THE MAFIA'S FORBIDDEN WIFE

CHAPTER THREE

Isabella POV

I checked my phone again.

The screen lit up the dark bedroom with a cold white glow, showing me the same thing it had shown me for the last three hours: no reply. My message still sat there, delivered and unanswered.

I couldn’t sleep either.

I had typed it just after one in the morning, lying on my side of the large bed while Marco slept with his back to me. The words had felt reckless and necessary at the same time. Now, in the quiet gray of early morning, they only felt reckless.

I locked the phone and set it face down on the nightstand.

Marco shifted behind me. His arm came around my waist, heavy and warm, pulling me back against his chest out of habit. I stayed still and let him. His breathing remained deep and even. He was still asleep. I stared at the wall and counted the seconds until I could move without waking him.

When his hold finally loosened, I slipped out of bed carefully, took my phone, and went into the bathroom. I closed the door before turning on the light. The mirror showed me the same face as always, calm, composed, the face of a woman who belonged to someone powerful. Only my eyes looked restless.

I opened the message thread again. Still nothing.

I set the phone on the marble counter and turned on the shower, letting the water run hot enough to cloud the glass. Under the spray I pressed my forehead to the tile and tried to talk myself out of the sharp, stupid hope sitting in my chest. Luca Moretti was not going to answer. He had warned me in that hallway. He had looked at me like I was a mistake he already regretted almost making. A man like him did not text the Don’s wife back at two in the morning.

And yet I had sent the message anyway.

I finished showering, dried off, and dressed in soft lounge clothes before Marco woke. By the time he came into the kitchen, I had coffee waiting and my expression arranged into something peaceful. He kissed my temple, murmured that he had an early meeting, and told me not to wait up if the day ran long. I smiled and nodded. The performance was automatic by now.

Only after the elevator doors closed behind him did I let my shoulders drop.

The penthouse felt larger without him in it. I walked through the rooms with my phone in my hand, checking it more times than I wanted to admit. Mid-morning light filled the living room. Outside, the city moved on as if nothing had shifted. Inside, everything felt slightly off-center.

I tried to read. I tried to answer a few polite messages from women who were wives of other men in the Family. I even stood at the window and watched traffic far below, counting black cars like it might distract me. Nothing worked. My mind kept returning to the hallway outside the restaurant, the closeness of Luca’s body, the roughness in his voice when he told me I had no idea what I was asking for, the way his eyes had dropped to my mouth for the briefest second.

I was still standing there when the private elevator chimed.

I turned, expecting one of the household staff or perhaps Sofia. Instead, Luca Moretti stepped into the penthouse carrying a slim black folder.

My pulse stumbled.

He stopped just inside the entrance when he saw me. For a moment neither of us spoke. He was dressed in dark pants and a charcoal shirt with the sleeves rolled once, the same controlled appearance as always, but there was a tightness around his eyes that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him in daylight.

“Mrs. Romano,” he said. Formal. Careful. “The Don asked me to drop these numbers off for him. He’s still in the meeting with the Vitales.”

I swallowed. “He’s not here.”

“I know. He said to leave them on his desk.”

Luca walked past me toward the office. I should have stayed where I was. Instead I followed a few steps, stopping near the doorway as he placed the folder neatly on Marco’s desk. When he turned back, the space between us felt too small for the size of the room.

“Did you need something else?” I asked, and hated how quiet my voice sounded.

He looked at me directly for the first time since arriving. Something unreadable moved behind his eyes. Then he said, low enough that it wouldn’t carry, “You shouldn’t have sent that message.”

Heat rose in my face. I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You didn’t answer.”

“Because answering would have been worse.”

The honesty in his tone made my stomach tighten. I crossed my arms, more to steady myself than anything else. “So you thought about it.”

Luca’s jaw flexed. He glanced toward the open doorway behind me, then back. “I deleted three replies. That should tell you enough.”

The admission landed harder than I expected. For a second I couldn’t find anything to say. He watched me the way he had in the hallway—like he was measuring the exact distance between sense and disaster.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said finally. “That part was true.”

“I know.” His voice roughened almost imperceptibly. “Neither could I. That doesn’t make this anything other than a problem.”

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, one of the staff, moving toward the kitchen. Luca stepped back immediately, the brief crack in his composure sealing over. By the time the housekeeper appeared with a question about lunch, he was already the Capo again: polite, distant, already angled toward the elevator.

“Tell the Don the file is on his desk,” he said to me, loud enough for the other woman to hear. Then he added, quieter, just for me, “Don’t text me again, Isabella.”

The use of my first name, rare, deliberate, sent a shiver straight down my spine.

He left without waiting for a reply.

I stood in the living room long after the elevator doors closed, phone still in my hand, the silence of the penthouse pressing in around me. My pulse had not settled. If anything, it beat harder.

I walked back to the bedroom on legs that didn’t feel entirely steady and sat on the edge of the bed. The conversation had lasted less than two minutes. It shouldn’t have been enough to leave me this unsettled. But the fact that he had admitted he drafted replies, that he had lain awake the same way I had, changed the shape of everything.

He was trying to stay away.

He was failing in the same direction I was.

I opened the message thread again and stared at my own words. Then, before I could talk myself out of it, I typed one more line and hit send.

You used my name.

I watched the screen, heart slamming against my ribs, until the word “Delivered” appeared.

This time the reply came faster than I expected.

A single sentence.

That was a mistake.

I was still staring at it when the elevator chimed again.

Marco’s voice carried from the entrance, calm and familiar, calling my name as he walked into the penthouse. I locked the phone, slid it under the pillow, and stood up just as he appeared in the bedroom doorway.

He looked at me for a long second, head tilted slightly.

“You look flushed,” he said. “Everything all right?”

I smiled the way I had practiced for years and moved toward him.

“Everything’s fine,” I answered.

But my phone, hidden under the pillow, still felt warm from the last message, and the lie tasted different this time, sharper, more dangerous, and already beginning to cost me.