Page 56 of Wicked Mafia Beast
She's tiny. Five-two at most, with deep violet hair swept up in a loose twist and wispy bangs framing a heart-shaped face dusted with freckles. Her eyes are aqua blue, bright and warm, and she's wearing a flowing sundress in pale yellow that radiates warmth into every corner of the room. A toddler rides her hip, a dark-eyed cherub with her mother's easy smile and her father's intense gaze.
"You must be Onyx." She crosses the room in three quick strides and pulls me into a hug before I can react. She smells like vanilla extract and baby shampoo, and her arms are surprisingly strong for someone so small. "Kon's told us absolutely nothing about you, which means he's completely obsessed. Come in. The scones just came out of the oven."
I stand there, arms rigid at my sides, unsure what to do with warmth I didn't ask for. She pulls back and reads my face with a perceptiveness that reminds me, uncomfortably, of her husband's reputation.
"Too much?" Her smile doesn't falter, but it softens. "I'm a hugger. Fair warning."
"I..." My voice sounds foreign to my own ears. "Thank you for having me."
"Oh, please. I've been dying to meet the woman who's got Kon tied in knots." She shifts the toddler on her hip. "This is Sofia. Say hi, baby girl."
Sofia stares at me with dark eyes that are pure Rafael Milano, assessing and ancient in a face still round with baby fat. She shoves two fingers in her mouth and continues staring. Smart kid.
Persia leads me deeper into the penthouse and the domesticity intensifies with every step. In the kitchen, a woman sits at the marble island, brown hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, glasses perched on her nose, laughing at her phone screen. A baby girl sleeps in a carrier beside her, dark curls peeking out from beneath a knitted blanket.
"Kat, she's here." Persia sets Sofia in a high chair and starts pulling scones from a baking tray. "Onyx, this is Katriana. Drake's wife."
Katriana looks up from her phone and pushes the glasses higher on her nose, brown eyes warm and immediately assessing. There's a book wedged under her elbow, spine cracked, pages dog-eared. Even at a lunch date, she came prepared with an escape route into fiction. We are going to be best friends for sure.
"Hey." She stands and offers her hand, her grip firm, her smile genuine. "Ignore everything the guys have told you about us. We're much worse."
I almost laugh. Almost.
"And this sleeping beauty is Charlotte." Katriana brushes a curl from the baby's forehead with a tenderness that makes my sternum ache. "She sleeps through everything. Gets that from Drake, who can fall asleep literally anywhere."
The front door opens again and a woman enters with a man trailing behind her, a baby balanced in the crook of her arm. She's striking. Long black hair with blue-dyed tips that catch thelight, light brown eyes shot through with golden shards that give her gaze an almost feline quality. She moves with the confidence of someone who has been underestimated her entire life and turned it into a weapon.
I mentally run through my files of names.
Ilona Marchetti. Luca's wife.
Behind her, Luca Valentina holds the door with one hand, his lean frame draped in a slim-cut black suit, dark hair tied back with a leather strap like Kon wears. He scans the room with gold-flecked brown eyes that miss nothing before settling his gaze on me with a disarming smile that somehow makes him look more dangerous, not less.
"The famous journalist." Ilona shifts her baby to her other hip and extends her hand. Her grip is cool and firm, her expression knowing. "I was where you are not long ago. Scared. Angry. Certain these men were just another cage."
“How..” I start and she cuts me off with a smile.
“It’s written all over your face, sweetheart.”
“Ah.”
The directness catches me off guard. There’s no preamble or small talk. Ilona serves up the truth first thing and I have to admit, I like that about her already.
"And now?" I ask, whole-heartedly wanting to know her answer.
"Now I know the difference between a cage and a home." Her golden-brown eyes hold mine, steady and certain. "It took me a while to learn it. Give yourself the time."
I feel like she is reading the war raging between my heart and brain without me giving much intel.
Luca catches Ilona's eye from across the room and his whole face changes. The sharp calculation softens into naked adoration, the smile reaching his eyes in a way that transforms him from the Syndicate's intelligence operative into a man completely undone by the woman carrying his daughter.
I look away. The intimacy of it burns behind my eyes.
Lunch happens. And it is the most disorienting hour of my life.
They talk about teething schedules and sleep regressions and a new bookstore Katriana found that has a children's reading corner. Persia describes a recipe for butternut squash soup that she swears changed Rafael's life. Ilona complains that Luca reorganized her closet by color while she was sleeping and Katriana nearly chokes on her scone laughing.
This is not what I prepared for. I walked into this loft braced for tension, for the careful smiles of women navigating dangerous men, for hushed voices trading survival strategies over coffee. I expected bruises hidden under silk sleeves and rehearsed laughter that never quite reached their eyes. I expected them to talk about exit plans or at the very least commiserate over the mistake of falling for men who carry guns and keep secrets and decide who lives and who doesn't on a Tuesday afternoon. That's the mafia wife playbook according to every case study I've ever read, every documentary I've binged, every assumption I carried through that elevator door.
