Chapter 17 Isabella
Chapter seventeen
ISABELLA
Day Five
"Tonight." Franco's voice is barely a breath. "We go tonight."
We're in the service corridor near the kitchen—a blind spot I mapped two days ago where the camera angles don't quite overlap. Manuel stands watch at the far end, posture casual, eyes anything but.
"The ceremony's tomorrow at moonrise," Franco continues. "We miss this window, there won't be another."
"The storm?"
"Breaking. Antonio's en route—Dimitri confirmed an hour ago." Franco's jaw tightens. "But he won't make it before the ceremony. We need to get you off the compound. Buy him time."
"The north service entrance." I've walked past it eleven times, counting guards, timing rotations. "Gap in camera coverage between 2:15 and 2:18 AM."
"You've been paying attention."
"I've been trapped before." Three months in Antonio's fortress. A lifetime in my father's house. "I learn."
"Stefanos is supposed to ensure the guards at that entrance are his people. Manuel got word to him yesterday. He confirmed."
Something cold slithers down my spine. Stefanos. The man who watches me with grief-sharpened eyes. Who warned me—or threatened me—about trusting the wrong people.
"Do we trust him?"
"Dimitri vouches for him. Grieving, furious at Theos, wants blood for Marco." Franco meets my gaze. "But grief makes people unpredictable."
"So we're betting my life on a grieving man's loyalty to a dead lover."
"We're betting your life on the only option we have."
I think of Antonio's letter, still pressed against my heart. Come back to me, ballerina.
"Then let's move."
"One more thing." Franco hesitates—unusual for him. "Your mother."
The words land like stones.
"She can't come," I say, even as something in my chest cracks.
"The tracker in her bracelet. Her condition. She'd slow us down, and—"
"I know." My voice sounds far away. "I know she can't come."
Franco's silence is its own kind of kindness.
"I need to say goodbye."
"Isabella—"
"Ten minutes." I hold his gaze, let him see the steel underneath. "If I leave without seeing her and something happens, I'll carry that forever. So will you, for not letting me try."
A muscle jumps in his jaw. He glances at Manuel, who gives an almost imperceptible nod.
"Ten minutes. Then we move, goodbye or not."
My mother's room is dark except for a single lamp casting shadows on the wall.
She's sitting up in bed, oxygen tube in place, watching the door like she's been waiting. The manic energy from her earlier doses has faded. She looks gray now. Diminished. More like the dying woman she actually is than the ghost who's haunted me for thirteen years.
"You're leaving." Not a question.
I close the door softly. "I have to."
"Henrik won't let you go." Matter-of-fact, like discussing weather. "He's invested too much. Waited too long. He'll hunt you forever if you run."
"Then I'll run forever."
Something shifts in her expression—recognition, maybe. Or pride for a daughter she barely knows.
"There you are," she murmurs. "Stubborn as I was. Before I learned to bend."
"Bending didn't save you. It just made you smaller."
She flinches. I didn't mean it as cruelty, but the truth has edges.
"Come with me," I say anyway, even knowing the answer. "Antonio has doctors. Resources. We could try—"
"No." She lifts her wrist, shows me the medical bracelet. "And even if I could disable this, I'd slow you down. Get you caught." A thin smile. "I've spent thirteen years keeping you alive from a distance. Let me do one more thing right."
"Letting me go isn't doing something right. It's just... letting go."
"Maybe that's all I have left to give."
We stare at each other across the dim room. Mother and daughter. Strangers who share blood and bone and thirteen years of silence.
"I came to your hospital room," she says quietly. "When you had cancer. Did they tell you?"
"I thought it was a dream. The drugs..."
"I held your hand for three hours. Sang the lullabies I used to sing when you were small." Her voice cracks. "You were so thin. So pale. And the machines kept beeping, and I kept thinking—this is my fault. If I'd stayed. If I'd been stronger. If I'd fought instead of running—"
"You would have been dead. Really dead."
"Maybe. Or maybe we both would have been free." She shakes her head. "I'll never know. That's the thing about the choices we don't make. They haunt us worse than the ones we do."
I cross to her bed. Take her cold hand, feel the bones too prominent beneath papery skin. She smells like jasmine perfume and medicine and something underneath that might be decay.
"I don't forgive you," I say. "For leaving. For letting me grieve. For thirteen years of talking to a grave that was empty."
"I know."
