THE MAFIA'S NEW BRIDE

RINGING OUT

She waited until the house went quiet.

Not that it was ever loud, exactly — nothing about this place was loud, not the way home used to be loud, footsteps and dishes clinking and her sisters shrieking over something stupid at eleven at night. This was a different kind of quiet, deeper, the kind that pressed against her eardrums until she almost missed noise just to fill the space.

Almost midnight, the guard who'd walked her back that afternoon was nowhere in sight. Nora sat cross-legged on her enormous bed and pulled out her phone.

Her hands were shaking.

"Get it together," she told herself. *It's just a phone call. You've called Papa a thousand times.*

She dialed. Pressed the phone to her ear. Listened to it ring.

Once. Twice. Three times.

*Pick up. Please, just pick up.*

Four rings. Five.

Voicemail.

*"You've reached Manuel Alvarez. Leave a message."* His voice, tired, ordinary, the same voicemail greeting he'd had for years. She almost laughed, hearing it. It sounded so normal. So completely disconnected from anything that had happened in the last three days.

She hung up before the beep. Tried again.

Same thing. Straight to voicemail on the second ring this time, like he'd seen her name and actively declined it.

*He's avoiding me.*

The thought landed hard and ugly in her chest. Of course, he was. What was there left to say? *Sorry I sold you, hope the mansion's nice?*

She tried her mother's cell next, the one she rarely used, mostly kept for emergencies since her hearing had started going a few years back.

Straight to voicemail too.

Nora sat there in the dark, phone glowing in her hands, and felt something c***k open inside her chest — not loud, not dramatic, just a slow, quiet kind of breaking, the kind that didn't make a sound but hurt just the same.

*Three days ago I had a family.*

*Now I can't even get someone to pick up a phone.*

She tried one more time. Her father's number. Let it ring all the way through, all six rings, refusing to hang up early this time, some stubborn part of her needing to hear it fail all the way to the end.

On the sixth ring, it connected.

"Nora?" His voice rushed, hushed, like he was talking from somewhere he didn't want to be overheard. "Nora, I can't — I don't have long, okay? I can't really talk."

Relief and fury hit her at exactly the same time, tangled together so tight she couldn't tell which one was bigger.

"Why haven't you been answering?"

"It's complicated." A pause, and in the background she heard something — a door, maybe, or a car engine, hard to tell. "Are you okay? Is he treating you alright?"

"Am I *okay*?" Her voice cracked despite her best effort to keep it steady. "Papa, you sold me. To a stranger. And now you're asking if I'm *okay*?"

"Nora, please, I don't have time for—"

"Then make time." Her voice rose, and she didn't care anymore about who might hear it through these thin, expensive, watched walls. "You owe me that much. You owe me a real conversation, not three seconds between whatever you're actually doing right now."

Silence on the other end. She could hear him breathing, fast, uneven.

"It's bigger than the loan," he said finally, his voice dropping even lower, barely a whisper now. "Nora, listen to me. The debt — it's not just some bank, okay? It's not that simple. There's a man—"

The line went dead.

Not a normal hang-up. A hard cut, sudden, like someone had physically ripped the phone out of his hand mid-sentence.

"Papa?"

Nothing. Dead air.

She called back immediately, heart hammering now, fear replacing anger so fast it left her dizzy.

Straight to voicemail.

She tried again. And again. Six times, seven, her thumb jabbing the screen harder each time like force alone could make him pick up.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

*There's a man.*

The words looped in her head, over and over, her father's voice cutting off right in the middle of them like the sentence itself had been dangerous to finish.

*What man? What aren't you telling me?*

She sat there in the dark for a long time, phone clutched so tight her knuckles ached, staring at the useless screen like it might suddenly light up with an explanation.

It didn't.

---

She didn't sleep. Couldn't. Every time she closed her eyes she heard that hard, sudden silence where her father's voice should have been, saw a hundred different terrible reasons for it, none of them good.

Around three in the morning, unable to lie still another second, she got up and padded quietly to her door, some restless need to move, to do something, anything, pulling her out into the hallway.

The apartment felt different at night. Emptier. Darker, despite the low security lights lining the baseboards every few feet.

She wasn't sure what she was even looking for. Just movement, maybe. Some proof that this place had a pulse, that she wasn't the only person in it awake and afraid.

A light spilled from under a door near the end of the hall — Marco's office, she realized, recognizing the door from that terrible moment with Camila two days ago.

Voices. Low. Urgent.

She shouldn't have gotten closer. She knew that even as she did it, feet moving on their own, drawn toward the light like something helpless and stupid.

"—can't keep this quiet forever," a man's voice was saying, not Marco's, someone she didn't recognize. "Alvarez's debt was never really about the money, and you know it."

"I know exactly what it's about," Marco's voice, cold, controlled, but with an edge underneath that hadn't been there before. "That's precisely why I need it handled quietly. If word gets out about the real reason—"

"It might already be too late for quiet." A pause. Papers shuffling. "He's already started asking questions. His father let something slip on a call tonight. We caught it."

Nora's whole body went ice-cold.

*He's talking about my call. He's talking about Papa.*

"Cut off his access," Marco said, flat, final, a voice used to giving orders and having them obeyed instantly. "Whatever line got used to make that call, kill it. Tonight."

"And the girl?"

A long pause. Nora held her breath so hard her chest ached.

"Keep her close," Marco said finally, quiet now, almost too quiet to get through the door. "Closer than before. If she starts pulling threads on her own, this whole thing unravels faster than any of us can control."

Nora's blood went to ice.

*He's not talking about protecting me.*

*He's talking about containing me.*

She backed away from the door slowly, careful, heart slamming so loud she was terrified they'd somehow hear it through the wood — and she'd made it almost to the corner, almost safe, almost back to her room and the illusion that she hadn't heard any of it.

When a hand closed firm around her arm from behind.

"Can't sleep?" Julian's voice, low, right at her ear, close enough that she felt his breath against her hair.

She spun around, heart in her throat, and found him standing there in the dark hallway, watching her with an expression she couldn't read at all.

"How long have you been standing there?" she whispered.

Julian's eyes flicked toward the light still spilling from under Marco's door.

"Long enough," he said quietly, "to know you shouldn't have heard what you just heard."