THE MAFIA'S NEW BRIDE

WHAT NOBODY SAYS OUT LOUD

"I'm sorry?" Nora said.

The woman tilted her head, studying her the way you'd study a painting you weren't sure you liked yet.

"The new one," she said again, slower this time, like Nora was hard of hearing instead of just blindsided. "Marco's bride. That's you, right?"

"That's me."

"Huh." The woman looked her up and down, unbothered about doing it right there in the hallway. "He's got a type, I guess."

Nora's face went hot. *Great. Love that for me.*

"I don't think we've met."

"No, we haven't." The woman held out a hand, rings on three fingers, nails done in a red so dark it looked almost black in the low light. "Camila Reyes."

Nora shook it, and the name landed a beat too late, slow like ice cracking.

*Reyes.*

"You're his—"

"Sister," Camila smiled, and for the first time it actually reached her eyes, soft in a way that didn't match anything else about her. "Little sister, technically. He hates when I say that. Makes him feel old."

Relief hit Nora so hard her knees actually loosened under her.

*Sister. Not a wife. Not an ex. Just his sister.*

She almost laughed out loud, almost blurted something stupid like *thank god*, before she caught herself and just nodded instead, like a normal person, like someone who hadn't spent the last hour convinced she'd stumbled straight into a house full of secrets and buried bodies.

Except.

Except Camila's face had changed the second she'd said, "the new one." Something had flickered there, quick and gone.

"Camila — can I ask you something?"

"Depends." Camila leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching Nora with an interest that felt almost hungry. "I like blunt questions. Ask it."

"Was Marco married before?"

The hallway went very, very still.

Camila's smile didn't move, not exactly, but something underneath it did — like watching ice c***k from below, invisible until it wasn't anymore.

"Who told you that?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters a lot, actually," Camila's voice had dropped, losing all its earlier warmth in about half a second flat. "Who? Told. You."

"Della mentioned it. During the fitting."

Camila closed her eyes for a second, breathed out slowly through her nose, counting on something Nora couldn't see.

"She shouldn't have said anything."

"Why not?" Nora's heart was going too fast now, a drumbeat she couldn't slow down, no matter how hard she tried. "Camila, please. What happened to her?"

For a long moment, Camila didn't answer. Just looked at Nora, really looked, the way people look at you right before deciding whether you can handle the truth.

"Her name was Isabel," she said finally, quietly. "She was married to my brother for two years."

"And?"

"And she died."

The words hit Nora like cold water straight down her spine.

"How?"

Camila's jaw tightened. She glanced down the hall, toward Marco's closed office door, like she was checking whether the walls themselves could hear her.

"It's complicated," Camila said, careful now, choosing each word as if it might explode in her hands. "Officially, she was unhappy. This house — this life — it wasn't good for her. Nobody saw how bad it got until it was too late to fix it."

"Officially?" Nora latched onto the word instantly. "What's that supposed to mean, *officially*?"

Camila's eyes flicked to her, sharp and sudden. "Forget I said that."

"No. Camila. What does that mean?"

"It means—" Camila stopped herself, jaw working, clearly fighting some battle inside her own head about how much was safe to hand over. "It means not everyone in this family believes the story we were all told. That's all I can say. That's *more* than I should've said."

Nora's stomach turned over slowly, something cold and sick settling in.

"You think someone hurt her."

"I didn't say that either." But Camila's face said it plainly enough, said it in a way she wouldn't quite meet Nora's eyes anymore.

"You need to stop talking about this." Her voice snapped sharp, urgent, eyes darting to the office door again. "Right now. Before he hears you."

"Does he know I found out?"

"He can't know you found out." Camila grabbed Nora's wrist, quick and tight, pulling her a few steps further from the door as distance alone could undo the last five minutes. "Listen to me. My brother does not talk about Isabel. Not to me. Not to our parents. Not to anyone. He's spent three years pretending it never happened, and if you bring it up in front of him—"

The office door opened.

Both women went silent, guilty, caught, like kids frozen mid-crime.

Marco stepped out, phone in hand, already halfway through a sentence to someone behind him — and stopped dead the second he saw them standing there together.

His eyes moved from his sister's face to Nora's, slow, assessing.

Something shifted behind them. Something cold and sharp and immediate, like a door slamming somewhere deep inside him.

"What," he said, very quietly, "are you two talking about?"

Nobody answered.

Nora felt the silence stretch out, felt her own pulse hammering hot in her throat, felt Camila's hand still wrapped tight around her wrist like she could physically hold the truth back if she just squeezed hard enough.

Marco's gaze dropped to that — his sister's hand on Nora's arm — and whatever he read there told him everything the silence hadn't.

His face went white, then hard, then something Nora didn't have a word for yet.

"You told her," he said to Camila, voice flat and terrible and quiet in a way that was so much worse than shouting would've been. "You actually told her about Isabel."

"Marco, I didn't—"

"Get out."

"Marco—"

"*Get out.*"

Camila's hand slipped off Nora's wrist. She looked at her brother for one long second, something painful passing between them, years of history Nora couldn't begin to read — and then she walked away without another word, footsteps fading fast down the hall, faster than Nora had ever seen anyone move in this building.

And then it was just the two of them.

Marco and Nora.

And a silence so heavy it felt like it might c***k the floor open between them.

"Marco—"

"Don't." His voice cracked a single word, just barely, just enough that Nora caught it. "Don't say her name. Not you. Not ever."

*What am I supposed to do with that? She thought, chest tight, throat tighter. "You won't talk. You won't explain. You just want me to pretend a whole dead woman never existed in this house I'm apparently living in now too.*

She didn't say any of it out loud.

He turned and walked back into his office.

The door didn't slam.

It clicked shut, soft and final, which somehow scared her worse than if he'd screamed the whole building down around them — because a man that controlled, that closed, wasn't a man who forgot things.

He was a man who buried them. Carefully. Deliberately. And made very sure nobody ever went digging.

And Nora had just dug one up with her bare hands, without even meaning to, and she had no idea yet what was going to come crawling out of that hole after her.