Chapter 14 Isabella
ISABELLA
I jolt awake to Roman's massive frame looming over me, his eyes dark with fury.
The mattress dips under his weight as he braces one arm beside my head. My heart hammers against my ribs.
"You've been lying to me this whole time." His voice is deceptively quiet, controlled, the way he gets before violence. "Using me."
I push myself back against the headboard, but it doesn’t create any space between us. I have nowhere to run. "What are you talking about?"
"The phone, Isabella. The one that woman handed you at the fabric store. The one you've been hiding."
My mouth goes dry. How did he know? I'd been so careful. "I don't… I wasn't…" The words tangle in my throat.
"Don't lie to me!" His palm slams against the headboard beside me, making me flinch. "I heard everything, Isabella. Every. Damn. Word."
The reality crashes down on me. He's been monitoring me somehow. The thought makes me feel violated, exposed.
"You were spying on me?"
He laughs derisively. “You knew the score when you chose to marry me instead of…” He lets my alternative, death, hang. “It’s my job to know what the fuck you’re up to. But like an idiot…” He pushes off the bed and paces, seething.
I use the opportunity to move to the other side of the bed. He whips around. "After everything. After I promised to help you find the truth about your mother. After I took you to my bed."
"You had no right to spy on me," I whisper, anger momentarily overriding my fear.
Roman shakes his head. "I had every right. Your actions threaten my daughter. When it comes to her, I have every right to do whatever the fuck I want to do to you."
God, he's going to kill me.
"You're working with the people trying to destroy my family."
"I told him no!" I protest. "If you were listening in, you heard me. I told Blackwood I couldn't do it anymore."
“But you didn’t tell me.” His eyes narrow. "What else haven't you told me?"
I shake my head frantically. "Nothing! I swear I don't know anything else."
I swallow hard, staring up at Roman's unforgiving face. This isn't the man who touched me so tenderly just days ago. This is the enforcer, the killer who's made men disappear without a trace.
"You come clean to me now, Isabella. Everything." His voice drops to a deadly whisper. "Or all bets are off. You become my prisoner, and I sure as hell will keep you away from Angelica."
The mention of his daughter makes my stomach twist. In just days, I've grown fond of the little girl with her fierce independence and creative spirit.
The dress I'm making for her is half-finished on my sewing table.
"Roman, please—"
"Now." The word slices through the air, cutting me off.
Panic rises. I'm completely at his mercy if he decides I'm a threat. But honestly, I don’t know what he’s asking me. There’s nothing else I’ve kept a secret.
"I don't know what you want me to say," I whisper, voice trembling. "The phone was the only thing I was keeping from you. I swear."
"What about Ernie Abruzzo?" Roman demands, his voice sharp.
The name means nothing to me. I blink in confusion, desperately trying to place it. "Ernie Abruzzo? I don't—who is that?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Isabella."
"I'm not!” Then it comes to me. The driver had started to mention someone named Ernie. “You said Ernie had nothing to do with this."
Roman's laugh is bitter, cruel. "Stop fucking around and tell me what you know." He leans in closer, his face inches from mine. "I'm not going to hang my ass out for you any longer."
The shift is so sudden, so complete, that I feel like I'm drowning. What happened to the man who held me so tenderly? Who promised to help me find the truth?
"Roman, please," I plead, reaching for his arm. "I don't know anyone named Ernie Abruzzo. I've never heard that name before we met with the driver."
His eyes search mine, looking for deception.
I hold his gaze, willing him to see the truth. "I'm not lying to you. Not about this."
He turns away, paces the bedroom. "Tell me what your mother was doing in the weeks before she was killed," he finally says, stopping to face me. "Every detail you can remember."
My mind feels scrambled, thoughts darting like frightened fish. "I–I don't know." I press my palms against my eyes.
"Think, Isabella,” he demands. “Anything unusual? New friends? Changes in routine?"
I force myself to breathe deeply, to push past the panic clouding my thoughts. Mom's face swims into focus.
"She was… normal, I think. Planning a charity gala. Shopping. The usual things." I struggle to recall specifics. "She never mentioned anything strange. I had no idea she was meeting anyone. I don’t know why she would unless it was for one of her charity events."
Roman runs a hand through his hair. "What about your father? How were things between them?"
The question makes me pause. "They were…
fine? I mean, they weren't ever particularly affectionate, but that was normal for them.
" I think harder, trying to remember any signs of tension.
"Dad was busy with business. Mom complained about it sometimes, but that wasn't new. Deep down, they were committed."
"And the family? Was she close with anyone in particular? Any of the other wives?"
"I wouldn’t say they were her best friends, but they spent time shopping or working on events.
She didn't like the family business. She tolerated it for my father's sake, but she always wanted me to stay away from it all.
" I shrug and look down at the sheets. "I guess I failed her there.
" My head jerks up as a memory comes back.
"There was something. A few months before she died, my father started talking about arranging a marriage for me. "
Roman's eyebrows lift slightly. "To whom?"
"I don't know. Someone within La Corona." I shake my head, remembering my mother's face when my father first mentioned it. "My mother was furious. I overheard them arguing about it one night."
"What did she say?"
