Chapter Fourteen - Emil
The days that follow are a study in discipline—mine, and hers. Rage simmers beneath my skin, cold and patient, refusing to boil over.
I’ve never been fond of messy vengeance. My father taught me that power isn’t in the blow, but in the waiting, making your enemy watch as you take away the things they love most, one slow slice at a time.
Isabella Bruno. The gallery girl who turned out to be my family’s oldest rival in disguise. The woman who made a fool of me with her soft hands, her clever eyes, and every stolen moment. I should hate her. I should want her dead.
Hate, I’ve found, is too quick to burn out. What I want—what I need—is to make her understand what it means to cross a Sharov. I want her to know that her betrayal won’t be forgotten. I want her family to feel it every time they look at her.
So I begin to plan.
I send word to my men. They’re quiet, capable, loyal to a fault.
I want eyes on her at all times, but never close enough to spook her.
I want to know where she shops for groceries, how she takes her coffee, which route she walks when she thinks no one’s looking.
Her world shrinks beneath the weight of my attention: every friend cataloged, every errand noted, every party watched from a distance.
I learn she visits the Bruno estate at dusk, and that she’s restless there, always glancing toward the gates as if longing to escape. She spends long afternoons in the city, often alone, her phone gripped tight, eyes scanning for danger she can’t quite name.
It amuses me, the idea that she suspects something, but never knows the shape of the shadow at her heels. I am meticulous. I don’t want her harmed. Not yet. Fear is the first cut. Isolation the second.
The Brunos are quick to circle the wagons.
Matteo clings to her side like a hound. Vittorio keeps her close at every gathering.
Their protection is obvious, desperate. It tells me they value her more than she knows, enough to make her their shield against the Russians, enough to make her their pawn in the game.
That’s where I will strike.
It doesn’t take long for word to reach me: there are talks of an engagement, a match meant to tie the Brunos closer to the Pedros. I hear it first—half-mocking—from Lukyan.
“The girl’s getting married off to Shawn Pedro’s boy. Some soft-handed banker. That’s what happens to pretty little heirs.” He grins, watching my face for a reaction.
I shrug, but inside something sharp, unexpected, and unwanted digs in.
It isn’t jealousy. I tell myself that again and again.
This is about power, about message, about what it means to take what your enemy loves most and make it yours.
If she belongs to someone else, the game is over. If she’s out of reach, the Brunos win.
I know their kind of engagement. It’s all spectacle and calculation, parading her in front of allies and enemies alike, pretending her happiness matters.
I watch, I wait, I send gifts to the Pedros.
It’s a reminder that the Sharovs still command respect.
I let the city whisper about the Russian who won’t be ignored.
I make myself known in ways that matter: my car at the curb as she leaves work, my men sitting two tables away at her favorite café, a bouquet delivered to the Bruno estate with no card.
Each move is a message subtle enough to avoid open war, but clear to those who know how to read it.
I want her to wonder if she’s imagining it.
I want her to remember me every time she closes her eyes.
When I hear she’s been seen crying on her uncle’s arm after another argument about the engagement, I feel a chill of satisfaction. The Brunos can promise her safety, but they can’t promise her freedom. They certainly can’t promise her love.
In the dark, in the quiet of my office, I replay every moment we’ve shared—her laughter, her lies, the way she looked at me before she knew who I was. The memory aches in a way I never intended. I refuse to let it soften me.
Soon, she’ll have to make a choice. Sooner or later, the walls will close in and her family will demand her loyalty. She’ll come to me, if only to survive. When that day comes, I’ll be waiting—not as a lover, not even as an enemy, but as the man who took what her family loved most.
This isn’t about revenge, I remind myself. This is about power. About showing the Brunos that no one, not even their precious Isabella, is untouchable.
Still, as I lie awake in the deep hours of the morning, I wonder why her face haunts me more than all the ghosts I’ve left behind. I tell myself it’s strategy. I tell myself I’ll win.
Some nights, I’m not sure I even believe it.
***
The night stretches long and sharp across the city, the kind of darkness that thickens around old secrets and new grudges.
I stand at the window of my office, glass in hand, watching the headlights snake along the avenue below. I’m barely listening to Lukyan’s voice as he paces the room, but his tone changes and draws me back.
He stops a few feet away, arms crossed, eyeing me with the cool appraisal only an older brother can manage.
“You’re distracted,” he says, not for the first time this week. “You haven’t missed a council meeting in years, but suddenly you have other priorities. Let me guess, unfinished business?”
