The Beast’s Broken Beauty (Mafia Vows of Blood and Love #2)

1. Isabella

Chapter one

Isabella

" L et me take care of you," Antonio growls against my neck, his voice rough with command. His fingers are slick with lubricant, working between my legs with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what my body needs. He always keeps it close. For me. "Sei così bella quando ti arrendi, Bell'cenda. So fucking beautiful when you surrender."

Steam fills the shower like something out of one of those romance novels I used to hide under my mattress. The water pounds hot against my skin while I'm backed against the freezing tile. Like an Instagram-worthy hot-and-cold therapy, except way more X-rated. I'm caught between wanting to slap him and needing him deeper. Between hating him and craving him. Between the ballerina who survived cancer and whatever mess I've become now.

His scarred hand moves between my thighs like he's got a roadmap to every sensitive spot I have. And doesn't that just piss me off? That he still remembers exactly how to touch me, while I've spent three months trying to forget.

"I don't need your help," I say, teeth clenched, but my stupid hips have other ideas, grinding against his hand like they've declared independence from my brain. My body's the ultimate traitor, responding to his touch like he never threw me in this prison, like he never broke my heart.

"But you do," he commands, pushing another finger inside me, stretching me with a gentleness that somehow hurts worse than cruelty would. His thumb circles my clit with maddening precision. "Your body remembers who it belongs to. Who else makes you feel like this? No-fucking-one."

And that's the worst part. It's not just that he's good at this. It's that he knows me. Knows exactly how slow to go because of the early menopause. Knows which areas lost feeling from chemo. Knows I get dizzy if my head tilts back too far. And he never treats me like I'm broken.

The shame of wanting him burns hotter than any fever I had during treatment. "I hate how much I still want this," I confess, my voice catching as I feel him hard against me, intimidatingly thick. "How much I still want you ."

His eyes—dark and hungry like a predator's—lock onto mine. "Good," he says, voice dropping an octave lower. "Hate me. Curse my name. But don't fucking lie to yourself about who owns this pleasure. About who knows exactly what you need."

When he pushes inside, the stretch burns despite all his preparation. He's too big, too much. But he doesn't just ram into me like some porn star. He adjusts his angle, watches my face, finds exactly the position that makes stars explode behind my eyelids. His hands grip my hips with bruising force. "Mine," he growls. "You'll always be mine."

"Tell me you feel it too," he demands, each thrust hitting deeper now. His hand tangles in my short curls, tugging until I have to look at him. "Dimmi la verità. This madness between us. Tell me you wake up needy for me like I wake up hard for you, aching to be inside you."

The truth slips out before I can filter it: "Every night. I dream of you every damn night."

For just a second, his rhythm falters, and I catch a glimpse of the real Antonio. The one who played piano while I danced, who kissed my mastectomy scars like they were something beautiful instead of evidence of everything cancer stole from me. But then his eyes harden again. He lifts me higher against the tile, drives deeper, and any hint of the man I once knew disappears.

"Come for me," he commands, voice like gravel. "Let me watch you shatter. Let me feel that tight pussy squeeze my cock. Now, Isabella. Give it to me now."

And like my body's been waiting for permission, I shatter.

The orgasm rips through me, electric and overwhelming. I'm pretty sure I'm screaming as I dig my nails into his shoulders, as waves of pleasure crash through me—

Then I wake up.

Gasping and tangled in sweaty sheets. My thighs pressed together, aching for something I shouldn't want. My tank top twisted around my waist, and my heart hammering like I just did a full ballet routine.

God, I hate this. Three months locked in this glorified dungeon, and my subconscious is still betraying me with X-rated dreams about the man who orchestrated my misery.

The shame hits like a sledgehammer. I don't just dream about sex with Antonio. I dream about how he made me feel whole again. How for those brief hours on our wedding night, he made me forget all the ways cancer changed me. The early menopause. The scars. The nights I cried silently because my body didn't feel like mine anymore.

