18. Isabella
18
ISABELLA
T he headache hits me first. Before the nausea. Before I even have a chance to open my eyes.
It thrums through my skull like a neverending call to battle that I have no chance of surviving. It feels like every cell in my brain is deprived of oxygen, and I can’t breathe it fast enough.
It would be dizzying if my eyes were open. And when I finally do open them, I promptly vomit.
Conveniently, there’s a bucket next to my bed. I’m not sure if I manage to get all of it in or who put it there. But the effort of hurling my guts takes its toll, and I promptly fall back to sleep.
The next time I wake up, the bucket is clean. I still feel dizzy, and my head still throbs, but for the first time, I can look slightly further than the edge of my bed.
There’s a drip attached to my arm and a monitor that beeps in time with my heartbeat. The room itself is unfamiliar and sterile. A hospital, maybe?
Why would I be in a hospital?
There’s a shuffle outside my door, so I close my eyes again, feigning sleep, only to become overwhelmed by my exhaustion once more and fall asleep once more.
When I wake up again, my headache has gone. It still takes some time for me to dispel the feeling of nausea. But after a few moments of staring up at the light above me, the dizziness subsides.
Slowly, I push myself up into a sitting position and take stock of the condition of my body. Everything seems fine. There’s no pain anywhere other than the ghost of a headache now.
I’m wearing a simple hospital gown, though, and my little black dress and heels are nowhere to be found.
I sigh but then wince as my breath harshly passes over my chapped lips.
Luckily, someone seems to have left a glass of water nearby, so I reach over to take it.
Only for my ears to be assaulted by the sound of metal clanging against metal.
I glance down at my wrist and the handcuff that is wrapped around it. I tug against it again for good measure, but it’s locked onto the bar of my hospital bed.
What the hell happened?
Thankfully, I don’t have to wait too long for an answer.
There’s movement behind the door opposite me, and I brace myself for a doctor or a cop, who will undoubtedly start asking questions.
But when the door opens, neither walks through.
“You’re awake,” Teo Vitale says, entirely unalarmed by the situation.
I gape at him. “What did you do to me?”
“ I didn’t do anything,” he nods at the drip still attached to my arm. “ You took enough tranquilizer to kill a bear.”
I begin to retort, but my memories return to me like a burst damn. The Candelabra , Teo talking me to a secluded corner, slipping the contents of my mother’s vial into his champagne, flirting. Needing him to follow me out of there.
Except…
It all begins to blur after he puts his hand on my thigh.
“What,” I hiss, tears already forming in my eyes, “did you do?”
“I switched the glasses,” he replies softly, barely moving an inch. “You drank and began to flirt with me. You were already falling asleep before anything happened, so I picked you up and walked you out to avoid suspicion.”
“You expect me to trust your word?”
He points to the TV screen hanging on the wall. “No. But you can rewatch the CCTV footage if you’d like.” He waves a remote at me for good measure.
My hands are still shaking when I ask. “Then what?”
“You collapsed before we reached my car. I was going to take you straight to the hospital, but luckily, Mia called our medic out to come to treat you. He performed CPR on you right there in the parking lot.”
Something cool drips down my spine. “What…do you mean?”
“You died, Isabella. Twice.”
His words are like a stone smashing through glass bottles. Each rattles the earth as they shatter to the floor.
No. I can’t believe it, I won’t believe it.
She said it would incapacitate him, not kill him.
But it had almost killed me.
How could she? How could she?
The tears fall freely. Because I’m angry and I’m terrified. Because Teo switched the glasses and betrayed me, even though I was going to do the same thing to him. Because my mother told me no one would get hurt.
And yet here I am, in a hospital bed.
As my tears fall, Teo doesn’t move. Like some kind of frozen guardian, he waits for me to finish,perfectly content to wait and watch forever.
I don’t know how long it takes until I have my breathing under control again.
“Where am I?”
He blinks as if waking up from a wide-eyed slumber. “Safe.”
“Teo.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You did this to me. I deserve to know.”
“You’re somewhere no one will hurt you again.”
His words are shockingly bleak and entirely unexpected. I glance down at the handcuff. “Did you do this?”
“It was a precaution.”
“So I’m trapped here.”
“Yes.”
I blanch at this revelation, suddenly feeling that dizziness returning with full force. “Well, you can’t just…I guess while I get better, but…when I’m fine, you’re going to have to…my brother, he will…I have to get out of here. You can’t keep me.”
“Yes, I can.”
“I’m not yours to keep!”
This, after everything else, is what makes him step further into the room. His face is expressionless as he approaches the bed, clasping the bottom bar with both his hands and leaning into it as if it is the only thing holding him up.
“Tell me honestly,” he whispers. “Did you know what you put in that drink?”
The wiser, smarter part of me who values self-preservation screams at me to lie. But I can’t force the words out.
“No. No, no. I swear. She said she said…it was only meant to…” I clasp my hand over my mouth as the sobs rack through me again.
