Chapter 027 Isabella
The leather seat might as well have been barbed wire. Every small shift ground the pain deeper into my lacerated feet, but the real agony was elsewhere—inside the hollow space where everything I touched turned to ash.
Ten minutes of silence. Maybe fifteen. Viktor’s bloody hands gripped the wheel like he wanted to snap it in half. Streetlights strobed across his profile, catching on the drying blood that streaked his cheek and knuckles. Gunpowder and amber clung to him, thick and unmistakable. My traitor body answered with a slow, treacherous pulse between my thighs. I hated it. Hated myself more.
He had murdered his own men to reach me. Declared war on his own blood. And I repaid him with nothing but this suffocating quiet.
A black SUV cut across our lane without warning—no plates, no hesitation. Viktor slammed the brakes. Tires shrieked. The seatbelt bit into my chest, a sharp line of pain I barely registered. My body jerked forward and settled again, numb.
Two figures stepped out of the blocking vehicle. I knew the shapes of them before the headlights fully caught their faces: one moving with clipped military economy, the other with that silent, lethal grace.
Rocco. Enzo.
Viktor’s hand was already on his gun. He killed the engine and stepped out, door slamming hard enough to echo down the empty street. Three predators in a perfect triangle of tension, waiting for the first wrong breath.
I stayed in the car a moment longer, cataloguing exits out of habit. Twelve feet to Rocco’s holstered weapon. Eight to Enzo’s. Three seconds to close either distance if I still had the strength. I didn’t.
Rocco approached my window, hands visible but ready. The faint scent of cinnamon gum drifted in even before I cracked the glass. He’d quit smoking years ago, but the oral fixation remained. Enzo hung back, dark eyes scanning everything—Viktor, the street, me.
Rocco’s gaze swept my face: the split lip, the cut on my cheek, the blank stare. Something shuttered behind his hazel eyes. Matteo had told him. He knew.
Yet there was no disgust. Only sorrow so heavy it made my lungs ache.
Viktor planted himself between our car and Enzo, gun still in hand but not raised. The air crackled.
“We’re taking her home,” Rocco said. The same tone he’d used overseas when negotiation was a courtesy, not a requirement.
“She is home,” Viktor answered, voice low and lethal. “She’s with me.”
The possessive rasp in those words sent heat licking up my spine. Wetness gathered, shameful and immediate. I pressed my thighs together and hated the way my pulse jumped for him even now.
Enzo’s hands moved in quick, precise signs. Rocco translated without looking away from Viktor. “She doesn’t look like she wants to be with you.”
It wasn’t accusation. It was simple observation. I sat frozen, barely breathing, a corpse in couture.
“You kidnapped her,” Rocco continued. “Held her captive. Now you’ve dragged her into your family’s civil war.”
“I just saved her life.” Viktor’s voice dropped further, dangerous. “Killed three of my own men to pull her out of my cousin’s hands.”
“Your cousin. Your mess.” Rocco’s jaw flexed. “Your family’s poison keeps spilling onto her.”
“And where was your family when Kaz took her off the street?” Viktor’s words cracked like a whip. “Where were you when she needed protecting? Where was Matteo?”
Rocco flinched. The silence that followed carried every unsaid thing—Matteo’s rejection, my confession, the fracture running straight through the Moretti name.
“Nine years of truth between us, Sof,” Rocco said quietly. The childhood nickname cut deeper than any blade. “Nine years. And you chose to break it for him?”
Enzo stepped forward. His presence alone shifted the balance; even Viktor’s shoulders tightened. Enzo signed directly to me through the glass, movements gentle but unrelenting. Rocco didn’t translate this time. The question was mine alone.
What do you want, little sister? Him, or us?
I tasted copper. The truth about Dimitri sat behind my teeth like broken glass.
Rocco had trained me. Held me when nightmares tore me apart. Enzo had watched over me in silence, understanding more than anyone else ever had. They were here, even knowing.
I opened the door. The creak sounded obscene in the stillness. My legs trembled as I stood. Blood had soaked through the soles of my ruined shoes; each step onto cold asphalt sent fire up my calves. The night wind sliced across bare skin, raising gooseflesh and memories of Viktor’s palms sliding up my thighs only hours ago.
