Chspter 16 #2
Nikolai lifted a brow. “Still looks like the board’s playing you.”
I turned, jaw tense, and walked back to the windows, the city spilling out beneath me in quiet shadows. But my mind didn’t follow the skyline. It’s stayed stuck on the message. Viktor’s words. The bracelet.
And Isabella.
Because no matter how much I wanted to deny it—wanted to tell myself this was just strategy—I knew better. And if Lorenzo finds out what happened between us… or worse, if she finds out first…
I clenched my fists. I need to get ahead of this.
“We leave in three days,” I said over my shoulder. “Get me everything you can on Lorenzo’s past connections. The woman he was supposed to marry. Anyone who disappeared from his life without a trace.”
Yuri whistles. “You really want to know, huh?”
“I don’t want surprises,” I growled.
Nikolai nodded. “We’ll find it.”
I didn’t look back. Just keep staring out at the city I control… and the woman who might be the key to my downfall.
The city bled gold beneath the skyline, sun dipping low behind crumbling towers and glinting glass. I stood near the edge of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my penthouse, one hand braced against the cool glass, the other clenching around nothing but air.
Silence hung behind me. Heavy. Expectant. But it was the kind of quiet I liked—when the world outside roared but mine stayed still. Contained. Controlled.
That illusion shattered with Yuri’s voice. “So,” he said slowly, amusement curling into the single syllable, “if she’s pregnant… you marrying her?”
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t answer. Because the question hit harder than I liked.
Marrying her?
The thought should’ve been laughable. She was the one woman who wanted to see me dead—until she didn’t. And now… now I couldn’t stop thinking about her. About what we’d done. About how easy it had been to give in to her. To lose myself in her.
She wasn’t my weakness. No. But she was something. And I hated not knowing what.
I glanced over my shoulder, catching Yuri watching me from the leather chair, his drink untouched in his hand, eyebrow cocked like he was just waiting for the chaos to unravel.
“You’re out of your goddamn mind,” I muttered, turning to face him. “That’s not going to happen.”
“So you’d just let her raise a little devil on her own?” he asked, grinning as he took a sip. “Come on, Romanov. I’ve known you a long time. You wouldn’t walk away.”
“I wouldn’t have let it happen in the first place,” I snapped. Then paused. “But it did.”
Nikolai leaned forward from where he sat on the edge of the couch. “You really don’t know if she is on anything?”
I stared at him like he’d grown another head. “You think I fucking asked that?” I said, more to myself than them. “What do I look like—someone who checks expiration dates on protection I never used?”
Yuri let out a low whistle. “Rough week to start playing Russian Roulette with your bloodline, hermano.”
I ground my jaw. The truth was—I hadn’t been thinking. Not logically. Not like I usually do. When I touched her, when I kissed her, when I tore her apart and stitched her back together with my mouth and hands—nothing else had existed.
Not the cartel. Not the past. Not even the fact that she may very well be Lorenzo Silvani’s daughter.
It had been pure instinct. Lust. Rage. Obsession. And something deeper I couldn’t name without wanting to tear my own skin off.
Yuri stood and walked to the bar again, pouring himself another drink before raising the glass toward me. “To your future kid. May they inherit your temper and her eyes. Hell of a combo.”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. My hands flexed at my sides, the burn in my arm still pulsing like a reminder of the night I bled all the way to her door.
Nikolai stood, the edge of his expression tight, serious. “You want us to start prepping security for Naples?”
I nodded once. “Everything. Routes, contingency plans, and I want eyes on Silvani the moment we land.”
“And Isabella?” he asked.
I met his eyes, voice low. “She doesn’t know anything yet. And until I’m sure… she won’t.”
He held my stare. “You think she’s lying?”
“I think she’s a bomb,” I said. “And I want to see whether she was built to explode… or to survive.”
They left after that—no more jokes, no more drinks. Just a heavy silence that trailed behind them like smoke.
And when I was alone again, the city outside looked a little darker.
But the fire inside me?
It hadn’t gone out. Not even close.
The echo of their footsteps faded, swallowed by the vast silence of the penthouse. I stood motionless for a while, still facing the skyline like it could give me answers. The sun was long gone now, buried behind the horizon, but the city below didn’t sleep. It never did.
I could feel it pulsing beneath the glass—lives moving, secrets unfolding, deals being made and betrayed all at once. I breathed in deep. Still.
Still she hadn’t said anything. Still she hadn’t asked. Still she was in my space, walking around like she didn’t turn the tide of my world the night I bled my way into hers.
Isabella Silvani.
I said the name in my mind—slowly, deliberately—like tasting something foreign on my tongue. No.
No, I didn’t believe it yet. Not until I saw them face-to-face. Not until I watched the way Lorenzo looked at her. Or didn’t. If there was blood between them, it would show. One way or another.