"I might never forgive you."
"I know that too." Her grip tightens. "But you came to say goodbye anyway."
"You're still my mother." The words catch in my throat. "Even now. Even after everything. I don't know how to stop loving you just because you deserve it."
She makes a sound—half laugh, half sob. "That's more than I deserve. More than I ever—"
She stops. Her eyes have gone sharp, focused on something over my shoulder.
"Isabella." Her voice changes. Urgent. "The north entrance. Stefanos."
Ice floods my veins. "What about him?"
"I've seen him from my window. Meeting with men, late at night. Three times this week." She's gripping my hand hard enough to bruise. "I couldn't see faces—it was too dark, too far—but the secrecy of it. The way they moved."
"Mom, he could have been meeting with his own people—"
"Or he could have been playing both sides." Her grip tightens. "I don't know, Isabella. I just know something felt wrong. Be careful. Please."
The floodlights snap on outside her window.
Blinding white. Cutting through darkness like a blade.
Alarms begin to wail.
"Go," my mother breathes. "Go now."
I'm running before I finish processing. Down the hall, around the corner, bare feet slapping tile because there wasn't time for shoes. Franco. I need to reach Franco.
He's at the rendezvous point. Manuel too. Weapons drawn, faces carved from stone.
"They know," Franco says. "Someone tipped them."
"My mother saw Stefanos meeting with people. Late at night, three times this week. She couldn't identify them, but—"
"Could be his sabotage contacts," Franco says, but his jaw is tight. "Could be something else."
"Either way, we're blown."
"Either way, we move." He checks his weapon. "We'll find out soon enough whose side he's on."
"North entrance is blown," Manuel says. "We need another route."
"There is no other route." Franco's voice is flat. "This whole island is a cage. We were always going to need inside help to get past the perimeter."
"Then we make a stand." Manuel checks his weapon. "Hold until Antonio arrives."
"That's hours. Maybe longer." Franco shakes his head. "We won't last."
"Then we try anyway." I hear my own voice, strange and steady. "The entrance. Even if they're waiting. Even if we have to fight through."
Both men look at me. I see them calculating—odds, risks, the near-certainty of failure.
"She's right," Manuel says finally. "Better to die running than wait for the knife."
Franco nods. Once. "Stay behind us. Whatever happens—don't stop."
We move.
The north path is shadow despite the floodlights—they're concentrated on the main compound, leaving the service routes dark. Franco leads, moving with the silent precision of someone who's done this before. Many times. Maybe that's how you burn through nine lives.
We're twenty feet from the service entrance when the shadows become shapes.
Men. A dozen at least, forming a semicircle around the exit.
Henrik's security. Expensive suits, flat expressions, the professional stillness of people who've done violence for money.
And at the center, lit by moonlight like something from a nightmare:
Henrik.
Henrik's smile cuts through the darkness. "Did you really think Stefanos would help you?"
But something's wrong with that story. I saw Stefanos's face when he talked about Marco. That wasn't performance—that was grief with teeth.
I look past Henrik, searching the shadows, and find Stefanos being held at gunpoint by two of Henrik's men. Blood drips from his temple. His wrists are bound.
He didn't betray us. He got caught trying to help.
"Your little friend here has been bleeding my investment dry for months," Henrik continues, almost admiring. "Millions of euros, vanished into accounts I'm still trying to trace. All for revenge over some dead lover."
Stefanos spits blood. "Marco was worth more than your entire fortune."
"How romantic." Henrik gestures to his guards. "Take him somewhere quiet. We'll discuss his future after the ceremony."
Franco moves—fast, instinctive, shoving me behind him as his weapon comes up.
Three shots crack the night.
Franco staggers. Blood blooms across his shoulder. His leg buckles and he goes down hard, gun clattering against stone.
"FRANCO!"
I lunge for him but hands grab me from behind—Henrik's men, grip bruising, holding me in place while Franco crumples.
"Not fatal," Henrik observes, strolling closer. "I need him alive. Leverage, for when your husband arrives."
"You bastard—"
"Careful." His pale eyes find mine, and the weight of his attention is suffocating. "Your cooperation determines how comfortable his captivity becomes. Behave, and he gets a medic. Misbehave..." He shrugs elegantly. "Shoulder wounds are survivable. Other wounds, less so."
Franco groans, trying to push himself up. Blood pools beneath him, black in the moonlight.
