Chapter 25
Elena
A slap yanked me out of the dark.
My head snapped sideways. A razor-sharp ringing blew up in my ear. The bitter taste of drugs clung to the back of my tongue, and my throat burned like I'd swallowed a fistful of lit sand.
I tried to lift my hand, but something bit hard into my wrists.
I couldn't move.
I opened my eyes.
Everything swam in a smear of gray—rusted steel beams, dusty high windows, a dangling white light that rocked and cut shadows across the floor.
An abandoned warehouse.
I had been tied to a wooden chair. Thick rope cinched my chest, my waist, my wrists—every breath shoved pressure into my ribs. Tape across my mouth pulled at my skin until it stung.
My stomach tightened on instinct.
The baby.
Memory slammed back in. The alley. The missing bodyguards. That sharp, chemical stink. And the way a man's gaze had paused on my lower belly.
My heartbeat punched up into my throat.
I tried to read my body. No cramping. No warm rush down my legs. No fresh agony besides my shoulder and wrists.
I didn't dare relax. I only twisted my wrists. My hands had been bound behind the chair back—I couldn't even touch my stomach.
Black stilettos stopped in front of me.
I lifted my head, slow.
Isabella looked down at me.
She wore a clean-cut black dress. Her hazel eyes held none of that party softness, none of the perfect smile she had used on Father, none of the sweetened voice she had put on for Kiryan. There was only hate—thick, ugly, endless.
I jerked against the ropes.
The chair legs screeched across concrete.
"Mmm—"
The tape swallowed my question.
Isabella smiled.
"Finally figured out it was me?"
She grabbed my hair and forced my face up higher. My scalp screamed like it was tearing, and I stared back without flinching.
She had loved hurting me like this since we were kids—at the long dining table, in Father's study, at every suffocating party where even my breathing had to look polite. Every time I stepped back, she stepped forward.
I used to back down.
Not anymore.
She saw it in my eyes. Her fingers tightened.
"Don't look at me like that."
The second slap landed.
Harder.
My teeth cut the inside of my cheek. Blood flooded my mouth. My face swelled, and tears sprang up at the corners of my eyes from the pain.
Isabella looked like she finally felt better.
"It was you," she said low. "Every time. Always you."
I made a garbled sound, trying to get her to rip the tape off.
She understood. She just dragged a fingernail along the edge of it instead, slow and cruel.
"What do you want to say? That you are innocent again?"
She leaned in. Her perfume crushed the warehouse stench of rust and mold. It was the scent she had always loved—expensive, controlled, never slipping before the last guest left. But her face had twisted into something vicious.
"You are good at it," she said. "Hunch your shoulders. Get those watery eyes. Look like anyone could kick you and you'd thank them for it. Father yelled at you, you stayed quiet. Kiryan misunderstood you, you stayed quiet. Everyone thought you were sweet. They thought I was the bitch."
Her mouth curved.
"No one knew you were the real curse on the Rossi family."
I stared at her.
Rage burned in my chest until even the ropes felt tighter.
A curse.
Any crack in our lives, she had shoved me toward it and called it my fault.
I yanked my wrists as hard as I could.
The rope scraped skin raw. Pain shot straight into bone.
Isabella saw it and lit up with mean satisfaction.
"Hurt?"
She pinched my chin.
"This is only the beginning."
As she spoke, her other hand drifted to her flat stomach.
That movement froze me.
Isabella caught my look. Her smile vanished.
"My baby is gone."
The warehouse seemed to drop ten degrees.
My eyes widened.
She had been pregnant.
It hadn't been Kiryan's—the timing didn't match, the records didn't match. But it had still been real. Whoever the father had been, losing it hadn't been something you could erase with a lie.
I wanted to ask what had happened.
All that came out was a muffled, broken sound.
"Now you are scared?" Isabella's voice shook. "The doctor said I won't ever have another."
Her palm pressed harder, like she could claw something back out of her own body.
"I miscarried. I can't have kids anymore. Happy now?"
I shook my head hard.
No.
I had never wanted her to lose a baby. I hadn't even known when it happened. But she didn't need answers. She needed someone to hold her hate, and I had always been the easiest target.
"Stop pretending!"
She shoved my face away.
The chair rocked back. I clenched my core instantly, my toes digging into the floor.
Isabella watched that reflex. Her gaze paused for half a second, then rage flooded it.
"If you hadn't crawled into Kiryan's bed, I wouldn't have left New York. If you hadn't married him in my place, he wouldn't have fallen for you. If he hadn't chased me off because of you, I wouldn't have drunk myself stupid and lost my baby—if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be in this much pain!"
