Chapter 22 Isabella
Isabella
I've been standing in this hallway for ten minutes, unable to move forward or back.
The rain batters the tall windows, turning Manhattan into watercolor smudges of gray and gold. I pull the cashmere sweater tighter around my shoulders, but Besiana's borrowed clothes can't make me feel like I belong in this glass fortress.
The library door is slightly open, and voices drift into the hallway where I stand frozen. Dom's low rumble, Leo's sharp interjections, Matteo's voice cutting through them both with dangerous precision. They're planning something. Strategizing. Fighting a war I helped start simply by existing.
I should knock. Should ask if there's anything I can do to help. The polite thing, the useful thing. Instead, I hover in the doorway like a ghost, caught between wanting to contribute and knowing I don't belong in their world of calculated violence.
"Isabella." Besiana appears beside me, moving with the same silent grace that runs in this family. "You look lost."
"I was just..." I gesture vaguely toward the library. "They seem busy."
"They are." Her dark eyes study my face with uncomfortable perception. "But that doesn't mean you're not allowed to exist in your own space."
My space. The words feel foreign. Nothing about this mansion feels like mine, despite the way Matteo watches me move through it like I'm something precious he's placed exactly where he wants me.
"Come," Besiana says, linking our arms with easy familiarity. "Let them play with their maps and their phones. We'll find something more interesting to do."
But I can't concentrate on anything more interesting. Can't focus on the book she hands me or the tea she presses into my palms. The afternoon stretches endless and gray. Through the windows, I watch the storm intensify, turning the city into something dark and threatening.
I find myself wandering through the mansion's halls eventually, my bare feet silent on marble and hardwood. The air feels charged with tension, like the walls themselves are bracing for war.
"Isabella?" Matteo's voice startles me. I didn't hear him approach, too lost in my spiraling thoughts.
I turn toward him, taking in the worried set of his shoulders, the way his amber eyes search my face for signs of distress.
He's changed from his morning clothes into dark jeans and a black sweater that makes him look younger, more approachable.
Less like a predator and more like a man who might actually love me.
But I can see the silver coin flipping between his fingers.
"I'm fine," I say automatically, the lie coming as easily as breathing.
He doesn't believe me. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the way the coin moves faster. "You sure? You look pale."
"Just tired." Another lie, smooth as glass. "The storm's giving me a headache."
He studies my face for a long moment, and I have the unsettling feeling he can see right through me. That he knows about the choice I'm struggling to make, about the way I'm fragmenting under the weight of too many impossible truths.
"Come here," he says softly, holding out his hand.
I want to go to him. Want to let him pull me close and promise that everything will be okay, even though we both know that's impossible. Instead, I shake my head.
"Isabella, what's going on?"
The question breaks something loose inside me. "About how you told me you loved me and I don't know how to handle that? About how I feel like I'm betraying everything I thought I knew about myself? About how the man who raised me might be a monster and I'm not sure who I am without him?"
The admission hangs between us like shattered glass. Matteo's expression shifts from concern to something deeper, more complicated.
"Bella—"
"Don't." I hold up a hand, stopping him before he can say something that will break me completely. "Please. I can't... not right now."
He nods slowly, understanding more than I deserve. "Okay. But when you're ready to talk, I'll be here."
"What if I'm never ready?"
"Then I'll wait." His voice is steady, sure. "As long as it takes."
He turns to leave, but pauses at the doorway. "Whatever you're wrestling with, whatever choice you think you have to make alone—you don't. We're in this together now."
Together. The word should comfort me. Instead, it feels like another wall closing in.
After he leaves, I retreat to the sitting room, trying to find calm in the storm of my thoughts. But every flash of lightning makes me think of Chase, of the way his smile never reached his eyes when he was disappointed in me.
He killed my parents. The thought hits me fresh, a knife between my ribs. The man who raised me, who taught me to appreciate beauty and culture, who gave me everything after they died. He killed them first.
Fourteen years. Fourteen years I've been grateful to my parents' murderer.
The memory hits without warning. My parents' funeral. Chase's strong hand on my nine-year-old shoulder, his voice gentle with grief. "They would want you to be strong, Isabella. To carry on their love of beautiful things."