"She told him I had my own hopes and dreams. That I deserved to choose my own path." The memory brings a lump to my throat. "She made him promise not to marry me off, at least until I had a chance to live my own life."
Roman leans against the dresser, arms crossed. "And your father?"
"He was adamant. Said the marriage was needed to keep him relevant in La Corona since he didn't have a son to carry on after he passed.
That I was almost too old as it was." I can still hear my father's voice, the cold logic of his argument.
"My mother was devastated. She kept saying there had to be another way. "
"Did she mention what that other way might be?"
I close my eyes, trying to recall any clue, any hint she might have dropped. "I don't know. She just said she would make sure I didn't end up trapped in this life. She promised she'd save me from it."
"How?" Roman asks, his voice suddenly sharp with interest.
I shake my head helplessly. "I don't know. She never told me. And then…" And then she was killed.
"Did you ever ask your father about it afterward? About what she meant?"
"No." I look up at Roman, sudden realization washing over me. "I was too grief-stricken, then angry that no one seemed to care enough to find out what really happened to her."
Roman's pacing grows more intense with each turn across the bedroom.
"Ernie Abruzzo was a mob wannabee, but he wasn’t half as smart as his brother, Salvatore," he says, more to himself than to me.
"Small-time thug with big ambitions trying to get into any of the families when Marco had no interest in him, and Marco forbade Salvatore from elevating him to anything but a bagman, and even then, he needed a partner. Marco didn’t trust him.
He disappeared around the same time your mother was killed. "
I clutch the bedsheet tighter. "What does he have to do with my mother?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Roman stops abruptly, turning to face me. "If he was working as an informant like Vinny said and your mother discovered it, or maybe she stumbled onto something. Or maybe…" He hesitates.
"What?" I demand.
"Maybe she was working with him."
The accusation offends me to the core. "That's insane. My mother would never betray my father."
"To save you from this life? To keep you from an arranged marriage?" Roman's eyes bore into mine. "What wouldn't a mother do for her child?"
I feel sick, caught between defending my mother's memory and the terrifying possibility that Roman might be right.
If she was trying to find an escape route for me, what lengths would she go to?
"But how could he help if he was a nobody?" I ask. It makes no sense.
"If he was an informant, he could have whoever he was informing be able to help you. Isn’t that what you asked Blackwood to do? Maybe it’s through Ernie that Blackwood knew to target you."
It's all conjecture, but it makes a certain amount of sense. "But why kill her? Or him?"
He looks at me like I'm dense. “You know that in this world, disloyalty and disrespect are handled harshly.”
"But you didn't kill me. Surely, my father would have tried to save her too if she’d been linked to an informant. My father isn’t affectionate, but he loved her." Theirs wasn't a passionate marriage, but there was commitment and devotion. Of that I have no doubt.
"Love doesn't preclude betrayal," Roman says quietly.
I can’t believe my father would kill my mother, or order it or agree to it if La Corona demanded it. I just can’t.
I stare at Roman, my thoughts spiraling. "What if this Ernie killed my mother?" I ask, desperate for any explanation that doesn't implicate my own father. "Maybe he was using her, but things went wrong?"
Roman's expression grows pensive. "It's possible, but Ernie Abruzzo died of a heroin overdose around the same time your mother was killed."
"A coincidence?" I suggest weakly.
"Heroin overdose is your father's signature way of disposing of problems."
“So maybe Ernie killed my mother and my father killed him for it.” But even as I say it, I’m not sure whether I buy it. "Except how would my father have known about them? How would he have connected them?"
Roman sits on the edge of the bed, his weight causing the mattress to dip toward him. "If your father didn't already know about their connection, how did he find Ernie? And if he did know…"
"Then he knew my mother was planning something," I finish, feeling sick. "He knew and he stopped her."
The room seems to close in around me as I have to consider that my father killed my mother and this Ernie guy, all to save himself and La Corona.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. I know the Dons and La Corona come before anything else.
"We don't know anything for certain," Roman cautions, but I can see in his eyes that he's thinking the same thing I am.
He stands and moves toward the door. He doesn’t seem dangerous now, but he’s definitely distant.
"Wait," I call out, my voice small and broken. "Are you… are you going to take the phone?"
He pauses, hand on the doorknob, and turns to look at me. His expression is unreadable, those dark eyes giving nothing away.
"No," he says finally. The single word hangs between us.
I blink in surprise. "Why not?"
"Because if I have to force your loyalty, it's worthless to me." His voice is calm, matter-of-fact, but there's an edge to it that makes my skin prickle.
"I don't understand."
"It's simple, Isabella. You can't have it both ways. You can't play both sides and expect to survive. Not in this world."
I wrap my arms around myself, as if that will protect me from him, from his world.
His eyes lock with mine. "It's me or Blackwood. La Corona or the FBI. There's no middle ground here."
"And if I choose wrong?"
Roman's expression doesn't change. "Then I can't protect you anymore."
The threat is clear, even if unspoken. I'm still a liability. Still expendable if I make the wrong move.
"I need your trust," he continues. "But more importantly, you need to decide where your loyalties lie. Not just for show, but for real."
He steps out the door, then stops. “Oh, and until you decide, you stay the fuck away from my daughter.”