Her voice climbed, sharp enough to cut.
"You ruined my marriage. You ruined my home. You ruined my chance to be a mother. You ruined everything I had."
My lungs felt packed with fire.
Leaving New York, forging papers, trying to fool Kiryan with somebody else's baby—those had been her choices. But she still wrote every bill in my name.
I twisted my wrists like I could hurl the truth back at her. The chair back creaked.
"Mmm! Mmm—"
Isabella lifted her hand again, ready to hit me.
Slow clapping drifted out of the warehouse shadows.
"Touching."
Her hand stopped midair.
Footsteps crossed the concrete, steady in a way that made my skin crawl.
A tall, lean man stepped out from behind an iron pillar.
His coat hung open, his right hand in his pocket, like he had just walked out of a meeting not worth his time. One eye was intact. The other had been ruined by an old knife scar. The mark slashed across the socket, leaving his face permanently skewed into something cruel and off-balance.
Matteo Soto.
I had only seen him in the files Father had left behind. In person he had looked thinner, sharper—more dangerous.
He moved without wasted motion, like a blade honed down too fine. Isabella had trained ballet for years and could hold herself like royalty in any room, but she still shifted half a step aside.
That half-step said who owned this place.
"You showed up late," Isabella said, ice-cold.
"You started early," Matteo said. He stopped a few paces away, eyes flicking over my swollen face. "I told you not to break her yet."
He smiled lightly. "She is leverage."
Isabella's jaw tightened.
"You promised I could handle her."
"After I get what I want," Matteo said. "Then you can settle twenty-some years of sisterly bullshit, line by line. Hell, I'd even lend you a sharper knife."
He looked at me.
That good eye held no lust, no pity. Only appraisal.
"But right now, she has to stay intact."
My stomach clenched hard.
Isabella crossed her arms. "What if Kiryan doesn't trade?"
"He will."
"You overestimate her."
"I don't overestimate her," Matteo said. "I estimate Morozov correctly."
The name came out loaded, like he had been chewing on hatred for years.
I stopped fighting and forced myself to catch every word.
Kiryan had said Matteo had abandoned routes, cleared warehouses, recruited gunmen, bought unregistered cars. This had been set up long before. Isabella had just delivered the perfect bait.
"What do you want from him?" she asked.
Matteo looked at her like she was a partner who forgot her place.
"Everything."
He said it so softly the back of my neck went cold.
"The docks. The warehouses. The shipping lines. The contacts. Every road he still has on the East Coast."
Isabella frowned. "He said he wouldn't give an inch."
"When a man says that, it usually means the price still isn't high enough."
Matteo stepped closer, then bent down in front of me.
"Morozov has held New York too long. He's forgotten other people want his chair."
His fingers tapped the chair back.
"Once he hands it all over, nobody in this city will be able to threaten me again."
I stared at him.
Something didn't fit. He didn't say he'd let anyone go. He didn't talk about an exchange or letting Kiryan walk away. He only talked about no one threatening him.
Cold crept up my spine, vertebra by vertebra.
Isabella heard it too.
She looked at Matteo. "Are you going to kill him?"
Matteo straightened and smiled.
"You think I invited him over for drinks?"
Air crushed out of my lungs.
I thrashed.
The chair jumped hard. The rope tore my wrists open again, and I didn't even feel it.
No.
Kiryan couldn't come.
"Quiet." Matteo set a hand on the chair back, steadying it.
I shook my head, forcing frantic sounds through my throat.
"Mmm—mmm!"
Isabella watched me, then laughed.
"She is worried about him."
Matteo looked down at me. "Of course she is."
"Pathetic," Isabella said, stepping closer. "He threw you away for me so many times, and you still get scared he'd die."
She wanted me to deny it. She wanted shame on my face. But in that moment, I stopped lying to myself.
I had loved Kiryan.
Not because of paperwork. Not because he had claimed me. Not even only because he had learned—finally—to wait on the far side of my boundaries.
I knew him at his worst. I had also watched him try to be better.
I remembered him tossing my art supplies into the rain.
I also remembered him standing in my gallery later, clumsy and serious, trying to tell my colors apart.
I remembered him letting go of my hand at that birthday party.
I remembered that night of pouring rain—he could've stormed upstairs, but he had stopped at the line I drew.
I hadn't forgiven him. I still hadn't decided whether I could trust him again. But love didn't wait for logic to sign off. It had survived long before I admitted it. Admitting it didn't make me weak. It just made me terrified to lose him.
Because I knew Kiryan would come.