25. Isabella
Chapter twenty-five
Isabella
M y thoughts, my stomach, my heart? they're all tangled like headphone wires left in a pocket too long. Jumbled. Knotted. Completely and utterly screwed.
Because what do you say when your jailer suddenly becomes human? What do you do when the Beast shows you the boy he once was? This was supposed to be another insufferable practice dinner before meeting the Greeks—not... whatever this confession has become.
My throat tightens as Antonio's words replay in my mind: his brother's murder, his desperate need for protection, and underneath it all, that guilty pulse that has its own heartbeat. I'm not sure he can hear it, but it's deafening to me—like those hospital monitors that beep faster before something goes terribly wrong.
I trace the rim of my wine glass, muscle memory from ballet making the movement precise despite my inner chaos. The cool glass grounds me when nothing else can. I force myself to look at him—really look at the man who tore me apart and somehow still makes my skin remember his touch.
His hair is slightly disheveled, like he's been dragging his fingers through it—that nervous habit he's had since before the fire carved his fate into his face. Those scars catch the candlelight, turning silver then shadow as he shifts. My fingers twitch with the phantom urge to trace them, to learn their texture the way I once mapped his unmarked skin.
His jaw is tight enough to crack teeth, muscles working beneath olive skin that I once tasted—honeyed and salt-sweet. The tension radiates from his shoulders like heat from pavement in August. Every line of his body tells a story of restraint, of leashed power barely contained.
But it's his eyes that hold me prisoner. They're focused on me with an intensity that makes my pulse skip-stutter in that dangerous way my cardiologist warned about. He's willing me to understand, to believe him, to give him what he's never earned: my trust.
And yet...
I exhale slowly, steadying myself against the tide of whatever this is.
A sharp voice in the back of my mind—the one that kept me alive through chemo, through heartbreak, through betrayal—reminds me exactly who he is. The man who touched my scars like they were beautiful, then locked me away in darkness. The Beast who claimed my body with reverent hands, then shattered my heart with calculated cruelty.
What if this story is just another layer of manipulation? Another way to ensure I play my part with the Greeks? What if they could help me escape this gilded nightmare? Help Naomi? Help me find a way back to something resembling freedom?
The bitter taste of betrayal coats my tongue like those metallic chemo drugs. The memories rise unbidden—how I spent ninety-four days counting stone cracks on a ceiling while he went on with his life. How I learned to sleep with one eye open and a shard under my mattress. How foolish I was to believe, even for one night, that he saw me as anything but a pawn.
Something must show on my face because a shadow crosses his expression, darkening those eyes to midnight.
"You don't believe me." He lifts a shoulder in that way that still makes my stomach flip despite everything. "I deserve that. But it's true." His voice drops lower, sliding under my skin like the bass line of a song you can't forget. "This is why I wanted to believe your father when he talked about building me up, about protection, about making sure nothing—and I say nothing—happens to my family ever again."
The cracks in his controlled voice mirror the fissures in the fortress walls—visible only if you know where to look, but no less real for their subtlety. "I lost my mother, myself... and I lost you."
Those last three words hit like a sucker punch, stealing my breath. I lost you. As if he ever had me. As if I was ever his to lose. As if he hadn't thrown me away himself.
The door swings open before I can respond, and Franco strides in, his eyes jumping between us like he's watching a particularly tense tennis match. He freezes mid-step, clearly reading the electricity crackling in the air.
"You told her?" His surprise sounds genuine, like Antonio sharing anything real is rarer than remission after stage four.
"I did," Antonio replies, his eyes still burning into mine like he's trying to sear his truth onto my soul.
"I think it was important," Franco adds, his words slicing through the tension.
I study his face, searching for the tells that would expose this as another choreographed performance. Franco knew about Antonio's plans for me before. He helped execute my exile. Trust is a luxury I can't afford anymore—not with anyone except Naomi, Elena, and the reflection staring back at me in mirror shards.
Cerberus chooses this exact moment to burst through the door, racing toward me like I'm a steak dinner after a month-long fast. His enthusiastic greeting is the only uncomplicated thing in this room. This dog doesn't manipulate or calculate. He just loves without condition. Unlike his master.
As Cerberus settles at my feet, a warm anchor in this storm, I can't help but think about what Antonio said about feeling like a puppet with bloody strings. He has no idea. I've been dancing on burning wires since the day I met him—unable to run, to hide, to scream without consequences.
"Don't forget to talk about body language," Franco says. "You both need to sell your relationship. And right now, it looks like you don't trust him," he tells me, as if stating that water is wet.
His words barely register because Antonio stands up—all coiled grace and lethal symmetry—and grabs another file. He slides a photograph across the table, his fingers lingering a moment too long, as if reluctant to let go of the memory it captures.
My hands tremble as I reach for it, a reaction I can't control, like so many other responses Antonio triggers in my treacherous body. The photo's edges are soft with handling, creased like the worry lines forming between my eyebrows.
I stare at the faces looking back at me, and something catches in my throat. Antonio looks so young, his smile untouched by flames or fury. The boy who would play piano while I danced, not the Beast who would lock me away. His mother's eyes are warm—the same warmth she showed me when I was just a girl with ballet dreams. The man beside her, Antonio's father, stands proud and strong. And then there's the younger boy, dimpled grin frozen in time, unaware of how short his story would be.
A family. Whole. Happy.
Would we have met under different stars? If tragedy hadn't carved his path, would Antonio and I have crossed another way? Or are we destined to hurt each other in every possible timeline?
"That was taken two days before the murder," he says, his voice scraping across my frayed nerves. "I know you probably still don't believe me... but I'm not hiding anything from you. Not anymore."
My lips part, but words fail me. Instead, I twist my napkin like I'm wringing necks, like I could somehow strangle the confusion swirling inside me. The fabric yields under my fingers, a small surrender I can control when everything else feels beyond my reach.
Is this another game? Another move on the chessboard where I've always been just a pawn? Or is he finally showing me something real—something that explains the man behind the Beast's scars?
His eyes haven't left mine, and the heat in them has nothing to do with candlelight. It's the same smoldering intensity that once had me arching beneath him, forgetting every reason to hate him. The same dark fire that still calls to something wild and wanting inside me…something cancer and captivity couldn't kill.
And help me, I still want to believe him.