Chapter 024 Isabella
I cannot stay here.
The thought is a drumbeat in my skull, driving me through the underbrush until my lungs burn and branches tear at my clothes. I don't feel the sting. I don't feel the cold mud slicking my bare legs or the fresh cuts opening on my feet. I only feel the weight of the truth I just unearthed in Dimitri’s room.
Hours bleed into a blur of green and grey. I reach a paved road eventually, standing on the shoulder like a spectre. A truck slows, air brakes hissing. I climb into the cab, mumbling a destination through lips numb from cold. The driver is an older man with grease under his fingernails. He looks at me once—at the dirt, the blood, the vacancy in my eyes—and turns his gaze back to the road. He doesn't ask questions. Maybe he recognizes the kind of broken that is past helping.
The journey to Chicago stretches into eternity. The vibration of the engine rattles my bones, but it doesn’t shake the memory loose. I knew. I knew and I said nothing.
Dusk settles over the city by the time he drops me at the limits. I walk the rest of the way. My feet, already lacerated from the woods, throb with a dull, rhythmic agony against the pavement. I haven't eaten. I haven't stopped moving since I ran from the lakehouse. I am fueled only by the acid churning in my gut and one singular, burning imperative: Matteo needs to know.
When the Moretti compound gates loom out of the twilight, the guards hesitate.
"Miss Moretti?" Lipi’s voice wavers, his hand hovering near his radio. "Should we… should we call ahead?"
I shrug. The movement feels mechanical. They make the call while I stand there swaying, the gravel biting into my soles. Eventually, the gate rolls back. I force myself to remember who I am—Isabella Moretti—and I stride up the driveway, trying not to see it as home. This is not a homecoming. It is a sentencing hearing.
The house is quiet. I move through the halls like a intruder, leaving faint bloody footprints on the marble.
Matteo’s study smells of his afternoon espresso, the dark, rich blend he imports from Sicily. The scent, once comforting, makes bile rise in my throat. He is behind his mahogany desk, reviewing ledgers. He wasn’t expecting me. His head snaps up, face shifting rapidly from confusion to relief, then to sharp alarm as he takes in my appearance: clothes torn, hair wild, eyes hollowed out by a horror he can’t yet see.
"Isabella? Jesus." He rounds the desk, moving with that instinctive, protective urgency that has defined him since Papa died. "What happened? Where is—"
"I need to tell you something." My voice cracks, dry and brittle.
He reaches for me. "Sit down. You look like you’re about to collapse."
"No." I step back, recoiling from his outstretched hand. I stand in the center of his Persian rug, the intricate patterns blurring beneath my feet. "I can’t sit. I need to say this standing."
Matteo stops. His eyes narrow, scanning me for injuries, for threats. "Isabella, you’re scaring me."
I lock my knees to keep from falling. "I knew about the massacre."
The words hang in the air, heavy and suffocating. Matteo goes completely still. It is the dangerous, absolute stillness of a predator sensing a shift in the wind.
"What do you mean, you knew?" His voice is soft. Careful. Like he is afraid he misheard.
"Dimitri warned me." I force the words past the razor blades in my throat. "The night before. At the property edge, where we used to meet."
Silence stretches, thick and terrible. I watch the understanding dawn across his face in agonizing stages: confusion, disbelief, realization. And then, something worse. Something that looks like the death of love.
"When?" The word scrapes out of him. "When exactly did he tell you?"
"The night before the attack."
"You used to meet." He is processing, his tactical mind slotting the pieces together, rewriting history in real-time. "How long had you been meeting with him?"
"Months. He was… teaching me Russian. We were friends." I swallow. "Maybe more."
Matteo’s hand finds the edge of his mahogany desk. His grip tightens until the knuckles turn the color of bone. "And he told you they were going to attack the meeting."
"He said his father was planning something. A massacre. That everyone would die. Papa, the senior men, the Morettis, everyone." Tears blur my vision, but I don't blink. "He begged me not to warn anyone. He said if I did, his father would know there was a leak. He said Viktor’s father would kill him slowly."
"So you chose to stay silent."
It isn't a question. It is a condemnation.
Defensive words leap to my tongue—I was young, I was scared, I loved him—but they die before they reach my lips. They are ash now. "Yes."
"Dozens of our people died that night, Isabella." His voice is too quiet. Too measured. I watch the wood of the desk groan under his grip. "Dozens of Rosettis."
"I know—"
"Do you?" He stands fully now, towering in the dim light. For the first time in my life, I look at my brother and feel fear. "Uncle Enzo. Cousin Matteo. Tommy’s brother Giovanni. Men with wives. Men with children. Men who trusted us to protect them."
The tears spill over, hot tracks on my cold skin. I let them fall. I deserve this. I deserve worse.
"Papa kissed you goodbye that night," Matteo continues, his tone gaining a serrated edge. "You sat at dinner knowing he was driving to his death. You ate Maria’s food. You laughed at Alex’s jokes. And you said nothing."
"I thought—"
"No." His palm slams onto the desk. The sound is a gunshot in the quiet room, making me flinch. "Don't tell me what you thought. Don't give me excuses about being young or scared or in love with some Russian boy."
"Matteo, please."
"Papa is dead because of you." He erupts from behind the desk, advancing on me. I see it now—not just anger, but a profound, shattering hatred. "I became Don at twenty-two because there was no one else left. Twenty-two years old, trying to hold together the bloody pieces of this family while carrying the weight of seventeen funerals."
My legs shake, threatening to buckle, but I remain standing. I will take every lash.
"Enzo lost his voice screaming while they tortured him," he says, circling me like a prosecutor closing a capital case. "And you could have stopped it all."
"I know. I know." The words fracture into sobs.
