Chapter 018 Isabella
I watch Viktor sleep and catalog every betrayal I have committed against my own blood.
Morning light seeps through the bulletproof glass, turning the sharp angles of his face into something almost gentle. His chest rises and falls in slow, even breaths—the exhaustion of last night finally claiming him. The sheet has slipped to his waist, exposing the fresh scratches I clawed across his skin. Marks of my surrender. Proof that I gave myself to the man who stole me.
The list lengthens inside my head, each item a fresh cut:
I erased intelligence that could have saved Moretti lives—Kuzmin meeting schedules, security rotations, everything Rocco needed to shield our soldiers. Three taps on a burner phone, and it vanished.
I lied to Rocco. Twice. Once in that dim parking garage, once on the phone yesterday, looking him in the eye—or letting him hear my voice—and swearing nothing was wrong.
I am fucking the man who orchestrated my abduction. Not merely enduring him. Choosing him. Craving the weight of his body, waking slick from dreams of his mouth on me.
I confessed the deleted intel to him while his spend still slid down my thighs.
Worst of all: I woke in his arms this morning and thought, for one traitorous heartbeat, that I could stay here forever.
The thought coils like smoke in my lungs. I slide from the bed, careful not to disturb him. His white dress shirt lies discarded on the floor; I pull it on. The cotton is soft, warm from his body, scented with amber and gun oil and sex. It hangs to mid-thigh, swallowing me.
I move to the window. Beyond the reinforced glass, the compound sprawls in manicured cruelty—perfect lawns, invisible snipers, a fortress disguised as elegance. Somewhere past those walls, my family is moving pieces on a board that no longer includes me the way it once did.
Matteo will be in his penthouse, orchestrating war. Rocco will already be awake—his instincts never sleep—feeling the wrongness in my voice like a splinter under the skin.
What am I becoming?
I was forged to be a weapon. The hidden blade of the Moretti family. Every lesson, every scar, meant to protect the bloodline that raised me. My knife is no longer strapped to my thigh where it belongs. It rests beneath the mattress, close enough to reach in the dark. A concession to comfort. A stupid, lethal mistake.
Matteo would name this treason and never forgive it.
Rocco would… God, Rocco already knows something is wrong. He heard the fracture in my silence.
“You’re thinking too loud, printsessa.”
I turn. Viktor is propped on one elbow, watching me with winter-pale eyes that strip away every defense. His hair is disordered from my fingers; the morning light softens the predator into something almost human. My body answers before my mind can object—heat blooming low, nipples tightening against his shirt.
“How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to watch you punish yourself.” He sits up. The sheet falls lower, revealing the dark trail of hair disappearing beneath white cotton. My mouth goes dry. “Whatever war you’re fighting in that beautiful head can wait an hour.”
“It can’t.”
“Isabella.” My name in his mouth is a caress and a command at once. “Come back to bed.”
I should refuse. Should rebuild the walls I spent years perfecting. Instead my feet carry me to him, drawn by the gravity I no longer pretend to resist. He pulls me down, settles me against his chest. His heartbeat is steady under my ear; his fingers thread through my hair with deliberate gentleness. No urgency, no demand—just the simple intimacy of bodies aligned.
Yet even this makes my pulse stutter, makes wetness gather between my thighs. My body no longer distinguishes safety from desire when it comes to him.
“I don’t recognize myself anymore,” I say, the confession scraping my throat raw.
He is quiet, waiting.
“I knew exactly who I was before you. What I wanted. Now I look in the mirror and see a stranger who aches for her captor’s touch. Who lies to the one person she swore never to lie to.”
His cock stirs against my hip—my own words arousing him. The knowledge sends another helpless rush of heat through me.
“I know the feeling,” he murmurs.
Silence stretches, heavy but not uncomfortable. Then: “Tell me something real about them. About the family I only know as enemies.”
Every instinct screams warning. I tense.
“Why?”
“Because they made you,” he says simply. “I want to understand what shaped my kotyonok into the woman who can bring me to my knees.”
The request is so human it disarms me.
“Who are you closest to?”
The answer arrives without thought. “Rocco.” The name burns. “He trained me. After the massacre.”