“Isabella.” My name cracked on Viktor’s tongue. His breathing roughened, audible even over the idling engines.
My hand lifted halfway toward him before I forced it back into a fist.
I still couldn’t look at him. “I need to go with them.”
“Why?” One word, raw and bleeding.
“Because I can’t explain it to you. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
I was choosing my brothers. Last time I chose love over blood, people died. I couldn’t repeat the mistake.
I waited for fury—for him to seize my arm, remind me whose collar circled my throat, whose name I’d whispered in the dark. Instead I got something far worse.
Silence. Then the softest exhale, as though someone had punched him in the chest.
I looked up at last.
Blood freckled his sharp cheekbones. His white shirt clung, ruined. Streetlight carved harsh shadows across his face, turning beauty into something almost monstrous. But his eyes—pale, shattered—looked at me like I’d carved his heart out with a dull blade.
“You’re leaving me.” Not a question.
“I’m giving you time to realize you shouldn’t want me anymore.”
“I’ll always—”
“Don’t.” My voice splintered. “Don’t say something you’ll regret when you know everything.”
Because if he promised forever now, I might crumble. Might spill the poison right here on this dark street and watch the last person who mattered turn away in disgust.
Enzo signed again, this time toward Viktor. Simple, unmistakable gestures. Rocco translated softly: “You love her. That’s why you’ll let her go.”
Viktor’s hands flexed at his sides. Veins stood out against blood-slick skin. His chest rose and fell too fast.
“And if I don’t?” Barely leashed violence.
“Then we see how many more bodies this street holds tonight,” Rocco answered for Enzo, hand resting on his weapon.
The standoff stretched—three heartbeats, four, five. I could hear Viktor fighting himself, every instinct screaming to keep me.
Then he stepped back. One step. Another.
“Go,” he rasped. “Before I change my mind.”
“Viktor—”
“GO.”
I walked. Each step was its own small death. Blood left faint prints on the asphalt. Rocco’s arm slid around my waist when my knees buckled, steadying me without a word. Enzo opened the rear door of their SUV. I climbed in, movements mechanical.
I looked back once.
Viktor stood alone beneath the sodium streetlight, blood drying on his face and hands—other men’s blood, spilled for me. He looked like a dark prince abandoned mid-coronation, beautiful and ruined.
The image seared itself behind my eyes, joining the gallery of ghosts: Papa’s last smile, Dimitri’s gentle laugh, Matteo’s disgust. Now Viktor, watching me leave the man who had just burned his world down to keep me safe.
The SUV pulled away. I watched him shrink in the side mirror until the night swallowed him whole.
Rocco slid into the back seat beside me. Enzo drove, silent as always.
Three blocks passed before Rocco spoke.
“Matteo told us what you confessed.”
I closed my eyes. Salt tracked down my cheeks though I hadn’t realized I was crying. “And you came anyway.”
“You’re our sister.” Simple. Absolute.
“I don’t deserve—”
“Stop.” His voice hardened, then softened again. “We’ll figure the rest out. Not tonight. Tonight you breathe.”
Enzo caught my gaze in the rearview mirror and signed slowly: You were fifteen years old.
“That doesn’t excuse—”
His hands moved again: It doesn’t excuse anything. But it explains everything.
Fifteen. A child who thought one secret could be contained. Who believed she could keep a promise to a boy she loved and still save her father. Who was catastrophically wrong.
Rocco reached back, squeezed my knee with the same steady grip he’d used when I was small and terrified of thunderstorms. “We’ve got you, Sof.”
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe some piece of me remained worth saving. Instead I saw the trail of ruin stretching behind me.
Dimitri, dead because I kept his secret.
Papa, dead because I kept it too well.
Matteo, broken because his little sister chose a Russian over blood.
Viktor, alone on a dark street, covered in blood spilled for a woman too cowardly to tell him the truth.
My skin still carried Viktor’s scent—gunpowder, amber, violence. My body still ached for his touch. I wondered if he was washing my absence off his hands along with the blood.
I wondered if he would ever forgive me when the full story came out.
I wondered if I would ever forgive myself.
I already knew the answer to both.