Chapter 029 Isabella
The pink walls of my childhood bedroom close around me like a coffin lined in silk. I have not slept here since the night of the massacre—eleven years of choosing the guest room down the hall instead—but today the past drags me back. Ballet posters still hang where I pinned them at twelve, the dancers frozen mid-leap, perfect and untouchable. I will never be that girl again.
My throat is raw. Each breath scrapes past the knot of grief lodged there. My hands tremble so violently I have to press them between my thighs to still them. Matteo’s last words—Get out—echo louder than gunfire.
Rocco’s breakfast tray sits untouched on the old desk. The toast has curled at the edges; a skin has formed on the coffee. The smell turns my stomach. How am I supposed to eat when Papa’s last meal ended in blood I might have stopped?
I check my phone again. Nothing. Matteo’s silence is a blade twisting slowly.
A knock—sharp, military. Rocco.
“Family meeting,” he says through the door. “Downstairs. Now.”
I stay curled on the narrow bed, knees to chest, still in the ruined clothes I wore when I stumbled home. The fabric is stiff with dried sweat and tears. “I’m not hungry.”
“It’s not about food. And it’s not optional.”
The edge in his voice pulls my head up. This is not the gentle Rocco who brought me coffee. This is the soldier.
“Matteo?” I ask, though I already know.
A beat of silence. “He’s not coming.”
The words strike like stones sinking into deep water. Matteo, who raised us after Papa died, who held this family together by sheer will, will not share the same air as me.
“Five minutes,” Rocco says. “Don’t make me come in and carry you.”
His footsteps retreat. I unfold myself slowly, joints stiff. The mirror over the vanity shows a stranger: hollow cheeks, tangled hair, eyes too wide. Viktor’s fingerprints still ghost across my skin, a brand I cannot scrub away.
The descent feels ceremonial. Each step on the marble stairs drags up memories—racing Alessandro to breakfast, sliding down the banister until Maria scolded us. Now I walk like a prisoner to her own execution. The cold stone bites my bare feet; the chill climbs my legs and settles in my bones.
The family room door stands open. Leather and wood polish usually comfort me; today the scent is suffocating.
Enzo stands at the window, afternoon light carving his profile sharp. Cigarette smoke clings to him, acrid and thick. Gianni paces the far wall, hand twitching toward his knives. Alessandro sits on the couch, staring at his clasped hands, refusing to look up.
Matteo’s chair at the head of the table is empty.
In eleven years it has never been empty. Not once. Even when he took a bullet and bled through bandages, he was there. Now the absence screams louder than any accusation.
Rocco guides me to a seat with a hand at my elbow—gentle, but immovable. The leather is cold against my bare thighs. He positions himself beside me, a warm wall between me and the storm.
“Sit,” he murmurs, cinnamon gum faint on his breath.
I curl into the chair, knees drawn up, small as I can make myself. The room feels cavernous with one brother missing.
Enzo turns from the window. His hands begin to move, precise and deliberate.
“We need to talk about what you told Matteo.”
I brace. I wait for the catalog of dead, for Gianni to erupt, for Alessandro to list every name I cost us.
Instead Enzo crosses the room and crouches in front of me, bringing himself below my eye level. The gesture is careful, almost tender. His cologne—Ana’s expensive choice—wraps around me.
“I need to tell you something,” he signs slowly. “And you are not going to like it.”
My ribs tighten. What could be worse?
“I have known about your promise to Dimitri for years.”
The air leaves my lungs. Gianni stops pacing. Even the dust motes seem to freeze.
“After Papa died,” Enzo continues, hands steady, “I searched your room. Found a letter from Dimitri hidden in your desk. It explained everything—the warning, the plan, the promise he asked of you.”
I shake my head. “There was no letter.”
“I destroyed it.”
The words hit like a slap. Cold sweat breaks across my skin.
“To protect you,” he signs quickly. “Your mind had already buried it. You were fragile. If you had found that letter and remembered everything while you were still breaking—”
“You KNEW?” My voice rips out, raw and bleeding. “All this time?”
“Yes.”
“And you never told me?”
He does not look away. “You did not remember. I thought if you never remembered, you would never have to carry it.”
I surge to my feet. The chair crashes backward. “I have spent eleven years chasing fragments! Nightmares I could not explain! Guilt I could not name! And you KNEW?”
My entire body shakes.
Gianni’s voice is low thunder. “You knew she betrayed us and you said nothing?”
Enzo rises, facing Gianni but still signing so I can read every word. “I knew a fifteen-year-old girl was forced to choose between her father and a boy who swore he would die if she spoke.”
“She let Papa die!” Gianni roars.
“She was a child,” Enzo signs, hands slicing the air. “A child in love, asked to choose between two impossible deaths. What would you have done?”
