Chapter 006 Isabella
The basement is cold. Not the crisp chill of a Chicago winter, but something deeper, older—concrete that has never known sunlight. It leaches heat from my bare feet, climbs my calves, settles in my bones like a permanent guest.
My left wrist throbs where the remaining leather cuff bites. Viktor cut the right one free before he left, as if the gesture were mercy instead of another twist of the knife. My blade lies on the floor, just out of reach. He tossed it there after finding it strapped to my thigh, after his fingers skimmed my skin and my traitorous body answered with a rush of heat I still feel.
I stretch as far as the restraint allows. Fingertips graze the matte handle. Not enough. The leather saws deeper into my wrist with every try.
There is another way.
I close my fist around my left thumb. Breathe once. Pull.
The joint gives with a wet pop that ricochets off the walls. Pain flares white-hot up my arm, familiar and hated. Rocco taught me this trick on a training mat in the Moretti gym, laughing when I cursed him in three languages. He never thought I’d use it to escape a Sokolov torture chair.
My hand slips free. The thumb dangles, useless and swollen. I grip it again, set my teeth, and shove it back into place. A hiss escapes before I can trap it. The joint pulses, angry, but the fingers move when I tell them to.
The knife is cool and certain in my palm. Weight I know better than most people know their own names.
I could run now. Pick the lock, ghost through the compound, vanish into the city before dawn. But answers are here—about Dimitri, about the Russian words that surface in my dreams, about why Viktor’s grief feels like a bruise I’ve carried for eleven years.
I stay. On my terms.
The nightdress hangs off me like a sack. Rough cotton, shapeless, chosen to strip away identity along with comfort. Message received: you are nothing here. Not the Moretti princess. Not even a woman worth silk.
Yet his eyes this morning burned through the fabric as if it were glass.
I circle the bolted steel table and select a small, sharp blade from the wall display. The edge is fresh, recently honed. I wonder whose skin it last kissed. The thought should disgust me. Instead it sends a dark shimmer down my spine.
I start at the neckline. One cut, then another, carving a shallow V that actually flatters. The cotton parts under the blade like it’s grateful to be reshaped. I take in the waist next, pinching and slicing, knotting excess fabric into gathers at each hip. Each adjustment is deliberate, meditative. Hours slide past while my hands work and my mind circles the same dangerous loop: his fingers at my throat, the careful pressure that made me wet, the way he watched my mouth when he fed me.
My hands shake once. I blame the cold.
The hem rises to mid-thigh. A slit climbs one side for movement—practical, elegant, lethal if I need it to be. When I finish, the dress clings where it once sagged. Rough cotton turned armor.
I catch my reflection in the polished steel of a surgical tray. Hair wild, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright. I look like a woman who has decided to be looked at.
Some broken part of me wants him to look until it hurts.
The door opens without ceremony. A guard steps in—young, mid-twenties, posture drilled into him by someone cruel. He carries a metal tray: black bread, water, a slab of grey meat that might once have been food.
He sets it on the floor just beyond arm’s length and keeps his gaze fixed on the far wall. Smart.
“Thank you,” I say, soft, warm. The voice I use at charity galas.
His jaw flexes. No answer.
“How long have I been down here?”
Silence. His hands clench at his sides.
“What’s your name?”
He pivots and leaves. The lock clicks like a verdict.
Men who refuse to look at a woman are either saints or terrified. This one is terrified. The rigid discipline, the careful distance—it screams orders enforced by pain. Viktor has marked me untouchable in every way that matters.
The realization slides hot under my skin.
I notice the phone on his belt. Older Android, bulky case. No passcode light when he moved. Habit will have him pulling it out a dozen times per shift. Predictable.
He never checked the restraints. Never noticed the empty cuffs dangling. He was too busy not seeing me to actually look.
Useful.
I eat because my body demands fuel. The bread is stale, the meat tasteless. Each swallow drags me back to last night—Viktor’s fingers brushing my lips, the way he watched me take food from his hand like it was communion.
I count footsteps in the corridor, estimate guard rotations. Kitchen clatter suggests early evening. When the compound quiets to skeleton-crew silence, I judge it past midnight.
Time.
The lockpick is still pinned in my hair at the nape, hidden beneath loose strands. Forty seconds and the basement door sighs open. The hallway is dim emergency lighting and long shadows.
I move barefoot, silent. The route is burned into muscle memory now. Up stairs, past the monitoring room—someone is watching screens, but midnight eyes grow heavy. Attention drifts.
Viktor’s study lock is German, expensive, complicated. One minute twenty. Inside, moonlight spills over leather and dark wood. His scent is everywhere—amber, smoke, something sharp and exclusively male. My nipples tighten under the cotton. I hate my body for its honesty.
A bonsai sits on the desk, branches recently trimmed with obsessive care. Dimitri’s hobby, he said. So Viktor keeps it alive. The same hands that bound me tend delicate leaves.
I search quickly. Files are organized—alphabetical, color-coded. Shipping routes, personnel, money flows. Nothing about two children who might have known each other eleven years ago.
Then the silver frame on the bookshelf, half-hidden behind books.
Two boys on a boat. Sunlight glints off water. Viktor—sixteen maybe—pale eyes softer than I’ve ever seen them, laughing without armor. Dimitri beside him, arm slung across his younger brother’s shoulders, dark hair, gentle mouth curved in joy.
I lift the frame. My fingers tremble.
Dimitri’s face is younger, alive, happy. Something inside my chest fractures.
Sun on water. A different day. A garden. A boy’s voice, bright with excitement: “Isabella, watch this…”
The memory slams shut, leaving only grief behind. Raw, impossible grief for a boy I cannot fully remember.
Tears blur the photograph before I can stop them. How do you mourn someone you’ve forgotten? How do you carry guilt for a death you can’t recall?
I set the frame back, but my hand shakes. The angle is off by a fraction. I catch the fountain pen before it rolls off the desk.
The guard station is halfway back. The same young man slumps in his chair, snoring softly. His phone rests exactly where habit placed it.
I slip inside. He doesn’t stir.
The screen wakes at my touch. No passcode. I open messages, type fast to Rocco’s burner:
Alive. Sokolov compound. Gathering intel. Don't extract. I'm close to something. Will contact when I can. S
Send. Delete sent. Clear recently deleted. Close everything. Return the phone to the precise angle it was.
Back through corridors that feel less foreign now. Every corner could hold Viktor, and my pulse spikes at the possibility—anger, fear, anticipation all braided together.
I relock the basement door from inside. Settle into the chair by choice, knife across my lap, modified dress clinging to every curve I decided to reveal.
I smooth the cotton over my thighs. The fabric is rough, but it’s mine now. He wanted to reduce me. Instead I sharpened myself.
Let him come.
Footsteps thunder down the stairs—fast, heavy, taking them two at a time. Not a guard’s measured tread. This is fury in motion.
The door crashes open hard enough to rebound off concrete.
Viktor fills the doorway, chest heaving, white shirt untucked, sleeves shoved up, hair wild like he’s raked hands through it all night. His eyes are pale fire—rage and something hungrier.
His gaze drags over me. Empty restraints. Knife in my lap. The dress that was meant to degrade me now outlining every line of my body like an invitation.
Amber and smoke flood the small space. My skin prickles, heat pooling low despite every warning screaming in my head.
I sit perfectly still, hands folded over the blade, spine straight, and meet his stare.
“What the fuck,” he says, voice rough as sin, “have you done?”