Chapter 2

Looking for the core ledgers her father had left behind, Isabella slipped into the old study on the top floor of the De Luca mansion.

The room had once been the study she shared with Matteo. Outside the window, a car backfired with a sudden bang.

Bang!

It sounded eerily like a shot from a high-powered sniper rifle.

In that instant, the nightmares of the cell came flooding back: the electric shocks, the ice water, the whip, the rounds fired into the floor by her feet... The trauma response hit so hard that her legs gave out. She crashed to the floor, curled into the corner, and shook violently as her breathing turned fast and shallow.

Footsteps came racing down the hall, and the door was shoved open.

Matteo ran in. He did not call for anyone, and he did not turn on the light.

He knew her too well. He knew Isabella could not stand bright light when she was terrified. He came over quietly, sat where she could see him, and said in a low voice:

"Lighthouse."

It was the safe word they had agreed on before the wedding. Saying those two syllables meant the danger had passed.

"One, two, three..." Just like before, he began counting her breaths for her at a steady, even pace.

Isabella's eyes filled at once. Three years had passed, yet her body still remembered him. Her rigid nerves slowly loosened, and she even allowed his hand to rest lightly on her cold, violently trembling wrist.

For a moment, the study went quiet. Isabella almost believed that the Matteo who had sworn to protect her with his life had come back.

Not long after, he brought her a cup of warm milk and placed it in her hands. It was the same drink he used to make every night when they stayed up late over the port accounts.

"Bella, I know you've been through hell." Matteo sat across from her, his expression grave. "For the first three months after you vanished, I burned through every liquid asset the family had. I was ready to go to war with three families to find you... But then a piece of classified evidence was delivered to the Council."

Isabella's heart lurched. "What evidence?"

"It showed that you handed the Moretti port shipping routes to the kidnappers yourself, to save your own life." There was a thread of pain in Matteo's voice. "That was when I had to call off the rescue. I was acting head of the De Luca family. I couldn't bury the whole family for the sake of one person who had betrayed it."

A very faint flicker of hope stirred somewhere in Isabella's chest.

So he had looked for her? So he had not abandoned her from the start?

"Show me that evidence." She stared at him hard, her voice unsteady. "Matteo, just show it to me, and if that really is my signature, I'll leave New York and never look back!"

But Matteo would not meet her eyes.

"The file has been sealed by the Council." He stood, his voice slipping back into its old, imperious tone. "Sign at the Council in fourteen days and acknowledge my twins' claim to the family, and I'll show you the document privately."

The tiny spark of hope inside her died at once.

He had no intention of showing her anything. He was using her hunger for the truth to force her to submit to Bianca and the children!

"I won't sign." Isabella pushed the still-warm cup of milk away and spoke flatly.

Matteo's face darkened. He looked at her for a long moment, then turned and left the study.

After he left, memory guided Isabella to the hidden safe in the study, and she opened it. Inside were the De Luca family's core payment ledgers from the past three years.

She flipped rapidly through the ledgers, scanning for the ransom entry from three years earlier.

Finally, on page forty-two of the third volume, she found the date: September fourteenth. The entry read: Ransom payments terminated. Rescue operation withdrawn.

Isabella's breath stopped.

In the false bottom of that same safe, she also found the date Bianca's prenatal file had been opened at Saint Maria Hospital in New York: September fifteenth.

One day apart.

On September fourteenth, he stopped searching for her and cut off her only way out. On September fifteenth, Bianca moved into the De Luca mansion with the twins' prenatal chart as if she had every right to be there.

Just then Bianca's voice drifted in from the hallway as she cooed to the children:

"Look how pretty this christening medallion is, my darlings. Remember this date. Three years ago today, your father chose us. He got you the highest place the Moretti family has to give."

Each soft word from Bianca felt like a dull blade dragged across Isabella's heart.

Cold swept through her. Her hands shook as she tore out the payment page and reached for the device she carried to copy it.

Then she turned the thin page over, and her pupils shrank to pinpoints.

On the back there was no Council seal, no official endorsement of any kind—only a note in black ink. The handwriting was sweeping and sharp-edged, the hand she had known for ten solid years, the hand of Matteo De Luca:

"End all searching. No further rescue."

Beneath it, clear as day, were his signature and his private seal.

No misunderstanding. No extenuating circumstances. No pressure from any Council.

It was Matteo. While she had hovered between life and death, waiting for him to save her, he had taken up the pen and signed her death sentence himself.