All lies. Every word, every gesture, every moment of kindness built on the foundation of murder.
My phone buzzes against the side table where I left it charging. The caller ID makes my stomach clench: Libby Donaldson from the Met.
"Libby," I answer, forcing my voice into professional warmth. "How are things?"
"Isabella, thank God. I wasn't sure you'd pick up." Her voice carries unusual tension. "Listen, I know you're dealing with family matters, but something strange happened today that I thought you should know about."
My pulse quickens. "What kind of strange?"
"Donald Henson called me this morning. You remember him, right? Big donor, always sniffing around the European paintings?"
I remember Donald perfectly. The way he looked at me like I was art he wanted to acquire. "Of course."
"Well, he contacted me about purchasing pieces from a private collection. Said he'd been approached by Chase Callahan about liquidating some significant works. Renaissance drawings, a small Monet, some carved jade pieces worth serious money."
The blood drains from my face. Chase doesn't sell art. He collects it obsessively, hoards it like a dragon guarding treasure. "That doesn't sound like my uncle."
"That's what I thought. But here's the really weird part—Henson said Chase seemed desperate to move the pieces quickly. Below market value, cash transactions only, no authentication delays. The behavior of someone who needs money fast."
My hands start to shake. "How much money?"
"Henson estimated the collection he was shown at around twelve million. But that was just what Chase brought to the initial meeting. He mentioned having much more available for immediate sale."
The phone slips from my suddenly nerveless fingers, clattering against the hardwood floor. Twelve million. The number echoes in my head like a death knell.
I sink onto the nearest chair, my legs giving out completely. Twelve million dollars. Enough to fund an army. Enough to buy serious firepower and experienced soldiers. Enough to turn a warehouse meeting into a bloodbath.
"Isabella? Isabella, are you there?"
Libby's voice sounds distant, tinny. I retrieve the phone with shaking hands. "Yes, sorry. Just... processing."
"Did he say anything else?" My voice comes out strangled.
"Just that Chase seemed different. Agitated. Like a man preparing for something big." Libby pauses. "Is everything okay? With your family situation?"
"Everything's fine," I whisper, the lie tasting like ash. "Thank you for letting me know. I should go."
I end the call and sit staring at the phone in my trembling hands. The room spins around me as the implications crash over me in waves.
Chase is liquidating his most precious possessions. The uncle who would rather die than part with a single piece of his collection is selling millions worth of art to raise cash fast. He always said he'd only sell his collection when he was ready to burn the world.
This isn't a negotiation he's planning. It's a massacre.
The Rosettis think they're going to a meeting. They're walking into a slaughter.
I press my hands to my mouth, fighting the urge to be sick. All this time, I've been thinking about loyalty and betrayal in abstract terms. But this isn't about choosing sides in some family dispute. This is about preventing mass murder.
The choice crystallizes with brutal clarity. Not between the man who raised me and the man who claims to love me. Between stopping a monster and becoming complicit in genocide.
I think about Matteo's patient amber eyes, the way he said he'd wait for me as long as it takes. About Dom's quiet authority, Leo's wild humor, Besiana's unexpected kindness. About all the people who work for them, who depend on them, who will die if I stay silent.
Then I think about Chase, about the way he's shaped every aspect of my life for fourteen years. About the gratitude I've carried like a weight, the loyalty that's defined me since I was nine years old.
But that loyalty was built on lies. Everything I thought I knew about him, about myself, about my place in his world—all of it constructed on the grave of my parents.
He's not my savior. He's their killer.
And now he's planning to kill again.
I stand on unsteady legs, my decision made. Whatever consequences come from this choice, whatever it makes me, I can live with it. What I can't live with is doing nothing while he murders an entire family.
The hallway stretches before me, leading toward the library where voices still murmur behind closed doors. Each step feels like crossing a bridge that will burn behind me, cutting off any path back to the woman I used to be.
But maybe that woman was always an illusion anyway. Maybe the real Isabella Callahan is the one walking toward that door, ready to choose the lives of people she cares about over the lies that have defined her.
Ready to become someone who acts instead of someone who simply endures.
The library door looms ahead, and I raise my hand to knock. On the other side lies the end of everything I thought I knew about myself.
And the beginning of everything I choose to become.