Chapter 3
Chapter three
ISABELLA
Someone tried to kill us. And someone's been listening this whole time.
The explosion keeps replaying in my mind like a song stuck on repeat—the deafening boom, Franco yanking me back, the stench of burning rubber filling my lungs.
I can still hear the cries echoing across the tarmac, still see the smoke curling up from where the car used to be.
The young guard is injured. So much blood.
Always so much blood.
My fingers find the flutter of my pulse at my throat. At least it's not racing out of control. The last thing I need right now is another SVT episode with no Antonio to hold my hand through it, no Dr. Draghi to stop my heart so it can restart.
Franco passes me a bottle of water from the cooler, and I take it with a nod. "Grazie mille."
For just a second, his mask slips. I catch a glimpse of who he was before Henrik made him a widower—before grief carved him into this silent, watchful guardian. That's the thing about us survivors. We recognize each other.
Franco leans close. His voice is barely audible over the engine.
"Messages are no longer going through. Or not that easily."
I glance down at my phone—no reception, but mostly no more bars. Like something has drained batteries from electronics that have been turned on. Maybe the burners hidden still have juice. Maybe they have connection.
I force my gaze to the horizon, where churning gray sea meets thick clouds. The wind tears at me, sharp and cold, whipping my hair into my face. This jacket might as well be tissue paper.
The wind cuts through my jacket and I pull Antonio's hoodie tighter, burying my nose in the collar without thinking.
Cedar. Smoke. Him.
The scent hits me like a sucker punch, and suddenly I'm back in his bed—his mouth trailing fire down my neck, his hands pinning my wrists above my head, that low growl against my ear: You're going to come for me, Bella. And then you're going to do it again.
I'd shattered twice before he finally took what he wanted. And when he did—
"Cold?"
Alexandros's voice rips me back to the present. My face flames. I'm on a boat surrounded by Greek mafia, my mother waiting to drain my blood, and my body is staging a mutiny over a hoodie that smells like my husband.
"Fine," I manage. "Just thinking."
His ice-blue eyes linger on my flushed cheeks, and I hate that he probably knows exactly what I was thinking about. Or who.
"You’re sure you’re alright there, Pouláki?"
Alexandros's voice cuts through the wind. He looms over me, all broad shoulders and windswept hair, looking more like some Greek god of the sea than a mafia boss. His tie is undone, shirt rumpled. He's in his element out here.
"What does that mean?" I ask, fighting to keep my teeth from chattering. "Pouláki?"
“Little bird,” Alexandros says. The word curls off his tongue like he's savoring it.
"Great.”
Birds can be trapped. Clipped. Kept in gilded cages until they forget they ever had wings.
I take a sip of water.
Birds can also peck out eyes when cornered.
"It's what I think when I see you," Alexandros continues, his voice dropping low. "A trapped bird, waiting to be free." His gaze drops to my wedding ring, then back to my face. "Though I understand some cages come with interesting... inheritances."
Ice threads through my veins, the same cold I remember from waiting rooms and bad news delivered in gentle voices. He knows. About my grandmother. About the will.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you?" His smile doesn't waver. "How long have you been married now? Four months? That leaves eight more before anything... unlocks. A lot can happen in eight months."
He’s been counting. Which means he knows about the clause.
Which means everyone here knows what I'm really worth. Even if I don’t.
“Even if you’re trapped right now.”
I can't help but snort. "Trapped? Says the guy who's basically kidnapped me."
"Kidnapped?" He crouches down, his hand gripping the seat next to me. Close. Too close. I can smell his expensive and musky cologne. "We're here so you can see your mother. Learn the truth. Make your own choices."
He leans closer, breath warm against my cheek. His pale eyes search mine.
"When's the last time you truly chose for yourself, Isabella?"
Last night flashes through my mind—Antonio's hands on me, his mouth trailing fire down my neck, the way he growled my name like a prayer and a curse.
The way he looked at me after, like I was something precious instead of something to break.
The letter he pressed into my hand. Ti amo, mia ballerina.
"Last night," I say, my voice steady.
