Chapter 026 Isabella
The warehouse is cold. Not the crisp chill of a winter night, but something deeper, industrial, that crawls under the skin and nests in the marrow. The metal chair digs into my back through the thin silk of my dress, zip ties carving red channels into my wrists. I test the joint with my thumb—thirty seconds to dislocate, slip free, take the guard’s gun. The Weapon inside me maps the sequence with mechanical precision.
I still my hands. Survival is a habit, not a desire. Not tonight.
Kaz circles me slowly, footsteps ringing off the concrete like a judge’s gavel. The air tastes of old blood, machine oil, and the faint chemical bite of his cologne. This place was built for endings. The drains in the floor prove it.
“Isabella Moretti.” His voice echoes under the rafters. “Do you know why you are here?”
I fix my gaze on a hairline crack in the floor six feet away. The Weapon catalogues exits—roller door left, emergency behind him, windows too high. Useless data. I am not leaving.
“Your crimes against the Sokolov family.” He stops in front of me, shoes gleaming despite the filth. “Shall I list them?”
I offer nothing. The space where my heart used to be is hollow.
“You seduced Dimitri Sokolov. Fed him Moretti secrets. Made him weak. Led him to his death.”
The words should sting. They don’t. My real crimes are heavier. Papa’s last smile—warm, trusting—flashes behind my eyes. He kissed my forehead that morning, unaware I had already chosen a gentle Russian boy over my own blood.
Kaz continues his recitation. I stop listening. Instead I feel phantom hands—Viktor’s, careful on my face as he taught me to trim the bonsai, voice soft as he spoke of his mother’s illness. Hours ago. Another lifetime.
“No defense?” Kaz grabs my chin, jerks my head up. His fingers are cold. “No begging?”
“No.”
The slap snaps my head sideways. Copper floods my mouth. The chair rocks but holds. I recenter slowly, tasting blood.
“Nothing to say?”
“Would it matter?”
“No.” His smile is thin and sharp. “But I would enjoy watching you try.”
“Then I won’t give you the satisfaction.”
The second slap splits my lip fully. Blood drips warm onto concrete, two perfect drops against the cold. I think, absurdly, of Viktor kissing that same mouth this morning, gentle after his tears. I give Kaz nothing but empty eyes.
Eventually he leaves me with three guards.
Guard One by the door: knife on left hip, favors right leg—old knee injury. Three seconds to drop him.
Guard Two pacing: holstered wrong, phone addiction every thirty seconds, cheap cigarette stink drifting over.
Guard Three leaning on the beam: the real threat, eyes tracking even while pretending to scroll. Blind spot directly behind the pillar.
Three clean paths to freedom unspool in my mind. I could be out before they finished shouting.
But the woman inside the Weapon no longer wants freedom.
Matteo’s voice: Get out of my house. The crystal shattering against his study wall. My brother’s love curdling to disgust.
Viktor’s lakehouse is no longer refuge. How could I face him with the truth—that I chose Dimitri over Papa, over everyone, and still lost them all?
There is nowhere left.
Kaz wants me dead for the wrong sins. He doesn’t know the real one: silence that cost dozens of lives, including the man who raised us.
Perhaps this is the only justice I deserve.
So I sit still, letting the zip ties bite deeper, red grooves that will scar. I stop calculating and start waiting.
Guard Three frowns at my stillness, confused why the infamous Isabella Moretti waits quietly for slaughter.
If only he knew the Weapon is screaming inside, clawing to survive. I cage her with memories—Papa’s last kiss, the sound of gunfire that night, the weight of my silence.
I close my eyes.
Gunfire.
Distant pops first, then closer, automatic bursts rattling the metal walls. Shouting in Russian. Screams. Bodies hitting concrete.
The guards snap alert. Radios explode with panic.
“East entrance breached—”
“How many?”
“Dozens—”
Static.
I know who leads them before the door explodes inward in a shower of splinters.
Viktor steps through the smoke like vengeance made flesh. White shirt soaked dark with other men’s blood, a gun in each hand, face utterly blank. Not rage. Purpose. The sight punches the air from my lungs.
Guard Two dies first—one shot, center mass, before he clears leather.