"You don't know." He stops directly in front of me. The look in his eyes makes me want to die. "You weren't just silent, Isabella. You were complicit."
The word strikes me in the chest, knocking the air from my lungs. Complicit.
"You weren't a victim who survived," he says, his voice dropping to a whisper that carries more violence than a scream. "You were the reason we were vulnerable. Every death. Every drop of blood. Every year of grief. It all traces back to your choice to protect a Sokolov over your own blood."
I have no defense. He is right. The truth is carved into my bones, indelible and rotting.
Matteo steps back. He studies me like he is looking at a stranger wearing his sister’s face. When he speaks again, his voice is hollow. Final.
"Get out of my house."
"Matteo—"
"GET OUT!" The roar shakes the windows, sending me stumbling backward. "You aren't my sister. My sister died that night along with everyone else. You’re just the ghost who’s been haunting us ever since."
I turn.
I walk out.
I don't look back. My legs move mechanically through the hallways lined with portraits of the dead. Men I could have saved with a sentence. My body remembers the path even as my mind fractures into dust. The marble floors where I took my first steps now witness my last ones.
Behind me, something shatters. A heavy crystal decanter thrown against a wall. The sound of Matteo’s grief finally exploding in solitude. It follows me out the door, a final goodbye from the brother who pulled me from nightmares, never knowing I was the nightmare all along.
I stop three blocks from the compound.
I press my palm against the rough brick of an alley wall to stay upright. The evening air is thick, humid, clinging to my skin like a second layer of filth. My phone buzzes in my pocket. Long, insistent vibrations.
Viktor.
He must have realized I’m gone. He’s probably frantic. But I can't answer. I can't hear his voice. I can't tell him that I am the reason Dimitri died trying to stop a massacre I could have prevented. My treacherous heart whispers his name, aches for the safety of his arms, but I can’t go back. How can I let him touch me knowing these hands are stained with the blood of both our families?
I push off the wall and keep walking.
The Chicago streets blur. I walk without direction, the cold night air cutting through my thin, torn clothes. I am too empty to feel the chill. Around me, the city is finishing its day. Restaurant owners lower metal gates with a clatter. Joggers run past with earbuds in, oblivious. A mother pushes a stroller, cooing at the bundle inside.
Normal lives. Normal problems. They drift past me like smoke. I am not part of this world anymore. I am a ghost, just as Matteo said.
I don't notice the car following me.
My survival instincts, usually screaming at the slightest anomaly, are dead. I don't hear the tires rolling slowly over the pavement. I don't register the black sedan pulling alongside until the doors open and boots hit the sidewalk.
Sokolov soldiers.
They move with professional precision, forming a perimeter, clearly expecting resistance. They expect the Isabella who fights. The Isabella who carries a blade in her clutch and calculates kill zones.
My hand twitches toward my hip, a phantom reflex. But I don't have my knife. I left it under the mattress at the lakehouse like a fool. And even if I had it—what is the point? What is worth fighting for when Matteo is right?
Complicit.
Maybe Kazimir’s justice is exactly what I deserve.
The men approach cautiously, confused by my stillness. One reaches for my arm. I don't resist. I don't even tense. I just stand there, void and waiting, letting him grip my bicep.
Kaz emerges from the backseat.
He wears a suit that costs more than most people earn in a year. His smile is cold, a sliver of ice in the darkness. He takes in my broken state—the dirt, the blood, the absolute defeat—with obvious satisfaction. As he steps closer, his scent hits me. Sharp, chemical cologne. Nothing like Viktor’s amber and smoke.
"Isabella Moretti," he says, circling me slowly. "Walking alone through Chicago after dark. How convenient."
I don't respond. The emptiness inside me has swallowed my voice.
"My cousin has been looking for you." His tone is light, mocking. "He’s frantic, actually. It’s embarrassing how desperate he’s been. Calling every contact. Threatening his own men. All for you."
Still, I say nothing. I stand there like a statue, waiting for the hammer to fall.
Kaz stops in front of me. He tilts his head, studying my face. His eyes are pale, like Viktor’s, but they hold none of the fire. Only a flat, dead cruelty. "Something has shattered in you." He sounds pleased. "Good. That makes this easier."
He nods to his men. They guide me toward the car.
I move. My feet shuffle forward, that same mechanical walk that carried me away from Matteo. Some distant part of my brain—the part Rocco trained, the part that wants to live—screams that I should fight. Run. Scream. Gouge an eye.
But the scream is muffled by the weight of the truth. I killed them. I killed them all.
The car door closes with a heavy thud, sealing out the city. The interior smells of new leather. My phone buzzes again in my pocket, desperate, angry. I don't reach for it. Let him think I ran. Better that than him knowing what I am.
Kaz settles beside me. He smooths his tie. "You know, I was prepared for a fight. I had contingencies for someone with your training. Drugs, restraints." He gestures vaguely at my hollow form. "But this? This is so much better. Isabella Moretti, broken before I even had to try."
The car pulls away, tires crunching on gravel as we turn toward the industrial district. Through the tinted windows, Chicago slides past. Traffic lights blink from green to red.
"Dimitri would be fascinated," Kaz continues, watching me for a reaction I cannot give. "To know the girl he died for turned out to be such a disappointment. All that potential, wasted."
The words should cut. They should make me bleed. But I am already bleeding out. All I hear is Matteo’s voice echoing in the cavern of my skull. Complicit. Complicit.
"Nothing to say?" Kaz sounds almost disappointed. "No begging? No bargaining? No asking what I plan to do?"
I rest my head against the cool glass. What does it matter? Whatever he has planned, whatever pain he intends to inflict, it cannot touch the agony already living in my chest. Moretti names carved into my bones. My father’s last smile. Dimitri’s desperate plea.
We drive into the dark. It is quiet here. Isolated.
Perfect for an execution.