“Trained you how?”
“Everything. Hand-to-hand, blades, firearms, reading a room for threats, killing without hesitation.” Memory rises like smoke—gunpowder and grief. “I was fifteen. Terrified. Nightmares every night. Our father gone. Enzo tortured into silence. The family in pieces. I wanted to disappear. Rocco refused to allow it.”
“Why?”
“He was nineteen, fresh from his first tour. Carrying his own ghosts. I’d hear him scream down the hall at night. But every morning at five, he was in the gym waiting. He told me I would never feel safe again until I could make others fear me. So he made me lethal instead of broken.”
“That made you close?”
“No.” My voice drops. “A year later the nightmares worsened. I’d wake screaming in Russian—words I didn’t know I knew. Everyone thought I was fracturing. Matteo was researching clinics in Switzerland.”
Viktor’s hand stills in my hair.
“One night Rocco came to my room. Sat on the edge of my bed while I shook. And he said…” Tears rise, hot and sudden. “He said, ‘Sof, I don’t care what’s broken in you. I don’t care what you remember or what you can’t. You’re my sister, and no one will ever take you from me.’”
Viktor’s thumb strokes my cheek, catching the tears that escape.
“I was falling apart. He held me and said, ‘Let’s make a pact. You and me. No lies. Ever. The rest of the world gets the masks, the performance. Between us—only truth.’”
“You swore it.”
“A sacred vow,” I whisper. “Nine years. I never broke it. He’s the only person who knows every piece of me—the weapon, the nightmares, the fear. Until now.”
The admission lands between us like a live grenade.
“Until now,” he echoes quietly.
I press my face into his chest, breathing him in, letting his scent rewrite my synapses. “I lied to him twice in days. He asked what was wrong and I said nothing. He asked if you were hurting me and I said no.”
Viktor’s jaw tightens; I feel it against my temple.
“He knows,” I continue, voice breaking. “Rocco always knows. He hears it in the spaces between my words. He’s probably awake right now, mapping every possible disaster.”
“What will you tell him when you see him?”
“I don’t know.”
We dress eventually. I keep his shirt but add soft cashmere pants from his drawer—luxury that feels like another betrayal. Viktor wears dark jeans and a gray henley that molds to his chest. The casual clothes make the domesticity sharper, more dangerous.
He leads me to the bonsai on the dresser. The tiny tree he tends with ritual precision every morning.
“Dimitri didn’t start this one,” he says, voice soft with old grief. “I did. Ten years ago.”
“Show me.”
He steps behind me, chest to my back, arms enclosing mine. Heat radiates through the thin layers between us. His breath stirs the fine hairs at my nape; his cock begins to harden against my ass. My body answers instantly—pulse leaping, slick heat gathering.
“You don’t cut at random,” he murmurs against my ear. “You study the shape it wants to become, then guide it there.” His hands direct mine to the delicate branches. “Patience. Force it and it dies. Or grows twisted.”
His lips brush the shell of my ear. My thighs clench.
“Some damage can’t be undone,” he continues. “But it can grow around the scar. Incorporate it.”
“That’s what we do,” I say, voice husky. “If we’re lucky.”
His erection presses fully against me now, unmistakable. I arch back without meaning to, seeking friction.
My stomach growls, loud in the quiet.
He laughs—low, genuine. The sound vibrates through my spine.
“When did you last eat?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Unacceptable.” He kisses my temple, tender enough to bruise my heart. “There’s a kitchen for this wing. I’ll make something. Twenty minutes.”
He kisses me once more—quick, possessive—and leaves. The door closes but does not lock.
Trust or trap? Both, probably.
I should stay. Instead I slip into the corridor. The en-suite is still blocked; another bathroom lies thirty seconds away. A minute won’t matter.
The hallway is empty, cool, scented faintly with clove cigarettes. My bare feet make no sound.
“The Moretti whore wanders alone.”
Ice floods my veins. I turn slowly.
Kazimir leans against the wall as if he has been waiting for exactly this carelessness. His eyes are flat, winter-dead. Where Viktor burns, Kazimir is simply absent.
“Kazi—”
“You remember my name. Touching.” He pushes off the wall, advancing. “My cousin left you unlocked. How sentimental.”