“Who said, belle? ”
My breath hitches as I realize my mistake. “No. No one. I swear.”
“Did she send you to kill me?”
“No!”
He looks at me then, long and hard. For the first time, that mask of indifference drops just long enough for me to see the exhaustion that lies beneath.
Had he been there in the parking lot while a stranger attempted to save my life? Had he worried if I would die? Had he been able to sleep? Live with himself? Was it guilt that ate him up inside? Or duty? Or some strange mafioso version of honor?
Teo stares and stares and stares. I let him. I let him see my truth, my pain and betrayal and fear, and all the mess that is going on in my mind. I want him to see it. No, I need him to see that I’m not lying.
Then, after a lifetime, or maybe ten seconds, he says, “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“If I could go back, I would have just drank it.”
My heart skitters to a stop. My hands start shaking again. “No. No! Because then…you’d be…”
Dead. He’d be dead, wouldn’t he?
I can see it all now, playing before my eyes. Teo slowly becoming delirious, escorting him back to my car and driving him to the Prince’s Hand. Not knowing that the tranquilizer was quickly killing him in my passenger seat.
He would have been dead on arrival.
“It would have been easier,” he whispers.
I swallow back another round of tears. What happened? I want to yell at him.
But I know already, don’t I?
I died. Twice.
And he’d had to watch.
“ If I die, my death can be on your hands,” I quote back to him.
His entire body freezes.
“You said that to me once,” I continue. “Not so nice, is it?”
For a moment, I think he might have become entirely paralyzed. But then his shoulders begin to cave in and shake. His laughter is stunted, almost watery, but the sound of it warms up the sterile room by a hundred degrees.
“Did you just…” he splutters out into laughter again. “Tell me off?”
“Laugh all you want, Vitale. I wasn’t the one crying over my enemy’s deathbed.”
He shakes his head as he pushes himself up, stalking over to my side of the bed and sitting on the edge.
I can feel his warmth through the thin sheets, and I have to restrain myself from curling around him as he reaches out to tuck my hair behind my ear.
His hand lingers, cupping the side of my face gently. It's so soft I can feel my insides melting at the touch.
“Where is she, Isabella?”
I close my eyes. “I can’t tell you that.”
“I did this to you.”
“Teo,” I protest.
“But she did this to you, too.”
I shake my head.
“Look at me.”
I do. And he’s there, hovering over me, mere inches from my face. We’re practically breathing the same air, and I savor the taste. The overwhelming buzz of his nearness fills my ears as if there is nothing else in the world.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you again,” he promises, serious as death itself.
I take a steadying breath. “And that includes my mother, does it?”
“You could have died.”
“She didn’t force me to drink it,” I argue back. “This is not the point.”
“Then what is the point, Isabella? Because I’m so damn tired of running these circles with you.”
It’s my turn to laugh. It’s an awful, bitter sound. “Then maybe you should have just let me die! It would have saved you the trouble of killing me.”
I watch as his jaw muscles jump beneath his skin. Those precious inches between us get shorter and shorter, and then his nose is on my cheek, almost nuzzling me.
“I can’t do it,” he whispers his dangerous secret into the non-existent space between us.
And my heart simply breaks.
And I curse myself for ever thinking this would be the best-case scenario. That I could somehow use this to my advantage, to manipulate him into leaving my family alone.
Because how could I have ever possibly believed that these feelings would only flow one way? All this time, I was so concerned about whether he would be able to commit to killing me.
I never once thought about the cost of killing him .
And the tragic truth is that I can’t do it either.
Which means we’re both just stuck. We both need something from the other, but neither of us can see it through to the bitter end.
So where does that even leave us?
“Would you do it? Would you give her up?” I whisper back as his nose skims over my cheek.
“Who?”
“Would you give up your mother?”
He stops breathing.
Then, he throws himself backward as if I’ve somehow shocked him. There is a deathly darkness in his eyes that I’ve never seen before.
“Don’t you dare talk about her.” His voice is low and threatening. It’s enough to make my toes curl and my heart pound in my chest.
But I don’t back down. “You wouldn’t do it, would you?”
“I said, ENOUGH!” he roars.
“Or what, Teo?” I almost laugh at him. “We both know we’re royally fucked over this. We can’t kill each other. We can’t get what we want. What is left for us?”
He shakes his head. “No. You will give her up.”
“You’re delusional if you think that’s true!”
“And I might not be able to kill you. But I can keep you here, alone and isolated. For however long that takes for your tongue to loosen.”
He walks to the door, stubborn pride radiating from his every step.
So I shout after him. “You can keep me here as long as you like. But someone will find me.”
He pauses at the door before turning back to me. “No one will find you. Not here.”
Dread begins to trickle down my spine. “Where. Am. I?”
When he smiles, it’s a cruel quirk of his lips.
“Enjoy the bunker, Miss Natali.”