Chapter 23
The room smells like rot and old cigarettes, a scent that seems to cling to the back of my throat.
Wallpaper curls off the walls in yellowed strips, the kind of place where time gave up long before the people inside it did.
A single light bulb swings from the ceiling on a fraying cord, its weak, sickly glow cutting through the oppressive dusk that leaks in from the boarded windows.
Every few seconds, it flickers —a sharp, buzzing pulse —and each erratic beat makes my own heart stutter in time.
I'm sitting on a stained mattress in the corner, every muscle screaming with tension.
My wrists ache from the crude zip-ties he used earlier, though he removed them after I woke up—a false show of trust. My head pounds from whatever drug he jabbed into my neck in the penthouse garage.
Danny paces in front of me—fast, jittery steps that scuff against warped floorboards.
His hands twist, flex, then clench again, the restless energy of a man on the edge of a precipice.
"Danny," I whisper. My throat's dry, voice shaking. "Please. Talk to me."
He doesn't answer. He's muttering to himself, a continuous, anxious stream of sound, the words slipping too fast between his teeth. I only catch fragments—"Russians... deal gone wrong... should've stayed quiet...."
My stomach twists, not just with fear, but with a nauseating understanding of the depths he's sunk to.
"Danny, you're scaring me," I say, forcing my voice steady. "Where are we?"
He spins toward me, eyes wild and unfocused, then laughs—sharp and wrong, like shattering glass. "Safe, Isa. We're safe now. Away from them."
I flinch at the venom in his voice. "Who?"
"The Morettis," he spits, pacing again, his hands chopping the air in frustrated gestures. "They think they can control everything, every election, every market, but they can't. They're going to burn, and then it's over. Then you and I can go back to normal."
The words don't fit him—the calm, polished political golden boy everyone adored. This man's voice cracks in strange places; sweat runs down his temples, carving clean paths through the grime on his skin. He looks hollowed out, consumed by something I don't recognize.
"Danny," I say carefully, trying to use the soothing tone I'd perfected when we were kids. "What are you talking about? What exactly did you do?"
He stops, hands braced against the crumbling plaster of the wall, his thin shoulders trembling under a cheap, wrinkled jacket.
"I fixed it," he murmurs, his voice a thread of sound. "I fixed everything that was going wrong. They gave me a way out."
My pulse spikes, adrenaline flooding my system. "Who gave you a way out?"
He turns, and I wish he hadn't. His smile is thin, brittle, showing too much tooth. "The Russians. They paid me to keep things quiet, to pass along information. It wasn't supposed to go this far. But they're smarter, Isa. They see the future. The Italians are weak."
My blood runs cold, a deep, paralyzing chill. "You took their money? You betrayed the city council for the Russians?"
His face tightens, defensive. "I didn't have a choice! The gambling debts—they were going to come for me, Isa. I had to. But then the Mayor wanted something too, so I used him. Used all of them. And you…"
He laughs again, low and shaky, and the sound is pure madness. "You could've ended it. You had everything you needed. You could've taken Dante Moretti down for good."
The room tilts violently. The pieces of the last few weeks snap into a hideous, terrifying picture. "That's why you sent those files? The bank leak? You used my name?"
"I had to make it look real," he says, voice trembling with self-pity. "They needed someone with credibility. You were perfect—brave little Isa, chasing justice. It throws off the scent."
"Danny," I whisper, recoiling and backing toward the door, my heart pounding a furious rhythm of horror. "Do you hear yourself? You walked into a war and dragged me into it."
He keeps pacing, muttering under his breath again—about alliances, about "the next move," about how the Russians will make him whole once "the Italians fall."
The air feels heavy, suffocating. I can't breathe. I force myself to focus on the things that matter, the things I chose.
My fear shifted abruptly. It wasn't about me anymore. It was about what was happening right now, outside this rotting room.
Dante. The image of him on the steps, his face etched with concern for Sofia, flashed in my mind.
He would have received the security alert.
He would have seen my pathetic, cowardly text: I'm sorry.
He wouldn't know I'd been drugged and kidnapped; he would only see the lie, the abandonment, the confirmation that I was, perhaps, just another piece of the plot.
The thought of his face hardening, the slow, cold burn of his rage, was a deeper pain than the ache in my wrists.
I had finally found a man who looked at me and saw me—not a means to an end, not a political pawn, but a woman whose opinions mattered, whose body responded to his with terrifying honesty.
I had seen the soft, unguarded edges of his soul, the fierce, unconditional love for Sofia.
He thinks I betrayed him.
And Sofia. She wanted to show me her antennae.
She was trusting me, trusting the promise that I would be home.
The idea that my brother's selfish, desperate actions would be the thing to tear me away from the only family I had ever truly chosen—the only people who saw me in a way that made me feel complete—was unbearable.
My family, the only blood tie I had left, was the weapon poised to destroy the one place where I had finally been able to stop fighting.
"Danny, listen to me." I took a slow step toward him. "We can fix this, but not with the Russians. If you help me talk to Dante, he can help us. He can—"
"No!"
His shout rattled the windowpane. He gripped his hair, tugging hard, like he was trying to pull the noise out of his own head.
"They'll kill us if they know I talked to him," he muttered, his voice dropping into a frantic whisper. "We wait. When the Morettis are gone, we'll be safe. Just you and me, like before. Like it should be."
I swallowed hard, tasting bile. "Before?" I repeated, staring at the ghost of the boy I used to know.
"Before you ran off playing hero. Before you choose them." His voice fractured on the last word, something dark, possessive, and broken bleeding through. "You don't get it, Isa. He'll destroy you. You think you're different, but you're just another piece of his empire, another thing he owns."
I shook my head, tears stinging. He didn't understand. Danny was talking about power, about empires. I was talking about the way Dante's hands gripped my waist, the protective heat in his eyes when he looked at Sofia. "You're wrong. Dante isn't—"
He slammed his fist against the wall, splintering the old, dry wood with a sickening crunch. "Stop saying his name!"
I flinched back. The silence that followed was too long, too still, punctuated only by his ragged, shallow breathing.
Outside, somewhere far away, a car passes—a dull hum swallowed by the vast, indifferent city. It feels a thousand miles from here, a world I can no longer reach.
I edge backward, slow, my fingers brushing the cold, peeling wood of the door frame. "Danny," I whisper, trying to sound calm, compliant. "I need some air, okay? Let me step outside, and we can—"
He moves faster than I expect, the politician's grace replaced by a panicked, desperate strength. His hand shoots out, fingers wrapping around my wrist hard enough to crush bone.
"You're not going anywhere," he says softly, his eyes gone flat and empty, devoid of the fear that had been fueling his frenzy.
"Danny, please—"
"Not until they're gone." He tightens his grip, dragging me back toward the mattress.
The light bulb above us flickers one last time, humming, then burns out completely, plunging the room into thick, suffocating shadow.
And for the first time since I woke up, I realize my brother isn't scared anymore. He's passed the point of panic.
He's waiting.