"Nine lives," he manages, teeth gritted against pain. "Like a cat. Got a few left."
"Charming." Henrik nods to his men. "Medic. Keep him alive. Don't waste the good painkillers."
They drag Franco away. His eyes meet mine for one moment—fierce, sorry, promising something I can't name—before he disappears into the dark.
Manuel. I scan the clearing. Find him pinned against a tree, two guards holding him at gunpoint. He's not fighting. Knows better. But his eyes track everything, storing information, waiting for an opening that may never come.
"Now then." Henrik turns his full attention to me, and I feel it like a physical weight. "The ceremony is tomorrow evening. You have until then to adjust your attitude."
He reaches out. Trails one finger down my cheek.
I don't flinch. Won't give him that.
"I've waited for a long time." His voice drops, intimate, obscene. "I can wait one more night."
"Antonio will come."
"I'm counting on it." His smile widens. "By the time he arrives, you'll already be mine. Legally. Spiritually. In every way that matters." He leans closer, breath hot against my ear. "And then we'll see how much your Beast is willing to sacrifice for something that's already been claimed."
They don't take me back to my room.
Henrik's hand on my arm steers me toward a different wing—his wing, I realize. The guards fall back as he opens a door to a study lined with books and expensive art. Private. Soundproofed, probably.
"Sit," he says, gesturing to a leather chair.
I remain standing. My legs are shaking, but I won't give him the satisfaction.
He pours himself a drink, entirely unbothered. "You know what I admire about you, Isabella? You never stop fighting. Even now, with your bodyguard bleeding out and your husband trapped by weather and your mother too sick to help—you're still calculating. Still looking for angles."
"What do you want?"
"I already have what I want." He settles into the chair across from me. "You."
"For what? My blood? The medical research?" I force the words out. "That's what you've been funding? Miracle cures and resurrection fantasies?"
Henrik laughs—a genuine sound, almost warm. "Oh, Isabella. The blood was never the point."
Something cold slides down my spine.
"Your grandmother," he says. “Built networks across Europe for forty years before she died." He swirls his drink. "And left it all to her only grandchild—accessible after one year of legal marriage."
The room tilts.
"You've been planning this since the auction," I whisper.
"Before the auction. Your grandmother's will became known in certain circles years ago.
Why do you think your father put you up for sale in the first place?
" Henrik's voice is almost gentle. "Everyone wanted that inheritance.
Your father tried to sell access to it. Antonio bought you to claim it for himself.
And I..." He spreads his hands. "I've simply been more patient than everyone else. "
"Antonio married me for—"
"Revenge, initially. Sure. Whatever." Henrik shrugs. "But his claim is built on a massacre and a bribed official. Mine will be built on witnesses, documentation, and a bride who participated willingly."
The believers. That's why he needs them. Not for their faith—for their testimony. And their money.
He’s using everyone.
"The medical research is real enough," Henrik continues. "Your survival markers are genuinely unusual. It keeps the believers invested, keeps your mother cooperative, provides cover for why you're here." His eyes find mine. "But the blood was never the prize, Isabella. You were."
Eight months. If he keeps me for eight months, he inherits networks that took forty years to build.
I'm not a medical miracle. I'm an inheritance waiting to be claimed.
"My mother doesn't know," I say slowly. "About the inheritance. She really thinks this is about saving her life."
"Your mother believes what she needs to believe. She always has." Henrik finishes his drink. "Now. Tomorrow's ceremony. You can participate willingly, or I can have Dr. Theos sedate you again and we'll manage without your cooperation. The witnesses will see what I tell them to see either way."
He stands, straightening his cuffs.
"But I'd prefer willing. It's so much more convincing." He moves toward the door. "Think about Franco. About what happens to him if you make this difficult. About what happens to that little girl when her father comes for you and dies trying."
The door opens. Guards wait outside.
"Take her back to her room," Henrik says. "And make sure she understands that tomorrow happens regardless of her consent. The only question is how much pain she wants to experience along the way."
They march me back to my room. Back to the cage I tried so hard to escape.
The door closes behind me.
Seven locks engage.
And I'm alone with the truth: Henrik doesn't want my blood. He wants my grandmother's empire. And he's been playing everyone—my mother, the believers, the Greeks—to get it.
Tomorrow is the ceremony.
Tomorrow, everything ends.
Or begins.