Chapter 5

Inside the sealed transport van bound for the psychiatric clinic, Isabella made her move.

Isabella knew the van's layout inside and out. With a tiny metal tool she had concealed, she severed the cabin's main control line, triggering a brief but total system blackout. During the ten seconds the guards spent scrambling to restore power, she leaped from the compartment and vanished into the rain and mud.

She did not care that she was soaked through. She went straight for the abandoned warehouse where her parents had died in that horrific crash.

The warehouse stank of rust and rot. Beneath a beam that looked ready to collapse, Isabella found Luca on the floor. The old guard had been shot in the abdomen, and blood seeped steadily from the wound, staining the dust around him red. Her father's old wooden rosary was clamped in his fist.

"Miss Isabella... the evidence..." Luca's words broke apart between breaths.

Isabella's eyes were bloodshot. She twisted open the rosary's largest bead and found a miniature encrypted audio chip inside. Without hesitation, she pulled out a handheld terminal and transmitted the raw data directly to Julian in real time for remote backup.

Backup progress: 100%

The instant the screen lit up, the warehouse door was kicked in, and blinding flashlight beams locked onto Isabella.

"Don't move! Put it down!" Bianca filed in with her men at her heels, shrieking. "Matteo, look at her! She attacked a guard and escaped, stole the family's core ledgers and secrets, and met with a traitor!"

Matteo came forward slowly from behind the crowd.

His gaze settled on Isabella's blood-covered hands, stained from where she had pressed on Luca's wound.

Matteo's eyes were terrifyingly cold. "Isabella. Hand it over."

"Matteo, call an ambulance! Luca is dying!" Isabella's voice was raw, her plea almost desperate. "I'll explain everything, but we have to save him first!"

"Explain?" Bianca cut in, her voice venomous. "Matteo, Luca was bought by a rival family long ago. Tonight he planned to sell the Moretti port's most guarded secrets! Isabella is helping him destroy the evidence!"

Matteo looked from the armed Luca on the floor to Isabella's blood-soaked hands, and the last trace of trust vanished from his eyes. With the Mafia Council only days away, he would not allow a scandal exposing a power struggle within the family.

"Take Luca into custody." Matteo looked away, his voice merciless. "As for Isabella... take her to cold storage number three at the docks. Let her cool down in there for a while."

Cold storage number three was kept at zero degrees Fahrenheit year-round.

Matteo knew perfectly well that during her three years in captivity, Isabella had spent long stretches in a freezing, damp basement cell. He knew the trauma had left her terrified of the cold to her very bones!

He chose that punishment anyway. No one knew better where to hurt her.

The moment the door closed, brutal cold engulfed Isabella. Her heart clenched violently with the trauma response, and she struggled to breathe.

"Matteo! Open the door! Matteo!"

For the first few minutes, she pounded and clawed at the steel door on instinct until her fingers were battered bloody. She could hear Matteo standing right outside, but he never once gave the order to open the door.

Isabella's hand slid slowly down the steel door. She stopped calling for help. The last trace of warmth in her eyes died, replaced by cold, absolute resolve.

Shaking violently, she made herself move. She stripped off her soaked outer layer, used the metal clip from her hair to rip the temperature sensor line off the wall and short out the thermostat, then dragged over a heavy rack and forced open the vent of the maintenance duct. She crawled into the next compartment, unlocked the latch from the other side, and got the unconscious, badly wounded Luca out and away. Then she went back into the cold room.

By the time Matteo shoved open the cold-storage door nearly an hour later, panic had broken through his composure. Isabella lay curled beside the freezing vent, her face white as paper, her breathing shallow, a thin layer of frost coating her body.

"Bella!" Matteo's eyes flew wide. Abandoning all restraint, he rushed to her and pulled her into his arms, stripping off his coat and wrapping it tightly around her frozen body. "God, how could it have been this long? I'm sorry... Bella, open your eyes!"

He shouted her name again and again as he carried her, barely alive, at a run all the way to the hospital.

Late that night, in a private suite at an exclusive hospital.

While Matteo was called away on urgent Council business, Isabella slowly regained consciousness in the silent room. Every bone in her body hurt as if it had been crushed, but her eyes had gone unnaturally cold.

Isabella struggled to pull out the transmitter and open an encrypted channel to Julian.

"Julian. The Moretti neutral asset trust... activate it now." Her voice was raw, but every word was final.

"Isabella! You're awake. How are you?" Julian's voice came through urgently, then turned grave. "My people picked Luca up and got him out. And I've decrypted a portion of the audio from the chip in your father's rosary... You need to brace yourself."

The audio file came across and played quietly in the dim room.

It was a radio recording from three years ago.

"Don, the kidnappers are asking whether the second ransom payment should be sent on schedule. The Donna is still in their hands..."

Then a familiar voice came through the speaker, so desolate and merciless that it chilled Isabella to the bone:

"Don't bother. Stop all payments."

It was Matteo's voice.

A boundless chill shot from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head, colder than the freezer itself.

Whatever tenderness Isabella still had for Matteo was buried for good.