He made me feel beautiful again. And that turned out to be the cruelest lie of all.

Salt crystals cover my window like nature's version of those overpriced artisanal decorations Naomi used to love. Mediterranean spray thrown up during storms, not delicate like Chicago frost but angry and wild. I trace the patterns with my finger as I count the days like a prisoner scratching tallies on her cell wall.

Ninety-two. Ninety-three. Ninety-four.

Three months in Antonio's fortress. And somehow, he's still under my skin. Still inside me.

I sit at the desk.

The pen rolls between my fingers like an unfamiliar prop. My hands remember elevés and arabesques but struggle with this simple act of writing. I press harder against the paper, leaving indentations like scars.

Dear Naomi,

I've rewritten this letter six times. Keep ripping up pages, starting over. This room's floor is a graveyard of crumpled confessions.

Remember that day in the hospital when I couldn't hold the water glass because the chemo had destroyed my nerve endings? How you guided my hand, steadied the rim against my lips, then promised, "Your body will remember itself again"?

You were right.

Yesterday, something impossible happened. I heard piano music seeping through these stone walls. Chopin. The same nocturne Antonio played on our wedding night before everything shattered.

My body moved before I could stop it. Not the mechanical stretches I've been forcing myself through, but real dancing. My muscles remembering what my mind has tried to forget.

I danced until my lungs burned, until sweat plastered curls to my forehead, until my reflection in the window looked alive again. Then I collapsed onto stone floors, disgusted with myself.

Because my body might remember how he made it sing, but my mind knows better. My heart knows better. Three months alone with nothing but stone walls and his betrayal have finally burned away those stupid fairy tale dreams.

I don't want him anymore, Naomi. I want my freedom. I want revenge. I want to stop waking up with phantom hands on my skin, muscle memory of a touch that never meant anything beyond revenge.

The Beast played me perfectly. All that wedding night tenderness, all that gentle care with my scars. Just another layer in his elaborate charade, his perfect choreography of cruelty.

The pen splatters ink across the page as my hand clenches. I cross out the last paragraph with violent strokes, black lines like prison bars. Naomi has Connor to contend with: her own arranged marriage, her own cage across the sea. She doesn't need my mess spilling onto her pages.

I start again:

The latest draft you smuggled through Connor was the best. I don’t know you’ve managed to start writing a romcom when you’re trapped in a reality that wasn’t the one you dreamed about... I've read it three times, memorized entire passages. Funny how words taste different in captivity. Sweeter, sharper, more real than the food they push through my door.

When the news dropped that you were marrying Connor, my heart performed that dangerous dance I've been dreading. You shouldn't be paying for my father's sins, for my failures. I wanted to wrap you in a hug, whisper apologies, promise you'd survive this mess somehow. But they've kept us apart since they dragged you away, your pleas still echoing in my nightmares.

At least you got Connor to agree to these letters as a wedding present. And I can’t wait to read more of your stories. It's the one miracle in this nightmare. Your descriptions of Ireland's green hills and Connor's fortress are the only color in my stone and shadow existence.

My Italian's improving. Yesterday I made Signora Marta—my elderly caretaker—actually smile when I asked for more bread without mangling the pronunciation. Progress measured in crumbs.

I haven't seen Antonio once in three months. Not a glimpse, not a shadow. It's like he threw me in this room and erased me from existence. Some days I think I'd prefer his hatred to this silence. At least hatred acknowledges you exist.

What I wouldn't give to know what this damn "contract" actually means. This mysterious agreement my grandmother created that everyone values more than the people caught in its web. No one will tell me its true purpose, its power, its constraints. Another thing I'm not allowed to understand until it's too late to change anything.

I'm so glad Connor also got you a camera. Did you take more pictures? Do you think maybe he'll let you send some? I hate writing those words: "let you." As if we need permission to exist, to speak, to share pieces of ourselves.

