Chapter 27 Isabella
Chapter twenty-seven
Isabella
Suddenly, there’s a tap on my face, and I jolt awake. Elena’s face is the first thing I see.
“Oh, thank God. I thought you died.” She’s hovering over me with a look I can’t quite figure out.
“What happened?”
The side of my head throbs, and when I lift my hand to it, there’s blood there.
“He hit you over the head with a plank,” she sighs, scooting back to sit against the wall with her knees tucked to her chest.
I furrow my brows, and slowly, memory hits me. I followed Father here after the confrontation with Dominic. And I found Elena. Shit!
“Hopefully, you have just a mild concussion.” Her shoulders sink as she stares at my head.
I soon identify the glint in her eyes as care. It feels weird, and somehow that makes me angry.
“There’s no need to pretend, Elena. My memory is still intact,” I say, but it comes out with more force than intended.
She throws her gaze to the tiled floor, and I ball my hands into fists as memories of everything she did—or didn’t do— come crashing down on me. But I push them away and focus on the one thing I thought when I saw her.
What is she doing here?
“What are you doing here? I thought you ran away?”
She shakes her head, and I don’t know how to feel when I see tears streaming down her cheeks. “I didn’t, Bella. He’s kept me here since the wedding.”
Her lips quiver and my eyes widen. “W-what?”
“Father…he. Oh God,” she bites her lips and looks up as if that could stop her tears, but it doesn’t. “He kidnapped me, said he doesn’t trust me around Dominic and…I’ve been here since.”
Blood rushes to my head, and for a split second, the world tilts. She’s been here? Dumbfounded is an understatement for the expression that overtakes me.
“Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he trust you around Dominic?”
“Because I know his secret.” She rests her chin on her knees, her thin, dirty hair framing the side of her face.
My mind races, wheels grinding in my skull. The wedding was months ago, and she’s been here the whole time? Dad kidnapped his own daughter?
“What secret?” I ask, holding my breath. As she lifts her head to mine, I catch a deep purple bruise that stretches around her neck in a pattern of finger marks. God, that is…that’s a sign that someone tried to strangle her.
My heart wrenches.
“I heard him speaking about how some assassination that he ordered had gone wrong,” her voice shakes, her hands trembling as if the mere memory of it hurts her. “And how…how they needed to pin it on the Moretti Mafia.”
I release a sharp breath and stagger to my feet. “What?!”
“It was the night before the wedding. I went to his room, but he wasn’t there.
Shortly after I entered, he came, so I hid in his closet.
Then he started making a call.” She pulls her knees tighter to her chest. “He found me and…I begged and...and I thought he’d let me go, but the morning of the wedding, at the hotel, he. ..knocked me out and I woke up here.”
Something about the way she says it makes my chest tighten. She must have been so scared.
“You know, I wish I had never moved to steal that money. I probably wouldn’t be here.”
I cock a brow at her. “Steal?”
What did she need money for? She was always beautifully reimbursed by Father.
“You’re the favorite child, you could have easily gotten money if you asked,” the words come out harder than intended. My vein pulses beneath my skin as I sharply glance around the cell, eyes searching for an escape.
I suddenly don’t want to be here longer than I should be. I sympathize with her, but that doesn’t erase how she treated me all those years.
“Things aren’t always how they seem, Bella,” she sighs. “I didn’t have the easier life like everyone thought.”
“I can assure you, you did,” I spit out without looking at her.
“Father never allowed me to treat you as anything more than…the usual.”
That halts my movement against the iron bars. Slowly, I turn and slant my brows at her, which causes more pain on the side of my head.
“He warned me to see myself as superior. Said I should be a man. He was obsessed with making me into the male heir he never got.”
“And so he gave me a list of rules to follow. According to that list, I couldn’t show too much emotion because men who lead don’t.
My life was mapped out to the detail, Bella.
” Her voice cracks as she buries her head between her palms. “All my outings, my hairstyle, the things I say, my friends. I had to appear like the perfect heiress when I was dying inside.”
A sudden cold chills my spine.
“I felt like my life wasn’t my own anymore. I was tired of carrying a responsibility I didn’t want. So one day I told Father, and he…” She chokes on a sob. “He slapped me.”
I stay silent. I always knew Dad hated both of us…but I didn’t know she had it this bad. I’d always thought…
“He threatened me to stay away from you, otherwise he’d go physical with you. Said you were a distraction. In his book, hostility is what makes a fearless leader…”
My fingers slide off the bars, and I sink to the ground. So all those years I thought she didn’t do anything. The years I thought that my sister acted like a stranger…this was the reason?
“God, I’m sorry, Bella,” she cries as if reading my mind. “For all those years, it felt like I was distant…”
I stare at her. For a second, I think it’s all a lie. Some desperate tale she’s spinning for the sake of mercy, but the rawness in her voice doesn’t feel like a lie.
And somehow that makes me angrier.
“You’re telling me that all those years of silence were just Father’s orders?”
Her chin jerks in a quick nod, which elicits a bitter laugh from me. I probably should keep quiet, but the little girl in me—the one who yearned for her sister’s comfort while being treated like the family’s disposable mistake—refuses to let go so easily.
“You let me drown so you wouldn’t. You kept quiet all those years because deep down you thought that you were better than me.”