Guard One draws his knife. Viktor shoots the shoulder, spins him, snaps the neck with bare hands. The crack echoes.
Guard Three manages two wild shots—concrete chips bite my cheek, warm blood mixing with cold. Viktor closes the distance, grapples, overpowers. Fingers close around the man’s throat until something gives with a wet crunch.
He smells of gunpowder and, beneath it, impossibly, amber and smoke.
More men flood in behind him, efficient, lethal. The warehouse becomes a storm of gunfire and Russian pleas. I sit perfectly still while bullets whip past. Part of me hopes one finds me and finishes what Kaz started.
“STOP!”
Kaz’s voice from the catwalk above, gun aimed at my head.
Everything freezes.
“One more step and she dies.”
Viktor looks up. Blood drips from his knuckles onto concrete. His voice is quiet, conversational, terrifying.
“You won’t.”
“Try me.”
“If you intended to shoot her, she would already be dead.” He takes a deliberate step forward. “You wanted a spectacle. You wanted me to watch.”
Kaz’s jaw flexes. “She killed Dimitri—”
“She’s MINE.”
The declaration rings off every metal surface, fills every corner. My traitorous body answers—heat pooling low, pulse jumping. I hate it.
“Mine to punish. Mine to judge. Mine to kill if I choose. Not yours.”
“The family—”
“I am the family.” The words drop like stones into deep water. “You committed treason when you took what belongs to me.”
The gun wavers.
One of Viktor’s men tackles Kaz from behind. The pistol clatters away. Kaz goes down cursing, promising retribution.
Viktor doesn’t watch. He walks to me.
He cuts the zip ties with the dead guard’s knife—still warm. The plastic falls away, leaving raw, seeping grooves. I don’t move.
His bloody fingers grip my chin, force my gaze to his pale eyes. Blood smears across my skin, marking me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Fury blazes there, cold and absolute.
“You ran.”
“Viktor—”
“You ran. Into the forest. Without a word.”
“I had to—”
“You had to what?” His grip tightens. “Run to Matteo? Choose them again?”
The second ‘again’ slices deep. He doesn’t know how wrong he is—doesn’t know the first time I chose his family over mine cost everything.
“I broke for you.” His voice fractures. “I showed you pieces no one else has seen. My father. My mother. I sobbed in your arms. And you ran.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
The truth stacks in my throat like broken glass. I see Matteo’s disgust again; I cannot bear to watch Viktor’s love turn the same way.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Not here. Not like this.”
He releases me. Steps back. The distance between us widens into something vast and freezing.
He turns, issues orders in clipped Russian and English—Kaz secured alive, survivors disarmed, bodies handled, scene cleaned before police arrive.
When he looks at me again, the fury has cooled into blank distance.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Then walk.”
No offered hand. No arm around my waist. Just expectation.
I follow on unsteady legs, stepping over bodies still warm, blood cooling on concrete. One man moans as I pass. Someone else will finish him.
Kaz screams as they drag him away: “She’s poison! She’ll burn everything!”
Viktor doesn’t answer.
Outside, the night air bites sharp after the heated chaos. The waiting car idles. I climb in because there is nowhere else.
The leather is pristine. Viktor’s bloody handprints bloom on the wheel as he drives. Through tinted glass, normal Chicago passes—couples holding hands, late dinners, life continuing while mine lies in pieces.
He saved me. Killed his own men for me. Declared war for me.
I feel nothing but the hollow. Except that is a lie—every shift of his body beside me registers, every breath. My skin remembers his touch and wants it even now, even covered in blood, even when he will not look at me.
His phone buzzes repeatedly. He silences it with one violent motion.
“You could have stayed with them,” he says, voice flat.
“He doesn’t want me.”
“But I do?” Hurt disguised as scorn. “After you ran?”
I have no answer that would not destroy us both.
“Why did you come?”
“Because you’re mine.” Simple. Possessive. “Someone took what was mine.”
Not love. Ownership.
His bloody fingers flex on the gear shift. Those same hands were inside me hours ago, drawing pleasure I didn’t deserve. Now they have killed for me. The contradiction aches.
Perhaps ownership is all I am worth now.
We drive on through the city, silence thick between us, wider than any ocean.