Chapter 40
The Flame
I didn't move when the car stopped.
The engine fell silent around me, but I remained exactly where I was, staring out through the tinted window at the building.
Every stone seemed to glow beneath the carefully positioned lights, every path lined with white flowers and flickering candles, transforming the entire place into something beautiful enough to belong in a bridal magazine.
It looked like a wedding. A real wedding. The kind little girls dreamed about when they were young. The kind my mother used to point out in magazines and tell me would one day be mine. Except none of this belonged to me. Not the flowers. Not the dress. Not the venue.
Not the choice.
And all of it was pointless. There were no guests, no one to celebrate with.
So what was I supposed to think? That Silas had done this all for me? That was laughable.
The driver opened my door and waited. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. A moment later, one of the guards appeared beside the vehicle.
“Miss Carbone.”
I folded my arms tighter across my chest and kept my eyes fixed on the window. “I’m not getting out.”
The silence that followed told me he had absolutely no intention of entertaining the discussion.
“Miss Carbone.”
“No,” I breathed, feeling a wave of heat rush over me as panic clawed at my throat.
“No!” The word came out sharper this time, fuelled by equal parts anger and desperation. “I’m not getting out of this car. You can tell Silas whatever you want, but I’m not doing this.”
The guard released a slow breath through his nose before reaching into the vehicle.
Panic immediately surged through my body.
I scrambled backwards across the seat, grabbing hold of anything I could reach, but it was a pathetic attempt from the beginning.
He caught my arm easily and began dragging me towards the open door.
“No!” I shouted, twisting violently in his grip. “Let go of me!”
My shoes scraped across the ground as he hauled me from the vehicle. I stumbled as soon as my feet touched the pavement, almost losing my balance entirely, and for one humiliating moment I felt like a child throwing a tantrum rather than a grown woman fighting for her future.
But I didn’t care.
Pride seemed insignificant compared to what waited for me inside.
“Please! Please don’t do this. My father has money. I promise you, he will make sure you’re—”
“Your father knows what’s happening.”
That knocked the wind straight out of me, and I immediately stopped fighting.
“What?” I whispered.
“Your father knows. Seems your little stunt last night didn’t work. Adrien isn’t coming, and neither is your father. Turns out the boss had an ace up his sleeve.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nobody is coming, Isabelle. Nobody. You’re all alone. The sooner you start accepting that, the better.”
They weren’t coming.
They weren’t fucking coming!
My father had abandoned me for the second time.
But why? A memory flashed behind my eyelids—Silas stood by the side of my bed, furiously typing away on my phone. What had he said to make Adrien and my father throw me to the wolves like this?
What the fuck had I missed?
And then I saw him.
Silas stood at the altar exactly as I had known he would, dressed in an immaculate black suit with his silver mask gleaming beneath the lights. He wasn’t moving. He simply stood there watching me with the same unnerving stillness that had haunted every encounter I’d ever had with him.
It was ridiculous that somebody could be so motionless and yet somehow dominate an entire space, but Silas had always possessed that ability.
He drew attention without demanding it. He inspired fear without raising his voice.
Even now he looked less like a groom waiting for his bride and more like a predator patiently waiting for prey to stop running.
Unfortunately for him, I had every intention of continuing.
The second his masked face turned fully towards mine, instinct took over.
I spun around and ran.
I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew that every survival instinct in my body was screaming at me to get as far away from Silas Falcone as physically possible.
I barely made it three steps.
A hand closed around my upper arm and yanked me backward so hard that pain shot through my shoulder.
I gasped, stumbling as the guard caught me and held me firmly in place.
“Let me go!” I shouted, struggling against him. “Please, just let me go!”
I looked desperately towards Silas, hating him with every fibre of my being, and was met with complete calm. There was no anger in his posture. No frustration. No sign that my attempted escape had inconvenienced him in the slightest.
Instead, he reached into his pocket.
Confusion flickered through me as he withdrew a small remote control.
Then he pressed a button.
A large screen behind the altar flickered to life.
For a second, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. The image was dark and grainy. I could hear muffled panting, but nothing more.
And then the camera adjusted, and my heart stopped beating.
This was the reason my dad wasn’t coming. This was the ace card Silas had up his sleeve. The answer to everything.
“Marco,” I whispered.
His head hung forward, blood stained the front of his shirt, and one side of his face was swollen beyond recognition, bruises darkening his skin beneath cuts and dried streaks of blood.
His lip had split and one eye was almost completely closed.
Fresh injuries blended into older ones until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.
My dad had chosen my brother over me. He wanted to guarantee Marco’s safety whilst sacrificing my own.
A figure dressed entirely in black stepped into the frame. A hood concealed every identifiable feature, leaving only darkness where a face should have been. The man lifted a hooked blade and rested it carefully against Marco’s throat, the sharpened edge pressing lightly against his skin.
Not enough to cut, but enough to promise that it could. Enough to show me exactly what would happen if I made the wrong decision.
My legs felt weak. The fight drained out of me so suddenly that it was almost physical.
The guard no longer needed to hold me upright.
I wasn’t going anywhere. I wouldn’t do this to Marco. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—sentence him to death.
My family might have abandoned me, but I wouldn’t do the same. If sacrificing myself meant my brother could live, then I knew that was the only choice I had.
I marched down the aisle, a fury unlike anything I had ever known simmering beneath the surface.
My fucking brother!
The person I loved most in the world.
I stood in front of Silas and scowled at him. “I hate you,” I whispered to his silver mask. “And I promise, I will make you regret all of this. I will make you pay for every single time you’ve hurt me.”
The silver mask just cocked to the side.
The officiant began speaking, but his words sounded distant, muffled beneath the roaring in my ears.
I watched Marco breathe the entire time. Watched the knife remain poised against his throat. Watched every tiny movement with desperate attention, terrified that if I looked away for even a second, I would miss the moment everything fell apart.
A nudge at my back had me stumbling forward, only just catching myself before I fell into Silas.
“Miss?”
“What? Oh…”
They were all looking at me expectantly.
“I do,” I said, the words feeling like glass on my tongue.
Then the officiant turned towards Silas.
“Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife…”
I didn’t hear the rest of the speech. I drifted away, already knowing Silas was going to lock this in.
“I do.”
What the fuck.
My head snapped up.
I knew that voice.
This couldn’t be happening.
His hand reached up to his face, his gloved hand hooking around the silver, and then the mask was lowered.
“Little ember,” he mocked, a disgusting, foul smirk on his face.
The nickname echoed through me with enough force to steal the air from my lungs.
Little ember.
The ground fell from beneath me as everything I had known shattered.
Memory after memory crashed together so violently that I couldn’t separate them anymore. The late-night phone calls. The text messages. The laughter. The comfort. The obsession. The protection. The surveillance. The manipulation.
The man I had trusted most in the world was standing in front of me, wearing a wedding ring and a satisfied smile.
And I had just become his wife.
“Luca…” I whispered.
And then the world turned black.