The Mafia Boss's Silent Bride

lai'

ep at that table befor

dn't let make decisions, wanted to walk back into that kitchen and carry her to a bed that wasn't a hard wooden chair. I didn't. I went to my room instead, and I closed the door the way I cl

someone else could use against me. It was a rule that had kept me alive in rooms that had killed better me

awn on her own, because she'd missed me leaving the morning before and had apparently decided, somewhere in that stubborn quiet of hers, that she wasn't going to miss it again. I stood in the doorway for a moment longer than I needed to, watchi

she must have finally given up waiting for me and fallen asleep sitting upright. And then I made myself stop thinking about it,

he wore like armor. "Waking up early. Making breakfast I didn't ask for. Whatever this is, the dinner last night, this now, I'd st

I'd noticed in her from the very first day, and she didn't sign anything back at all. She just held my g

elf. That was the

ching someone quietly close a door I'd just finished telli

eant only for me and not a meal she had any right to share. I ate in silence, and I was aware the entire time of her standing near the counter, not sitting, not quite lookin

n the dish towel she'd been folding and

language interpreter. I'm qualified for

t. I'd expected silence, maybe. Retreat. The same careful compliance she'd offered me every single day since the wedding.

reach them. It was the same instinct that had kept men alive in my organization for years and the same instinct that had gotten men killed the one time they'd let it slip. But I watched her face while I held the words in my mouth,

carefully into whatever shape everyone else needed her to be, her mother, her stepfather, and now me, apparently, adding my own set of walls to a life that already had too many. I thought about

ork. I'll have someone vet whatever position you take before you accept it. You don't go anywhere without

ath the sign I couldn't quite name, gratitude maybe, or

s less conspicuous than one confined entirely to a house, that it served the arrangement better than it cost it. I told myself several things on my way out that door, actually

ew it the moment I was alone behind the whee

prepared for less, and some part of me that I generally kept locked down tighter than anything else I owned hadn't been able to stand being the one who conf

distance, closing the door on a woman who had done nothing wrong except make me want things I'd spent years training myself not to want. I was pushing her away methodically, the same way I approached everything else that threatened to matter more t

to me by sundown. That had been a lie I told myself as much as I told her. What I actually wanted was sitting in that kitche

e t