I give him a cold smirk, swirling vodka in the tumbler. “That’s one way to put it.”
He watches me, waiting for more, but I let the silence grow. I see the calculations behind his eyes. Lukyan always sees more than he says, but tonight he just shakes his head and looks away, lips thinning in a line of warning or worry, it’s hard to tell.
He leaves without another word. I drain my glass and set it down, the ice clinking in the quiet. It isn’t about attraction anymore. Not even about the thrill of the chase.
With Isabella, it’s different. It’s personal, tangled in the old blood between our families, the taste of betrayal still sharp in my mouth. She lied, and she’s about to learn what that costs.
I begin pulling the strings. Slowly at first, just a few whispers slipped to the right ears in dark corners, a stray remark over drinks about the pretty Bruno girl who’s been spending too much time in strange company.
Nothing obvious, nothing provable. Just enough to sow doubt, to make the Brunos look inward, start watching their own with suspicion.
Next, a photograph. Grainy, but clear enough: Isabella on the sidewalk outside my building, her face half hidden by her hair. I leak it to an old contact, knowing it’ll find its way to the Bruno house, passed hand-to-hand with all the weight of an accusation.
The photo is a message, one only her family will understand. I want them to start wondering, questioning, turning on her just a little. Not enough to break her yet. Just enough to make her sweat.
All the while, I keep my distance. Let the rumors do the work. The Brunos pride themselves on loyalty, on keeping the bloodline pure and the secrets locked up tight. They won’t see this coming. Not until I want them to. Not until I decide the game is over.
I imagine her face when she realizes the trap, how all her careful lies will snap shut around her. She’ll see how easily her family’s trust is shaken, how quickly they’ll question her when the scent of Russian betrayal hangs in the air. It’s almost too easy.
But there’s one thing that won’t let me sleep.
One image that returns again and again in the quiet between midnight and dawn: Isabella’s face on the terrace, trembling, her breath stuttering under my hand.
The way she looked at me—fear and anger and longing all tangled together.
That combination is intoxicating, my favorite kind of weapon.
I’ve used it a hundred times, watched people crumble beneath it.
With her, though, the effect is different. The memory stirs something deep. Something old and ugly and addictive. I want to see her falter, to watch the realization dawn in her eyes as the truth closes in. I want her to beg, to fight, to surrender all at once.
Control. That’s what this is about. Revenge, yes, for the games she played at my expense. But more than that—the pleasure of knowing she can’t escape me. That she’s trapped, not just by family, but by the way I make her feel. The way I want her to feel.
I spend the next few days tightening the net. A message here, a favor called in there. Every move calculated, every rumor carefully fed until it takes on a life of its own. The Brunos are slow to notice, at first.
Then I hear from one of my men that Vittorio has started asking questions. That Matteo has taken to following Isabella in his spare time, watching her with suspicion. It’s working. The cracks are beginning to show.
I could end it whenever I want. I could destroy her world with a single phone call. But I hold back. There’s more satisfaction in watching her squirm, in letting her realize, bit by bit, that she’s never been in control.
Late at night, alone in the silent office, I remember the heat of her skin under my palm, the flicker of defiance in her eyes even as she trembled. I want to break her, but I want her to want it too. That’s the line I walk—the place where fear becomes desire, and loyalty becomes surrender.
My phone buzzes. It’s another update from Roman, another whisper from the Brunos’ inner circle. It’s all going exactly to plan.
Soon, Isabella will know the price of crossing me. When she does, she’ll have nowhere left to run.
It doesn’t take long for my efforts to bear fruit. By the end of the week, the right people are whispering the wrong things in the Bruno halls.
I hear from a source that Isabella’s name has begun to appear in tense, closed-door conversations, her absence at dinners questioned, her whereabouts scrutinized. Matteo is angrier, more paranoid, always a step behind her, and Vittorio’s patience wears thinner by the day. Exactly as I planned.
Still, it’s not enough. Not yet. Each night, as the city goes quiet and the lights across the river flicker out, my thoughts drift back to her: the way her eyes widened on the terrace, the tremor in her voice, the way she couldn’t decide if she wanted to run from me or toward me.
I crave that look again—the wild mixture of defiance and want, fear and longing.
This is no longer about retribution. It’s about breaking down every wall she’s built and watching her choose me, even knowing I’m the worst thing that could ever happen to her.
The moment she finally gives in, the game will be over.