My room's all stone and shadow, except for sunrise when light bleeds through my window, turning everything gold for seventeen minutes exactly. I've timed it. Sometimes I dance in those golden moments, pretending I'm somewhere else.

I miss you. I miss being a person instead of a possession.

Forever your friend, Bella

I fold the letter into its envelope. No address, just Naomi's name in my best ballet-school penmanship. One small act of normalcy in a world that's anything but.

The steps are different than usual. They're softer. Lighter. And there's a giggle. A child giggle?

I can't see through the keyhole.

"Signora Marta?" I call out, frowning. Signora Marta has really been kind and she has been trying to talk to me more. At first, they had one of the men bringing me food, taking me to the shower. There's a bathroom behind another heavy door that at least I can access directly so he didn't need to be there when I needed to go. But the man must have done or said something wrong—I hated the way he said my name, like a snake on my skin—and one day, he stopped coming. Replaced by the older lady with the weathered skin who only speaks Italian. She's been teaching me more words I've ever learned with my father.

"Is that you?" My heart flip flops. I try again in Italian. "Sei tu?" Still, silence meets my question. What's happening?

"Ciao?" The tiny voice comes through at last, tinged with confusion. And suddenly, a thought strikes me—what if she's by herself? Alone, with those winding stairs leading outside, where the waves relentlessly batter the mansion's walls.

"Hi!" I call out again. "Ciao."

And the child must stop by the door. "Hello?" She asks in a tiny voice. Like English is a game to her.

"I'm Bella, what's your name? Come ti chiami?" My heart pounds against my ribs, a wild rhythm cancer couldn't kill.

"Elena." One word in that small voice, but it feels like the first real thing I've heard in months.

"Very nice to meet you," I tell her. And because I need to find a way, any way to make sure she doesn't keep toddling away, I hurry back to the desk and grab a piece of paper. As I draw a princess the best way I know how, I ask her, "Are you the princess of this castle?"

She giggles. "Princess. Story." She claps her hands and I guess she wants me to tell her a princess story. How much English does she know? I slide the piece of paper under the heavy door and there's another giggle.

So, bracing myself, I start in a mix of Italian and English, "Once Upon A Time, there was a princess named Elena..."

And for once, I hope that someone—anyone, even Antonio—realizes that this child has gone missing and finds her before she grows tired of my story and continues to explore a wing that is far too dangerous for her.

My fingers trace patterns against the door as I speak, as if I could somehow protect her through solid oak. The steps in this wing are steep, winding, treacherous. A child could tumble down them in seconds. The windows have no safety bars. Some of the stone floors have crumbled away near the edges, leaving drops straight to the rocks below.

I embellish my story with details of brave princesses who rescue themselves, who don't need princes or beasts to save them, but my ears strain for any sound of approaching footsteps, any sign that someone is searching for this child.

Elena giggles at the dramatic voices I use, clapping when I describe the princess's magic powers. Through the gap beneath the door, I can see her tiny fingers reaching for the drawing I made her.

"More, more!" she demands, and I oblige, spinning the tale longer, keeping her anchored in place with my words.

The Mediterranean crashes against the cliffs outside, and wind howls through the cracks in ancient stone. This wing isn't just dangerous. It's deadly for a child left unattended.

I press my palm flat against the door, willing my voice to remain steady and enchanting while my mind screams with worry. Who let a child wander here alone? Whose responsibility is she?

"Princess fight dragon?" Elena asks, her limited English somehow perfectly clear.

"Yes," I answer, "the princess is very brave. She fights her own dragons."

As I continue weaving this story I'm making up on the spot, I find myself hoping. I hope that someone, anyone, even the Beast who locked me away, remembers this child exists. That they notice she's missing. That they find her before my voice grows hoarse or my story ends and she wanders away.

For the first time in three months, I'm not worried about myself. I'm not counting days of captivity or wondering when—if—Antonio will remember the wife he imprisoned.

I'm just trying to keep a little girl safe with nothing but my voice and a hand-drawn princess on a crumpled piece of paper.