THE MAFIA'S NEW BRIDE

SAY IT AGAIN

"What."

The word came out of Nora like something torn.

"Say that again." Her hand was still on her father's, but she wasn't looking at him anymore. She was looking at Marco. Only Marco. "Say it again, because I don't think I heard you right."

"Nora—"

"Say it again."

Marco's jaw worked. For one second, one full second, he looked like he might actually refuse. Like he'd rather stand there and let the silence eat them both alive than say the words twice.

"Vittorio wants information," he said, low, flat, forced out one piece at a time. "About Isabel" About the night she died. He thinks I know something. He's used your family, used you, to try to get it out of me."

The machines beeped somewhere behind her. Steady. Stupid. Like the whole world hadn't just tilted sideways.

"You knew." Her voice cracked wide open. "This whole time. You knew this was about her, and you let me sit in that house not knowing. You let my father—" Her voice broke completely, and she had to stop, chest heaving, tears blurring everything at the edges. "You let this happen to him and you knew why."

"I didn't know he'd go this far."

"That's not an answer!"

"Nora." Her father's hand tightened weakly around hers, his voice a rasp. "Nora, please—"

"No." She pulled her hand back, gentle but firm, and stood, her chair scraping loudly against the tile. "No, I'm done being the only person in every room who doesn't know what's happening to her own life."

She was shaking. She could feel it, her whole body running hot and cold at once, adrenaline with nowhere to go.

"What does he think you know?" she demanded, rounding on Marco fully now. "What actually happened to her, Marco? The real story. Not the version everyone whispers and then shuts up about the second I walk into a room."

"Not here."

"Here. Right here. Right now." Her voice rose, sharp enough that a nurse two beds down glanced over. Nora didn't care. "I am so tired of not being here, of later, because it's complicated. My father is lying in a hospital bed because some man thinks you're hiding something about your dead wife, and you're telling me not here?"

"Keep your voice down."

"Why?" A short, wild, humorless laugh tore out of her. "Are your cameras listening here too?"

Something flickered across his face. Guilt, maybe. Or something close enough to it that it almost mattered.

"I don't know what happened to her," he said finally, quietly, each word like it cost him blood to say. "That's the truth. I don't know. I have suspicions. Doubts. Things that never added up. But I don't have proof, and Vittorio thinks I'm sitting on something I'm not."

"Then tell him that."

"I have." His voice cracked, just barely, just once. "He doesn't believe me. And now he's decided the fastest way to find out is to make me watch everyone around me get hurt until I hand something over I don't even have."

Nora stared at him. Really stared, past the ice, past the control, all the way down to whatever raw, terrified thing was sitting underneath it. He wasn't lying. God help her, he actually wasn't lying.

"So what do we do?" Her voice had dropped now, exhaustion catching up fast with the anger. "Just wait? Wait for him to hurt someone worse than this? Wait for him to come for me next, like he said?"

"No." Marco's voice hardened, something decisive slamming down behind his eyes. "No. You're not leaving my sight until this is handled."

"You don't get to decide that."

"I'm not asking."

"You never ask." Her voice broke on it, raw and exhausted. "That's the whole problem, Marco. You just decide things. About me. About my life. About what I'm allowed to know and when. You did it with the debt. You did it with the marriage. And now you're doing it again."

"I'm trying to keep you alive."

"Then include me in that!" Her voice cracked completely now, tears spilling hot down her face, three days, no, weeks, of fear finally breaking loose all at once. "I am so sick of being protected in the dark. Protect me with the truth, not instead of it."

The hallway had gone quiet around them. Even her father had stopped trying to speak, watching the two of them with wide, exhausted eyes.

Marco stood there, jaw tight, hands clenched at his sides like he was physically holding himself back from something, reaching for her, maybe, or turning and walking away. She genuinely couldn't tell which.

"Fine," he said finally, voice low, rough. "You want the truth. All of it."

"Yes."

"Not here." He glanced at the nurse still watching them, at the thin curtain separating them from three other patients. "Not like this. But yes. Tonight. When we get home, I'll tell you everything I know."

Nora's chest heaved, anger and relief tangled together so tight she couldn't separate them anymore.

"You promise?"

Something in his face shifted, not softening exactly, but something close, something almost desperate.

"I promise," he said.

She wanted to believe him. God help her, some stupid, exhausted, aching part of her actually did.

They didn't get the chance.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket forty minutes later, while she was sitting beside her father's bed, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest, finally starting to let herself breathe again.

An unknown number.

She almost didn't answer. Some instinct screamed at her not to.

She answered anyway.

"Nora Alvarez." A man's voice, smooth, almost pleasant, the kind of pleasant that made her skin crawl instantly. "I've been looking forward to this conversation."

Her whole body went cold. "Who is this?"

"You already know." A soft, satisfied chuckle. "I hear you had a lovely little talk with your husband tonight. About Isabel. About the truth."

Her stomach dropped straight along the floor. He was listening. He was still listening.

"What do you want?"

"I want what I've always wanted." His voice sharpened, all pretense of pleasantness gone in an instant. "And I'm done waiting patiently for Marco to hand it over. So here's what's going to happen, Nora. You're going to convince him. Tonight. Whatever he tells you, whatever he knows, you're going to make sure it finds its way to me."

"I'm not doing anything for you."

"No?" Another soft laugh, colder now. "That's unfortunate. Because I have your father's discharge paperwork sitting right in front of me, and it would be such a shame if something happened to him again on his way home. Or to your mother. Or to those two little sisters of yours, Bella and Rosa, isn't it? Seven and nine?"

The blood drained completely from Nora's face.

"Don't you dare—"

"I don't want to hurt anyone, Nora." His voice went smooth again, almost gentle, somehow worse than the threat itself. "I just want the truth about what happened to Isabel. Get it for me. You have until Friday."

The line went dead.

Nora sat frozen, the phone still pressed to her ear, the dial tone buzzing empty and cold against her skin, her father sleeping peacefully.

three feet away with absolutely no idea that the danger hadn't ended at all.

It had only just started counting down.