LOGINVictor admitted it to himself first. The thought was bitter. “It’s possible, isn’t it? The message… it could be from the same person. The one who set up Rome.”Isabella moved to the window. Her back was to him. City lights reflected in the glass. She was thinking. He could almost hear it. She was going over everything she learned since coming back. She was more like Felix than she knew. A planner. A fighter.“How many knew your exact moves that night?” Her voice was low. Careful.Victor paused. He counted in his head. The inner circle. The ones who handled the most secret info. “Four. Me included. My security chief, Vincenzo. My consigliere, Marcello. And Seth.”“Four.” She turned. Her eyes narrowed. “Three others.”“Three others,” he confirmed.“And how many of those three are still… active?” She hesitated on the last word.“Two,” Victor said. The old suspicion weighed on him. “Vincenzo is gone. Died a few years back. Natural causes.”“Leaving Marcello and Seth,” she said, her ga
Isabella felt her phone buzz as she walked away from Victor’s office. His anger still felt close, like heat on her skin. Another unknown message. Her stomach turned. She thought it might be from Cora. Another threat. Another taunt. But when she read it, cold fear ran through her. Worse than anything Cora had sent._Don’t trust the man keeping you safe._ _The same hands that held your father while he died… are the hands now holding you close._Isabella’s breath caught. This wasn’t Cora. This was different. Her blood went cold, then hot. Every part of her wanted to delete it. To pretend she never saw it. But the words were already stuck in her head. She was done being kept in the dark. Done being used.Without thinking, she turned around. The door to his study was still open. Victor sat at his desk again, staring at papers. A half-empty glass sat under the lamp. He looked up, surprised, when she pushed the door open wider.“Isabella?” His voice was calm, but his jaw looked
The words were stuck in Victor’s throat, thick and heavy like old oil. He hated this. He hated the way his stomach twisted, a familiar cold knot forming low in his gut. Protecting Isabella felt like a constant battle against forces he couldn’t always see, and now, calming her was no longer part of that equation. Keeping her calm was the opposite of what he had to do. This was going to break that fragile peace they’d somehow cultivated. But she needed to know. She deserved to know.Victor pulled out his phone, the screen felt hot in his hand, and turned it around without a word. The image filled the small space between them, stark and intrusive. Isabella, standing by the sandwich cart, her dark hair catching the light, a small, unconscious smile on her lips. A moment of normal, weaponized.Her eyes, usually so expressive, widened just a fraction. It was fleeting, a ripple across a perfectly still pond. Then, the stillness settled in, cold and sharp, like winter ice. Victor recognized i
The words were stuck in Victor’s throat, thick and heavy like old oil. He hated this. He hated the way his stomach twisted, a familiar cold knot forming low in his gut. Protecting Isabella felt like a constant battle against forces he couldn’t always see, and now, calming her was no longer part of that equation. Keeping her calm was the opposite of what he had to do. This was going to break that fragile peace they’d somehow cultivated. But she needed to know. She deserved to know.Victor pulled out his phone, the screen felt hot in his hand, and turned it around without a word. The image filled the small space between them, stark and intrusive. Isabella, standing by the sandwich cart, her dark hair catching the light, a small, unconscious smile on her lips. A moment of normal, weaponized.Her eyes, usually so expressive, widened just a fraction. It was fleeting, a ripple across a perfectly still pond. Then, the stillness settled in, cold and sharp, like winter ice. Victor recognized i
The dead line hummed in Victor’s ear, a stark reminder of Cora’s words. Thirty seconds. He held the phone to his ear, listening to nothing, absorbing the silence that now filled the space where her frantic voice had been. Kevin was coming. Kevin knew about the necklace. He had killed someone for it. Victor lowered the receiver slowly, the plastic cool against his palm.“Seth!” he bellowed, his voice rougher than he intended.A moment later, crisp knocks sounded on his door, and then Seth entered, closing it softly behind him. He looked at Victor, a question in his eyes. Seth was good at picking up on shifts in Victor’s mood, always had been. Today, the shift was a seismic event.“Cora called,” Victor began, the words tumbling out, almost tripping over each other. He told him everything. Her terror, the hurried warning, the name: Kevin Moretti. He described the necklace, the specific way she’d spoken about it, connecting it unequivocally to Felix. And then, the chilling detail—the woma
Victor’s fingers tightened around the phone, the plastic digging into his palm. It had been thirteen years. Thirteen long years since she’d vanished, a ghost in the wind, leaving nothing but questions and a gaping hole in his life. He’d torn the city apart looking for her, chasing shadows, clinging to scraps of hope that always turned to dust. Now, a voice, a whisper from the past, was making his blood run cold.“Cora?” he breathed, the name a foreign sound on his tongue after so long.“Yes, Victor. It’s me.” Her voice, softer now, but with an underlying steel he remembered well, sent a shiver down his spine.His mind reeled, trying to process the impossible. “Where have you been? Why… how?”“I had to disappear,” she said, her tone flat, devoid of emotion. “It was the only way to survive.”“Survive what?” The words tumbled out, laced with a decade of frustration.“The information I possessed,” she explained, a sigh escaping her lips. “It made me a target. Staying alive wasn’t easy,
“Nothing happened,” Isabella said to herself quietly as she stood in the corridor outside the painting room, her fingers resting on the edge of the wooden box as she gently closed the lid and placed it back exactly where she found it, careful like even breathing too hard would make everything worse
“Leave it there,” Victor said without looking up from his phone when Rosa placed the tray on the table, his thumb still scrolling as if the screen required his full attention and not because he wanted an excuse not to look across the table yet.“Yes sir,” Rosa replied quietly, adjusting the placeme
“I am not going to sleep again tonight,” Isabella whispered into the empty room, her voice rough as she stared at the ceiling and already knew lying there pretending would only make her thoughts louder.She lay still for a while longer, counting nothing, thinking nothing useful, then finally pushed
“ What time are you meant to be here?” “Sir, I was…” “What time…” he interrupted “...are you meant to be here?” He repeated “ 8 0 clock Sir but there was…” “You are fired,” Victor said, his eyes fixed on the screen of his laptop. “Get out of my office” he said and the man turned to leave



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