THE MAFIA'S NEW BRIDE

THE RULES OF THIS MARRIAGE!

The reception ended early. Marco made sure of that, cutting through the last round of stiff, formal toasts with a look that sent the staff scrambling to clear plates nobody had finished.

Nora barely said two words during the whole car ride back. Neither did he. The silence between them sat thick and cold, worse somehow than actual shouting would've been. She thought about Elena's hand on his arm. She thought about that one real smile, wasted on someone who wasn't her, and told herself firmly, for the hundredth time that night, that it shouldn't matter. She wasn't his. She was just paperwork. A debt paid off in a white dress. She almost believed it too, if she said it enough times in her head.

Back in the apartment, Marco loosened his tie the second the elevator doors opened, shedding the formal jacket like it had been suffocating him all night. He looked, for just a second, almost human. Tired, rumpled, a man who'd just gotten through something exhausting rather than a machine that never needed rest at all. Then he caught her watching and the mask slid right back into place.

"We should talk," he said, "before this goes any further."

"Talk about what?"

"About what this actually is." He gestured between them, a small, clipped motion. "So there's no confusion later."

Nora crossed her arms, bracing herself without quite knowing why. "I'm listening."

"This is not a real marriage." He said it flat, precise, like reading off a contract he'd memorized. "It's a transaction. Your father's debt is settled, you have a home, security, resources, and in exchange, you represent this household when it's required of you. That's the extent of it."

"So I heard." Her voice came out sharper than she meant it to. "You made that pretty clear the first day."

"I want to make sure it's understood completely." His eyes stayed steady on hers, unreadable, giving nothing away. "There will be no expectations beyond what I've described. No pretending at something this isn't. This room is yours." He nodded toward the bedroom door behind her. "Mine is down the hall. That arrangement doesn't change."

Something in her chest twisted, hot and humiliated, even though logically she should've felt relieved. Wasn't this exactly what she wanted? Distance? Boundaries? Then why did it feel like getting slapped?

"Wow." She let the word drip with everything she couldn't say directly. "Really selling the romance here, Marco."

"I told you at the start I wasn't offering that."

"You did." She stepped closer, anger finally cracking through the numb shock that had carried her through the whole horrible day. "You know what you didn't tell me? That there's a whole family history with Elena Vance. That apparently half the room today thought she should've been the one standing where I was."

His jaw tightened, just slightly. First real reaction she'd gotten out of him all evening.

"Camila talks too much."

"Camila's the only person in this house who's told me anything real." Her voice rose despite herself. "Everyone else just shuts doors. Cuts phone calls. Watches me through hallway cameras like I'm some kind of security risk instead of your actual wife."

His whole body went still.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me." She wasn't backing down now, not with three days of fear and confusion finally boiling over into something she could actually direct at someone. "I heard you. Two nights ago. Talking about containing me if I started, quote, pulling threads. What threads, Marco? What exactly did I marry into?"

The color drained slightly from his face. Not fear exactly, something colder, more controlled, a man recalculating fast.

"You shouldn't have heard that."

"Yeah, Julian mentioned that too." She threw her hands up. "Funny how everyone in this house agrees on that, and not one of you has bothered explaining why."

"It's not your concern."

"I'm sorry, is my own safety not my concern? Is my own father's safety," her voice cracked, unexpected, and she hated it, hated that he got to see it c***k, "Not my concern? Because it sounded a lot like you were talking about him too. About cutting off whatever let him call me. What does that mean, Marco? What's happening to my father right now that you're not telling me?"

For a long moment he said nothing. Just stood there, jaw tight, eyes doing that thing where they gave away absolutely nothing at all, a man built entirely out of locked doors.

"Your father's debt," he said finally, careful, measured, "was never as simple as it looked. There are people involved who I'm not willing to discuss with you tonight."

"Not willing, or not able?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me." Her voice broke properly this time, and she let it, too tired to keep holding it together for his benefit. "I gave up everything. My home. My family. My whole entire life, in the span of about four days, and you can't even give me the truth about what I actually gave it up for?"

Something moved behind his eyes then. Not quite softening, but something close to it, something that looked almost like the man underneath all this ice was fighting to surface for just a second.

"It's for your protection," he said, quieter now. "The less you know right now, the safer you are."

"That's not your call to make."

"It is, actually." Cold again, fast, the door slamming shut behind his eyes just as quickly as it had cracked open. "As long as you're under this roof, it's exactly my call to make."

Nora stared at him, chest heaving, every part of her wanting to scream, to throw something, to demand better than this, and finding, underneath all of it, a raw and humiliating urge to cry instead, which was so much worse. She wasn't going to cry in front of him. Not tonight.

She turned before he could see it happen anyway.

"Fine," she said, voice tight, already walking toward her door. "Keep your secrets. Keep your rules. Just remember you're the one who married me, Marco. Not the other way around. If you wanted a woman who'd sit quietly and not ask questions, you should've picked someone else."

"Nora—"

She didn't stop. Shut her door behind her, hard enough to rattle the frame, and pressed her back against it, breathing fast, furious, humiliated, scared, all of it tangled together in one impossible knot in her chest.

Through the door, she heard him standing there a long moment, silent, unmoving. Then his footsteps, retreating slowly down the hall.

She slid down to sit on the floor, back against the door, and let herself cry then, finally, quietly, so he wouldn't hear it through the wood. She didn't know, sitting there in the dark in her wedding dress with the pins still in her hair, that on the other side of that door, Marco Reyes stood frozen in the hallway for nearly ten full minutes, one hand pressed flat against the wood, exactly where her back was resting on the other side, close enough to feel her there without either of them knowing it, before he finally forced himself to walk away.