“I would have chosen family.”
“Even if it was Faith?”
Gianni flinches as though struck.
Enzo turns back to me, softer. “I forgave you years ago, Isabella. Before you even knew there was something to forgive.”
“How can you—” Tears burn my lips.
“Because you were fifteen. Because a boy you loved begged you to trust him. Because if you had known there was no other way, you might have chosen differently. Or maybe not. But you were a child.”
“Scores of people died,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he signs. “And you have been dying with them every day since. Is that not punishment enough?”
Silence falls, heavy as wet wool.
Then Gianni breaks.
He crosses the room in three strides. A knife appears in his hand—silver, familiar, the same blade that has painted walls red. His hand trembles, not from fear but from rage so pure it vibrates through his bones.
“We blamed everyone,” he says, voice cracking. “And all along you could have stopped it.”
Tears track down his face—Gianni, who has never cried, not at Papa’s funeral, not after his first kill.
Rocco steps between us, solid and immovable. “Get out of my way.”
“No.”
The single word is a wall.
“She’s a traitor.”
“She’s our sister.”
“She stopped being our sister the moment she chose a Sokolov over blood.”
Alessandro speaks at last, voice rough. “Gianni. Put the knife down.”
Gianni’s eyes stay locked on mine over Rocco’s shoulder. “You didn’t see Papa’s body. You didn’t see what they did.”
Rocco’s voice drops to a lethal murmur. “You want to hurt her, you go through me. You put that knife in her, you better put one in me too. I’m not living in a family that kills its own.”
The standoff stretches until the air itself feels brittle.
Gianni’s hand shakes harder. Tears fall unchecked. Then, with a broken sound, he spins and hurls the knife. It buries itself in the far wall with a solid thunk. Plaster dust drifts down like ash.
He storms out, slamming the door so hard a framed photo crashes to the marble, glass shattering.
Alessandro finally meets my eyes. The hurt there caves my chest in. “I don’t understand yet,” he says quietly. “But I don’t want you dead.”
It is not absolution. But it is not execution either.
Shouting erupts outside—guards, rapid Italian and English overlapping. Boots on gravel. Weapons cocking.
Enzo glides to the window and goes perfectly still.
“You need to see this,” he signs without turning.
We crowd behind him. Through bulletproof glass I see the front gate, guards with rifles trained on a single figure walking up the long driveway.
Alone.
Hands raised high.
Wearing nothing but dark blue boxer shorts.
Viktor.
My body reacts before my mind catches up. Nipples tighten against the thin cotton of my shirt. Heat pools low and treacherous between my thighs. Even now, surrounded by family fury and aimed rifles, my skin remembers his hands, his mouth, the way he claimed me at the lakehouse.
He keeps walking. Steady. Unhurried. The guards scream at him to stop, to drop, to identify himself. He ignores them, pale eyes scanning the house.
Searching for me.
Gianni reappears in the doorway, drawn by the commotion. “Is that—”
“Sokolov,” Enzo signs.
“He’s insane,” Alessandro breathes.
“He’s in love,” Rocco says quietly.
Everyone looks at him.
“Only reason a man walks into enemy territory like that,” Rocco continues, eyes on me. “No weapons. No backup. No leverage except you.”
My feet move before I decide. The trained operative in me screams trap. The woman knows better. Knows what it costs the head of the Sokolov bratva to strip himself of every layer of power and walk nearly naked into a kill zone.
Rocco catches my arm. “Isabella—”
“He came for me,” I say. My voice is steady for the first time in days. “Unarmed. Alone.”
“It could be a trick.”
“It isn’t.”
Enzo signs rapidly. “Let her go. If he wanted war, he would not announce himself in underwear.”
I pull free and run.
Through the house that taught me to be a weapon, past portraits of the dead, past the dining room where Papa once held court. My bare feet slap marble, then gravel bites sharp and real as I burst into sunlight.
The glare blinds me for a second. When it clears, I see him fully.
Viktor stands in the center of the circular drive, surrounded by rifles. Sunlight gilds his skin, highlights every scar, every line of muscle I have traced with fingers and tongue. His hands remain raised. His head is high.
Then his gaze finds me on the front steps.
Everything stops.
The guards’ shouts fade to static. The world narrows to the space between us.
He smiles—not the cold predator’s smile of our early days, not the triumphant one from the lakehouse. This is raw, broken open, hopeful and terrified at once. A smile that admits how insane this is and does it anyway.
“Isabella,” he says.
My name crosses the distance like a vow.
Behind me my brothers watch. Ahead of me stands the man who collared me, who made me kneel, who owned me body and soul. Now he offers himself stripped of everything—power, armor, pride.
Just flesh and bone and whatever truth he has brought to save us both.