The words land like a blade between us. Alexandros's jaw tightens, but he doesn't look away. He probably thinks I'm so deep in Stockholm syndrome I can't tell the difference between captivity and choice.
He doesn't know our history. Doesn't know about the boy who played piano while I danced, the teenager who kissed my hand when other girls threw themselves at him, the man who locked me away and then handed me the key.
That's the difference between Antonio and these Greeks. Antonio gave me the choice to stay or go. These men are trying to convince me I never had a lock to begin with.
"I chose Antonio," I say, holding his gaze. "I chose Elena. I chose to come here to see my mother. Those are my choices. Not yours."
Alexandros chuckles, but his eyes don't match his mouth.
"Sometimes having a choice means people make mistakes." He tilts his head. "And is it really a choice when you don't have options?"
The nerve of him.
"Options," he repeats, like the word is a riddle. "Or maybe you thought you didn't have any. Locked away like that."
My stomach tightens.
"What are you talking about?"
He leans closer, his voice dropping so low I can barely hear it over the wind. One of his men is talking to Manuel and Franco behind us, their words swallowed by the howling air.
"That room your husband kept you in..."
The words hit like a slap, but I don't move. I keep my breathing even, the way I learned during those endless hospital nights when panic wanted to swallow me whole.
"Was it really that filled with mold?" His tone turns intimate, conspiratorial. "Or was it something else making it hard to breathe?"
This time my stomach doesn't just tighten. It drops.
Cold dread spreads through me like IV fluid—that familiar chill I remember from chemo, from bad news delivered in gentle voices.
"How do you know about that?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "About the room."
Alexandros's smile doesn't waver. "Your cardiologist's assistant was quite forthcoming."
My blood chills. Dr. Draghi's office. The nervous young man who always triple-checked my readings with a soft touch. "Matteo?"
"He had concerns about your living conditions. The dampness, the stress on your heart." Alexandros tilts his head, studying my reaction like he's cataloging it. "Concerns he shared with the right people for the right price."
I force myself to keep breathing. Stay calm. Don't give him more than he's already taken.
"His mother has cancer," Alexandros continues, almost conversational. "Treatment is expensive. Ironic, isn't it? He sold information about one cancer survivor to pay for another's care."
The cruelty of it steals my breath. Someone I smiled at in waiting rooms, trading my secrets to save someone they loved. I can't even hate him for it.
"And you've been listening ever since." It's not a question.
"We've been monitoring." He leans closer, close enough that I can smell his cologne—expensive, wrong, nothing like cedar and smoke.
"There's a difference. Your phone calls.
Your conversations with your friend Naomi.
" His thumb traces a circle on the railing.
"We've heard much of it. We know about the extraction contingencies. The favors your husband is calling in."
Before I can respond, Alexandros smiles like he's won some twisted game.
"So, as I said. Options."
I meet Alexandros's eyes and give him nothing.
Some stories aren't for Greek strangers fishing for weakness.
The branded boy who became my husband. His mother's blood on my father's hands.
The naive conversation that got her killed.
Those memories are mine. Mine and Antonio's. Not currency for desperate men.
"That room?" I let out a sharp laugh. "Three months. Yes, it had mold." I hold his gaze. "We all have our cages. The question is whether we choose to stay. Or whether we choose to come back."
He doesn't need to know about the piano music Antonio composed for my ballet. About the kitchen, the rain, the meatballs that made me laugh despite everything. About the way he traced my scars like they were beautiful instead of broken.
Those moments are sacred. And I won't let Alexandros cheapen them by digging for leverage.
"What's your nickname?" I ask, changing the subject before he can push further. "I'm guessing something like 'the lion' or 'the wolf.'"
"The Fylakas. A guard" His eyes hold mine. "Because I don't rest until I can protect what's mine."
The possessiveness in his tone makes my skin prickle. I stand up, gripping the railing to steady myself against the boat's pitch and roll.
"Well, as a bird wanting to fly free, I need some time alone."
Alexandros nods, stepping back. "Of course. Whatever you wish."