But the message Viktor sent kept circling back, like a scent I couldn’t wash off.
Cryptic bastard. He never gave anything straight. That was his game. Letting people pull their own strings until they hung themselves.
I didn’t like the feeling building in my gut. The slow, gnawing one. The kind that told me something I didn’t want to believe was probably true.
I turned from the window, my movements sharp, and walked across the penthouse toward the bar. I didn’t pour a drink—I wasn’t like Yuri. I didn’t drink to take the edge off. I kept the edge sharp, honed like a blade that could split skin from bone when I needed it to.
Instead, I opened the drawer beneath the bar and pulled out my backup phone.
No personal messages, no saved numbers. Just encrypted lines, contact lists coded by memory.
I opened the private channel I rarely used and typed a name I hadn’t reached out to in over a year.
A man in Milan who owed me more than just favors.
If there was any confirmation about Lorenzo Silvani’s bloodline, he’d find it.
I sent the message and locked the phone again. I didn’t trust easy. And I never moved without knowing the ground beneath my feet wouldn’t give out.
But if Isabella really was Silvani’s daughter… If she had been walking beside me this whole time, tangled in my sheets, digging her nails into my skin while the name of my enemy was written in her blood…
What the fuck did that make me?
A man betrayed?
Or a man who should’ve seen it coming?
I sat on the edge of the couch, elbows resting on my knees, and let my head hang forward for a moment. Breathing in. Breathing out. I still hadn’t told her. I didn’t plan to. Not until I was sure.
And when I was?
She’d either shatter like glass. Or burn with me. There would be no middle ground.
I reached for my lighter, flicked it open, then closed it. Again. Again. The click of it matched the rhythm of my thoughts. Sharp. Repetitive. Dangerous.
I didn’t know what the hell was coming in Naples. But I knew something was. Something bigger than her. Bigger than Lorenzo.
And it was already on its way.
Let it come. I’d be ready.
The room felt still, like the calm that settled before a storm broke open. Not the kind you hear rolling in from the horizon. The kind that just appears —heavy and sudden, as if it’s been waiting for the right moment to descend.
I leaned back against the couch, arms stretching along the backrest, my gaze fixed on the city beyond the glass. But I wasn’t seeing any of it. My mind was somewhere else entirely.
Naples.
The name alone was a trigger. The smell of salt in the air, the cracked cobblestones underfoot, the whispers of vendetta in every corner.
That was where the Silvani name lived. Bled. Ruled. And in three days, I’d be walking back into the heart of it. But this time, I wouldn’t be alone.
I tilted my head back against the couch, exhaling slowly through my nose.
Isabella.
She had claws under all that cool composure. I’d seen them now. Felt them. And if she truly was who Viktor hinted at— if —then she had been bred by fire long before I ever touched her.
My phone buzzed on the table in front of me. I didn’t reach for it right away. I just stared at the screen, waiting for the second vibration. It came a heartbeat later.
Matteo. Finally.
I grabbed the phone and swiped it open.
“I’ve never heard a whisper about a daughter. Not once. But if there’s something there, I’ll find it. Give me a little time.”
Short. Efficient. That was Matteo for you.
He didn’t waste words unless they had weight behind them. If he said he’d dig into it, he meant it. And if something was buried beneath Lorenzo’s estate—hidden names, bloodlines, the kind of secrets that only surface when it’s too late—he’d bring it to light.
Still… I sat with the message for a long moment, rereading it. No whispers. No trace. No record. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. It only meant it had been well hidden. Deliberately.
And that made sense, didn’t it?
If Lorenzo had a daughter by a woman who defied him… If that woman ran… If she died trying to stay hidden…
He’d erase all trace. Erase the scandal. Erase the weakness. Erase her.
But Isabella had survived. And now—without knowing it—she was walking straight back into the lion’s den.
I gripped the phone tighter. Did she know?
No. I didn’t believe she did. She looked for her family’s killer like someone who still had no answers. She didn’t walk around like the daughter of a Don. She didn’t act like a woman backed by a kingdom of men.
But blood didn’t lie. Even if you never knew where it came from, it spoke.
In your instincts. In the way you carried yourself. In the way you turned pain into armor.
I stared down at the message again, then dropped the phone back on the table with a dull thud and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
This could change everything. Not just for me. Not just for her. But for Naples. For the balance of power. For the kind of war Viktor wanted to start. He was playing both sides, feeding breadcrumbs to me and the Italians, watching who would tear the other apart first.
And we were walking straight into it.
A smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth, but it didn’t hold humor. It was instinct. That old Bratva edge kicking in. The one that came before the kill.
I stood slowly, walking back toward the balcony, the heat of the city washing over me as I opened the door.
Naples.
Viktor.
Lorenzo.
Isabella.
Four triggers. One match.
And I was going to strike it myself.