“He’ll return any moment.”
“A moment is eternity.” He stops too close. His cologne is sharp, synthetic—nothing like Viktor’s warmth. “Long enough to snap a neck. Long enough to erase the infection you’ve become.”
I hold my ground though every instinct screams for the knife I left behind.
“You won’t touch me.”
“Won’t I?” His hand rises, fingers tracing my jaw in mockery of tenderness. My skin crawls. “The men wager how long before Viktor regains his senses. How long before you suffer an unfortunate accident.”
I force boredom into my voice. “For every drop of my blood, my brothers will take rivers of yours. Gianni, especially, is creative.”
He smiles without warmth. “Pretty,” he says, thumb pressing my lower lip. “But not pretty enough to die for.”
His grip shifts to my chin, tightens. Nausea rises.
“You think he loves you?” His voice drips venom. “Sokolov men do not love. We own. We break. It’s bred into us.”
“I’m not looking for love.”
“I know Viktor better than you ever will. I watched Dimitri bleed out at eighteen—chest carved open by your lunatic brother’s knife, drowning in his own blood while he called for Viktor.”
The image sears behind my eyes. Dimitri—eighteen, gentle, dying in agony.
Kazimir leans closer. “When Viktor remembers what he owes his family—owes Dimitri’s memory—you’ll be nothing but a stain he scrubs from his sheets.”
Footsteps approach—rapid, lethal. My body recognizes Viktor before my mind does; heat flares low despite the threat.
Kazimir releases me, steps back, expression smoothing into polite neutrality.
Viktor rounds the corner carrying a tray. The air temperature plummets. His gaze flicks from Kazimir to me and back, violence coalescing like storm clouds.
“Cousin,” Kazimir says lightly.
“Kazi.” Viktor’s voice could shatter glass.
Something ancient and hostile passes between them. Then Kazimir walks away, whistling.
Viktor sets the tray aside and reaches me in two strides. His hands cup my face, searching for injury with clinical thoroughness that somehow feels tender.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing that matters.”
“Isabella.”
I shake my head. The tremor in my limbs betrays me; I hate it.
He studies me a long moment. Something shifts behind his eyes—decision crystallizing.
“Get dressed,” he says. “Proper clothes.”
“Why?”
“It’s time you saw your family.”
I stare, certain I misheard. “What?”
“You need to remember who you are.” His thumb traces my lower lip, gentle and devastating. “Go home tonight, Isabella. Have dinner at your table. Tell them you escaped for the evening.”
“You’re letting me go?”
“I’m permitting a visit.” His gaze is absolute. “You will return.”
The certainty in his voice chills me to the bone.
Because he’s right.
The vow I made to Rocco nine years ago is already shattered. I have lied to him twice, chosen my captor over truth, handed Viktor pieces of my soul on a silver platter. The damage is irreversible.
One more betrayal changes nothing.
I think of sitting across from Rocco, meeting those hazel eyes that have always seen through me, and lying again. Telling him I am unharmed. Telling him I am still his sister, untouched by the enemy.
They will search for bruises, for signs of rape or torture. They will not see the true wounds—how I deleted intelligence that could save their lives because I could not bear to hurt Viktor. How my body ignites at his nearness. How I crave his violence and his tenderness in equal measure.
“When?” I ask.
“Tonight. After you bathe.” His jaw flexes. “My driver will drop you near the manor. You will dine with them. Then you will come back to me.”
Not a request. A fact.
“They’ll ask questions.”
“Tell them whatever keeps you breathing.” He pulls me close, forehead to mine. “Tell them I am a monster. Tell them you are spying. Tell them anything but the truth.”
“Which is?”
His lips brush mine—barely contact, yet my entire body ignites.
“That you came to me willingly in the end. That you played the captive perfectly. But now…” His voice drops to a whisper of silk over steel. “Now you are truly my prisoner.”
He is right. God help me, he is right.
I kiss him then—fierce, claiming, pouring every unspeakable truth into the contact. He kisses back with the same hunger, hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.
For one suspended moment, the world narrows to this: his mouth, his taste, the knowledge that I am already lost.