He retreats to where his brothers are sitting, and I watch them argue—not bothering to hide it anymore. Stefanos shoves his phone at Nikos, his voice carrying over the wind.
"Another fifty thousand this month."
"The medical investors are asking questions," Nikos adds, his emerald eyes tight.
But then Alexandros says something sharp in Greek, and they both go silent. Whatever that was about, it wasn't the money. They've stopped hiding their financial disaster—so what are they still hiding?
When I catch Nikos's eye, he looks away. Not ashamed about the debt. Something else. Something about what my mother promised them. Something about what happens on that island.
I turn back to the sea, letting the salt spray sting my face.
They're all ears. Have been since before I even got on that plane. That's how Alexandros knew about the moldy room.
My bag is gone, vaporized in that "accident" back at the airport. But Antonio's letter is still tucked against my heart, safe in my inside pocket. Twenty-three times I unfolded it on the plane. I haven't read the words yet—I'm still rationing them, saving them for when I need them most.
I think I'm going to need them soon.
Franco and Manuel are watching me from across the deck—their presence reassuring even if we can't speak freely.
Another wave crashes against the boat, spraying my face with cold. Every lurch reminds me how far I am from solid ground. From safety. From Antonio. From Elena.
I think of her little hand in mine, her laugh that sounds like bells against stone walls. Is she asking for Bella-ballina? Does she understand why I had to leave?
I will come back, I promised Antonio. I promised myself.
I have to keep that promise.
"We're approaching land," Alexandros calls out.
I turn, and there it is—the island rising from the sea like a Greek myth. Jagged cliffs. Thick green blanket of trees. A winding path snaking up from a weathered dock. The air changes as we get closer, less salty, more earthy. I catch pine and something floral I can't name.
It's beautiful, in a wild, untamed way.
But I've learned that beauty can be the most dangerous thing of all.
"The doctor is there," Alexandros says. "He's waiting for us."
"I've been waiting too," I murmur. "Let's go."
The boat lurches as it docks, and I stumble. Alexandros's hand finds my back, steadying me, but I shake him off. I don't need his help. Don't want it.
Franco steps closer, his voice low. "We've got your back. No matter what happens on that island."
Manuel nods, his usually stoic face softening for just a moment. "All the way."
I take one step onto the dock. Then another.
And then I see her.
A figure in a wheelchair at the end of the dock. My legs stop working.
Because I know that silhouette. Know it like I know the feel of pointe shoes on my feet, like I know the beep of hospital monitors, like I know the ache of grief that's lived in my chest for thirteen years.
Thirteen years.
Thirteen years of talking to marble and air.
Thirteen years of laying flowers on an empty grave.
Thirteen years of wondering what she would have said when the doctors told me I had cancer, when I woke up from fevered dreams after sepsis, when I danced again for the first time and wished she could see.
She was alive. She was alive for all of it.
My vision blurs. My throat closes.
Hi, my little love. Did you dance with the stars?
Her voice. I'd forgotten the exact sound of it, and now it's crashing back, wave after wave of memory I'd locked away because it hurt too much to hold.
She's thinner than I remember. So much thinner.
The dark circles under her eyes look like bruises against paper-white skin.
Her hands tremble where they rest in her lap—hands that used to braid my hair before recitals, that arranged peonies in our sun-drenched living room while Chopin played, that held mine when I was scared of the dark.
Those hands are holding a gun.
Not pointed at us. Not exactly. But not pointed away, either. Just held there, casual as a cigarette, like she's forgotten it's in her grip. Or like she's been waiting so long she's grown comfortable with the weight.
My feet won't move. My mouth won't work. There's too much—too many questions, too much rage, too much grief, too much desperate hope that maybe there's an explanation that will make this okay.
But the gun trembles in her hand, and I realize I don't know this woman at all.
The mother I mourned was soft. Warm. Safe.
This woman looks like she's been forged in the same fire that made Antonio into the Beast.
I don't know if she's dying or dangerous.
And for the first time since I stepped off that plane, I realize this reunion might destroy me more thoroughly than any bomb ever could.