a room is the one who is never in a hurry.""Do you think he lied about your father?""I think he told the truth," Dante said slowly, "in exactly the way that costs him nothing."She nodded. Then she