She gasps, but I don’t let her say more.
“You were acknowledged, Elena,” I snap. “You had everything I didn’t, but the one thing I needed…the one fucking thing you could have done, and you chose to follow Father’s orders. Tell me, did Father order your friends to make fun of me, too?”
She winces, and the silence after is thick. Of course, she probably wanted to seem cool to her friends…at the expense of me, her sister.
Only the sound of our ragged breathing fills the air.
My chest tightens as her head falls into her palms. She releases strained sobs, and God, I want to reach out, but I quickly catch myself…
because as selfish as it sounds, she doesn’t get an easy pass to my mercy. Not when I spent years bleeding alone.
Dizziness washes over me, and my vision blurs momentarily. Instinctively, my hand flies to my belly. It’s still unconfirmed, but if I’m truly carrying, then I hope to get out of here as fast as I can and make sure the baby is okay.
“Save your tears, Elena. We have to get out of here.”
I barely stand when Father appears before the cell, a sinister smile on his face. Anger surges in my chest as his eyes land on me.
“At least you were finally useful for something.” His lips curve in an irritating grin.
“The Saudis will attack anytime soon. Your little husband will take the fall on my behalf…and just as a bonus, maybe I could step in and take over what remains of his mafia.”
“You’re looking at the new king.” He laughs, the sound scratching the base of my spine.
My hands involuntarily clench as I take in his sickly sweet smile. There’s a look in his eyes that tells me he truly believes in his stupid plan. And that makes me livid.
Slowly, I feel all those unsaid words…everything I tried to chew back all those years, rising in my throat.
“No,” I spit, shaking my head. “You’re not a king. You’re a fucking coward. A gambler who bets with other people’s lives when you don’t have the courage to pay your own debts.”
Elena gasps beside me, and I smile when I see Father’s smile fall.
“You stupid bitch. You think you’re something now?
” he scoffs, eyeing me with contempt. “You foolishly accepted the bracelet and jeopardized your husband’s critical information.
You couldn’t even differentiate an AI-generated clip from the real thing.
You are the main reason for your husband’s downfall. ”
I wince, but there’s a sudden surge of confidence in my veins. Maybe it’s because, now more than ever, I realize that my strength isn’t just mine anymore. One day, it’ll belong to every girl I’ll help—every woman I’ll pull from the fire I barely escaped.
“You spent your life demanding fear in place of love. You taught us to bow so you could feel tall.” I hold his gaze, reducing my voice to a deadly whisper. “You taught me to shrink so your ego could grow. But guess what? Not anymore.”
“I see marrying that bastard gave you a lot of confidence,” he sneers furiously.
“I’ll make sure you pay for every word, you fucking ingrate.
” His voice is thick with intention as he slams his hands against the cell.
In the past, I’d have cowered…shrunk back, but not anymore.
Elena flinches, but I don’t waver in my stance.
In fact, I step forward until the metal bars of the cell feel cold against my palm.
“You’re nothing but a coward, Father.”
He hisses and jams his hand against my fingers, which are around the iron bars. I inhale sharply, pain ricocheting through my hand, but lean my face as close to his as I can get.
“You’re weak. You have blood on your hands but no spine to own it. Call yourself king all you want, but a real king doesn’t hide in some basement and push his daughters behind cages to shield his cowardice.”
He roars, nails digging into the skin of my fingers. It stings, and blood wells where his nails bite into my skin, but I hold his gaze, my rage burning hot, and he stares me down with equal intensity.
“Dominic will come for you, and I’ll be there to watch you suffer.”
An unfamiliar expression crosses his eyes before he steps back, clenching his jaw. “I’ll kill you first when I return…or maybe I’ll let Elena do it.” Darting his gaze to Elena, who lets out a scared whimper, he straightens his shirt and walks away.
I release a deep sigh and plop onto the thin, dirty mattress in the corner.
“I know him,” Elena starts after a moment of silence. I can hear the pain and brokenness in her voice. “He’ll follow through with his promise, Bella. I don’t want to kill you.”
My head pounds as I stare at the padlock that jams the cell together. I rise swiftly, holding it in my hands as if that could magically unlock it. But my strength is no match for this.
There has to be a way. I need to get out of here and inform Dominic of the disaster Father has wrought. Wheels turn in my head as I dart my gaze around the cell, trying to find anything. That’s when something clicks.
Shoving my hand into my hair, I fiddle around for a hairpin, grab it and insert it into the little keyhole. Please work, I mutter to myself. I’ve barely twisted it when Elena’s voice reaches me.
“That only works in movies.”
I don’t answer. Sweat beads my forehead as I attempt countless times to open it, but it doesn’t budge. I try to hit, yank, break…but nothing works, and slowly, my determination starts to waver, leaving frustration instead.
“No!” I bang my fist against the bars, and my knuckles sting.
“Unless you have a phone and call for help, we aren’t getting out of here.”
Phone.
My hand immediately flies to the pocket of my pants and I grit my teeth when I don’t feel it there.
“He took it while you were unconscious,” Elena sighs, the look in her eyes revealing just one thing. Resignation. Dread settles heavily in my gut. Of course, she’s been here longer than I have.
“We’re locked in, Bella. I’ve tried everything. There’s no way out.”