THE MAFIA'S BRIDE

What A Drag

Chapter 4: What A Drag

Hades POV

I had no interest in remaining here.

The engagement was finished. The blood oath had been sealed. The alliance between the New York Famiglia and the San Francisco outfit was secured in the only language that mattered — blood and witnesses. There was nothing left for me in this house except one final conversation with Lorenzo Castello, and the old man seemed determined to waste my time.

I moved through the corridor with Enzo and Rocco at my back. Guests parted without being told. Their eyes clung to me the way insects cling to light — curious, wary, and ultimately irrelevant. I ignored them all. I had never seen the point in acknowledging people who existed only to consume oxygen and fill silence with noise.

The voices around me blended into a dull, constant buzz. Laughter that meant nothing. Conversations that would be forgotten by morning. The endless performance of polite interest and empty respect. I had never been skilled at the act, and I had never cared to improve. Time was the only currency that held value. Everything else was decoration.

Lorenzo Castello was spending mine without permission.

I was half a second from turning and leaving when I saw him.

He emerged from the lower corridor and headed straight for his younger daughter. Isabella stood near the staircase with a glass of something dark in her hand, her expression carefully blank. She had been throwing cold, measuring looks in my direction for most of the evening. I had not bothered to return them. Her opinion of me carried the same weight as the rest of the noise in this house — none.

I leaned against the stone wall opposite the stairs, arms loosely crossed, and watched.

"Where the hell is your sister?" Lorenzo's voice was low, but the edge in it carried clearly across the space.

Isabella looked up. Her smile was pleasant and completely false. "Why? Did she manage to escape you?"

She let out a soft, mocking laugh. "Well. Good for her."

Lorenzo's hand shot out and closed around her arm. The grip was tight enough to leave marks. Isabella's shoulders stiffened, but she did not flinch.

"If you or Valentina think she can run from this," he said, "think again. I will find her. I will bring her back. Do not forget who I am."

He leaned closer, voice dropping further. "Whatever stupid plan the two of you have cooked up with those empty heads of yours, abort it. Before things get worse for both of you."

Isabella yanked her arm free with deliberate disrespect and rolled her eyes. "Chill out. Tina just went to the bathroom."

She returned her attention to her phone as if the conversation had already bored her beyond tolerance. The performance was almost impressive. Almost.

"How long has it been?" Lorenzo demanded.

"I don't know. Five minutes. Why does it matter?"

I exhaled slowly through my nose. The entire exchange was tedious.

What a drag.

A father desperate to keep control of daughters who had already learned how to slip the leash. Predictable. Small. Uninteresting.

And yet I remained where I was.

Something about the timing sat wrong.

"Enzo."

He stepped forward immediately. "Yes, boss."

"I told you to keep watch on Valentina Castello. Where is she?"

"Private powder room on the upper floor, boss. East corridor."

"How long?"

He checked his watch without needing to be told twice. "Five minutes."

Five minutes.

It should not have mattered. She had looked pale and shaken after the oath. Women in her position often needed a moment alone to collect themselves. I had no reason to concern myself with her whereabouts beyond the basic fact that she was now, by blood and by name, under my protection.

Still.

Five minutes was longer than necessary for a simple bathroom visit. And the way Lorenzo's voice had sharpened when he asked for her location suggested he was thinking the same thing I was beginning to.

Enzo read the shift in my silence the way he always did. "Should I retrieve her, boss?"

I ran a hand through my hair and stared at the staircase for a moment longer than I intended. The decision formed before I fully examined it.

"No."

I did not fully understand the choice even as I made it. Instinct, perhaps. Or the simple fact that I disliked unfinished business. Or the quieter, more irritating truth that something about the locked bathroom and the girl's prolonged absence had begun to pull at the edge of my attention in a way I did not care to name.

I pushed off the wall.

Lorenzo was still speaking to one of his men when I approached. His voice carried the same tight control he had used on his daughter.

"Marco, bring Valentina down right now. And make sure she—"

"Don't bother."

My voice cut through his order cleanly. Both father and daughter turned. Isabella's eyes sharpened with open dislike. Lorenzo's expression flickered with something that might have been irritation, or caution, or the sudden awareness that he was no longer the highest authority in the room.

"I'll fetch my fiancée myself."

Lorenzo opened his mouth. I did not give him the chance to waste more of my time. I turned and walked toward the stairs without waiting for a response or permission. Enzo and Rocco fell into step behind me without needing instruction.

****

The upper corridor was quieter.

My footsteps echoed against the marble in a steady, measured rhythm. The air here carried less perfume and fewer voices. Enzo and Rocco remained a precise distance behind me, silent. They knew when to speak and when to stay out of the way.

I reached the powder room door and closed my hand around the handle.

It did not turn.

Locked.

I frowned.

I had expected to find her in her room, avoiding the reality of what the blood oath had made permanent. I had expected quiet defiance or tears or the kind of dramatic silence women sometimes used as a weapon. I had not expected a locked bathroom door and complete silence on the other side of it.

Something was wrong.

The certainty settled in my chest with the same cold weight I felt in the seconds before a job went sideways. I knocked once. Hard. The sound was sharp in the quiet corridor.

No answer.

I knocked again, harder.

Still nothing.

The silence on the other side of the door was too complete. Too deliberate. Not the silence of someone collecting themselves. The silence of something that did not want to be interrupted.

I stepped back.

Then I drove my boot into the wood with enough force to send the lock screaming out of the frame.

The door slammed inward against the wall.

And the scene inside the room stopped every thought in my head.