The Don's Bride

Chapter 3

The car ride was silent. Not the comfortable kind, the kind that sits heavy on your chest and makes you flinch at every small sound.

Sonia sat in the back seat, hands folded tight in her lap, watching the city move past the tinted windows. Marco drove without a word. Luca sat beside her scrolling through his phone like he hadn't just left a man dead on a club floor. Like the blood still faintly visible on his shirt didn't belonged to someone else entirely.

Sonia kept glancing at the door handle beside her. Locked. She'd already known it would be, but checking still felt necessary.

The streetlights thinned out as the car pushed deeper into parts of the city she barely recognized. She let the silence stay. Her mind was loud enough without conversation. Murder. Police. Being forced into a car by strangers. And sitting less than a foot away from her, the man at the center of all of it.

Luca De Santis.

Even just thinking the name made her stomach knot. She remembered fragments of it while growing up, whispered mentions, things half-heard on the news. A family with money and power and the kind of reputation that made people lower their voices. Her father used to tense up whenever that name came on, on the television. She'd never understood why.

She was starting to understand now.

She looked at Luca again. He looked completely relaxed, one arm resting casually, his sleeves pushed up enough to reveal dark tattoos running along his forearm. His face gave away nothing. How did someone sit like that, that still, that unbothered, after what had just happened?

The silence finally became too much.

"Where are you taking me?"

Marco answered first. "Somewhere safe."

"There's that word again," Sonia said flatly. "Safe."

Marco's eyes found hers in the mirror. "You got a better idea?"

"Yeah. My apartment."

"That's the first place they'd look."

They. Plural. Sonia felt the weight of that word settle into her chest. How many people were involved in this? How many enemies did Luca actually have?

Luca put his phone away and looked at her. "Stop thinking about running."

"I'm not staying with you."

"You are tonight."

"And tomorrow?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

He didn't answer. Sonia looked away, frustrated. Every conversation with him felt like reading a book with half the pages torn out. He gave just enough to keep her unsettled and not nearly enough to make sense of anything.

Marco turned onto a long private road, and tall black gates came into view ahead. Security cameras mounted at intervals. Armed guards at the entrance. Sonia sat up straighter.

"Oh, absolutely not."

The gates opened as they approached, slow and automatic.

She looked at Luca. "You live here?"

"Yes."

"This looks like a prison."

"Prisons have less security," Marco offered.

She ignored him.

The car stopped in front of a mansion that was enormous and expensive and somehow completely cold-looking. Wide windows, manicured everything, guards standing near the entrance like they'd been placed there and told not to move.

Sonia suddenly missed her small, cluttered apartment with an intensity that surprised her.

Marco got out. Luca looked at Sonia.

"Get out."

"No."

He stared at her for a moment. Then, without warning, he leaned towards her. She pressed herself back against the door immediately.

"What are you doing?"

"You're sitting on the seatbelt."

Her face went warm. Luca calmly reached past her, unclipped it, and leaned back. The whole thing lasted about three seconds. But in those three seconds Sonia registered something that unsettled her in a way that had nothing to do with guns or dead bodies or corrupt detectives.

He just made her nervous. In a completely different, inconvenient way.

"That was unnecessary," she muttered.

"You're being dramatic."

"You kidn*pped me."

"You're still breathing."

She stared at him. "Do you actually listen to yourself talk?"

Marco opened her door from outside before Luca could answer.

The night air was cold. Sonia stepped out slowly and stood looking up at the building. It was even bigger up close.

"You really live here," she said, mostly to herself.

Marco's mouth curved. "Jealous?"

"Concerned."

He laughed, a short, genuine sound, which felt deeply wrong given everything about this situation.

Inside, the mansion was too quiet, Sonia stood there staring, polished floors, expensive art on every wall, warm lighting that somehow still managed to feel cold. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. Nothing was out of place. It felt less like a home and more like a display.

Then a woman appeared at the top of the staircase.

Sonia went still.

She was elegant in the way sharp things are elegant, a black dress, perfect posture, eyes that moved over everything with quiet calculation. She came down the stairs slowly and Sonia felt her gaze land and stay on her.

Then the woman turned and looked at Luca. "You brought a witness home."

Not a question. A verdict.

"She's staying temporarily," Luca said.

The woman descended the rest of the stairs and stopped in front of Sonia. Up close she was even more unnerving. She looked at Sonia the way someone examines something unexpected, not with warmth, not with hostility. With assessment.

"You look frightened," she said.

Sonia held her ground. "Shouldn't I be?"

The corner of the woman's mouth moved. Not quite a smile.

Marco slipped off deeper into the house. The woman turned back to Luca.

"This is careless."

"She saw the shooting."

"Then she should have disappeared with the others."

Sonia's stomach turned over. The others. She tucked that away and kept her face still.

Luca's expression hardened slightly. "Not tonight."

The tension between them was thick enough to feel. Sonia looked between them carefully. Mother and son, she decided, though they carried themselves with none of the warmth that usually implied. Just a shared language of control and distance.

The woman's eyes came back to Sonia. "Your name."

"Sonia."

"Full name."

"Sonia Carter."

The woman went still. Just for a moment, barely a breath, but it was there. Luca caught it too.

"Carter," the woman repeated, quietly, like she was turning the word over.

"Did you know my father?" Sonia asked.

Silence. Again. The same silence she'd gotten all night every time her father's name came up. Like everyone in this world knew something about Richard Carter that she didn't.

The woman stepped back and addressed Luca. "She'll stay in the east wing."

"She's not a guest,"

"Glad we're in agreement," Sonia added.

The woman ignored her entirely. "She can't stay long," she told Luca. "This creates problems."

"I'll handle it."

"You sound like your father."

Something shifted in Luca's face at that. Fast, and then gone. But it was enough for Sonia to understand that those five words meant something, and that it wasn't a compliment.

The room got quieter somehow.

The woman looked at Sonia one last time before turning toward the stairs. "Don't walk around the house. Some doors are locked for a reason." Then she was gone, her footsteps fading up the staircase without a sound.

Sonia exhaled slowly.

"She's terrifying," she said under her breath.

Marco reappeared with a glass of water. "You noticed."

Sonia took it immediately. She only realized her hands were trembling when she wrapped them around the glass.

Luca watched her drink.

"What?" she said.

"You're holding together better than most people would."

"That's because I'm actively fighting the urge to pass out."

Marco made a quiet sound that was almost a laugh.

Sonia pointed at him. "You smile too much for someone who carries firearms."

He shrugged. "Occupational hazard."

She looked back at Luca. "Can someone please just tell me what's actually going on?"

A pause. "No."

Her mouth fell open slightly. "No?"

"You already know enough."

"I know someone was killed!"

"And knowing more puts you in more danger."

She stared at him, the frustration building past the fear for a moment. He stepped closer. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that she had to work to keep her expression steady.

"You'll stay here tonight," he said. "Tomorrow we figure out the rest."

"And if I don't want to stay?"

His eyes stayed on hers. Calm. Certain. Immovable.

"That stopped being important the moment you saw my face.”