All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Chapter 41: The Priest's Passage"The altar!" The gag had slipped from Father Anselm's mouth, and his voice cracked across the vault. "Under the altar! Anna's passage!"00:36.Dante did not stop to ask. He seized the priest's chair, tipped it, and slashed the ropes with one stroke of his knife. Father Anselm tumbled free, gasping, and seized Isla's wrist with surprising strength."Forty years ago, the old Don Giovanni built a way out of the mausoleum for the family. Anna showed it to me before she died. It runs under the hill to the river road." His eyes were frantic. "The stone with the dove. Press the dove!"00:29.They ran. Isla's heels slid on the marble. The altar loomed ahead, and carved into its front panel she saw it at last, a small stone dove, worn smooth by a century of hands. Dante slammed his palm against it. Nothing happened."Harder!" Anselm shouted."Dante, together!" Isla threw her weight against his arm. The stone sank with a deep, grinding groan, and the whole altar

Chapter 43: BellavistaDante went to Bellavista alone.Not truly alone. Luca's men ringed the building in the dark, a dozen shadows pressed against the alley walls and the rooftops across the street. But he walked in through the front door by himself, because it was the only way he could stand it, and because he had decided long ago that whatever lay waiting in that restaurant was his to face.The dining room was exactly as Isla had left it that night. Chairs stacked on tables. The corner booth. A long brown stain on the floor where Enzo Ricci had bled. He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the place where a girl in a wet coat had once stared him down, and felt something tighten in his chest."Upstairs," Luca murmured in his earpiece. "The old owner's office. Dino said the back stairs.""Hold the perimeter.""Boss, let us come in...""No." He drew his pistol. "If it's a trap, I want you outside it."The back stairs were narrow and creaked underfoot. At the top, a door stood

Chapter 45: Detective QuinnDetective Sera Quinn did not look like a woman who frightened gangsters.She was in her middle forties, short and square-shouldered, in a rumpled gray trench coat that had seen better decades. Her hair was cropped close and streaked with silver. She carried a battered leather satchel, and she sat in the Moretti library with her ankles crossed and a cup of tea balanced on her knee, studying the room's paintings with the mild interest of a woman at a rummage sale.Dante stood by the fireplace with his arms folded. Isla sat on the sofa with Tomas beside her, his cane across his knees. Luca hovered near the door. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut."You have a warrant," Dante said."I do." Quinn set down her cup. "For the ledger. And for Tomas Vance's testimony. I'd be within my rights to take both this afternoon and leave you an inventory." She smiled faintly. "I'd rather not. I find people are more helpful when they haven't been handcuffed.""You

Chapter 47: The Priest Who Was a BrotherLina was eighteen, and she was shaking so hard that the blanket someone had wrapped around her shoulders kept slipping to the floor.Isla knelt beside her on the attic boards and tucked it back, again, slowly. The girl's feet were scratched and bleeding. Her wrists bore the raw red marks of rope. But her eyes, dark, enormous, fierce, were clear, and when she spoke, her voice was low and steady."There were five of them. They put a sack over my head and threw me in a van. They thought I was her." She nodded toward Valentina, who stood white-lipped by the ladder. "When they pulled off the sack and saw my face, one of them swore. Another said the old man would kill them. So they argued, and I waited, and when they stopped at a light, I kicked out the back door.""You ran," said Dante."I ran. I didn't know where." Her chin trembled. "I only knew Marco's flat. He'd been kind. He said if I ever needed a place, I could climb the fire stairs." She swa

Chapter 49: The Gilded RoomIsla woke to the smell of lilies.For a long moment she lay still, her eyes closed, trying to remember where she was. Her head throbbed. Her mouth tasted of chemicals. Something soft was under her, a feather mattress, and something heavier was over her, a silk coverlet embroidered with tiny gold birds.Then the memory came back in a rush, and she sat bolt upright.The chauffeur's face. Paolo, who had looked so grief-stricken, so frightened, so sincere. Mrs. Moretti, you must come. The boss has been shot. He's asking for you. She had run to the car in her nightdress with a coat thrown over it. She had been crying. She remembered a rag pressed over her mouth, and a sweet, sharp smell, and the world going black at the edges."No," she whispered. "Oh, no."Her hands flew to her stomach. It was flat, warm, unchanged. She pressed both palms against it and breathed."Hello," she murmured, so softly that only the baby could have heard. "It's all right. Mama's here.