Vows in Blood

The mansion still smelled of smoke and iron. The ambush had left scars in the marble floors, bullet holes etched into doorframes, and an invisible heaviness in the air that Isabella could not shake. I had vowed no one would ever breach my home, yet the enemy had stepped through its gates, dragging shadows into my walls. I should have seen it coming. I should have protected her better.

Now, the blood on my hands was not enough to silence the storm brewing inside me.

---

The night was cold, the kind of cold that seeped beneath the skin, bone-deep and biting. I stood in the cellar beneath the east wing, where the walls were thick enough to drown out screams. My men lingered in the shadows, waiting for my word.

Before me, tied to a steel chair, sat one of the rats we had pulled from the wreckage of the ambush. His lip was split, one eye swollen shut, but there was still defiance flickering behind the bruises. A fool’s kind of courage.

I crouched in front of him, keeping my voice low, steady, controlled. “You came into my house. You pointed guns at her.”

The man spat blood onto the floor. “You think you can stop what’s coming? You’re already dead, King.”

A murmur stirred behind me, but I lifted a hand, silencing my men. The word King was deliberate. A title spoken in the underworld only with venom or fear.

I leaned closer until my shadow consumed him. “No. I’m not dead. But you will be.”

My fist cracked across his jaw before the sentence had even settled. The chair rattled, metal scraping concrete. His groan was muffled, his bravado crumbling.

“Who sent you?” I asked.

He laughed through the blood. “Does it matter? One rival falls, another rises. You can’t kill the dark, Alexander. You are the dark.”

The words struck harder than the blow I’d landed. He wasn’t wrong. Once, I might have believed I had lines I wouldn’t cross. Tonight, I knew better. The lines were gone, erased by the sight of Isabella pressed against the marble as bullets shattered the chandeliers above her head.

I signaled to Matteo, who stepped forward with the precision of a man born for violence. He pressed the tip of a blade to the captive’s cheek, letting the threat linger.

“Talk,” I said, my voice quieter now. Quieter, and far more dangerous.

The man’s breath came ragged, but his eyes flicked upward, a smirk twitching at the corner of his swollen mouth. “She’s the key. You know it. That’s why you keep her locked up like a bird in a gilded cage. They don’t want you. They want her.”

For a moment, the world tilted. My pulse thundered in my ears, drowning everything else. Isabella. Always Isabella.

I grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him back against the chair, the steel groaning beneath the force. “Say her name again, and I’ll carve it out of your tongue.”

But the damage was done. He’d confirmed what I had already suspected in the quiet hours of the night, when Isabella’s soft breathing beside me did little to silence the gnawing paranoia. She wasn’t collateral. She was the target.

I released him, stepping back, chest heaving. My men waited, their silence heavier than the stone walls. They needed a decision. They needed me to be what I had always been: merciless.

I gave a single nod. Matteo didn’t hesitate. The blade slid across the man’s throat in one clean stroke, his gurgle swallowed by the cellar walls.

Silence reclaimed the room, broken only by the drip of blood onto the concrete.

I turned away, forcing my breathing back under control. Killing him brought no peace, no clarity. It never did.

“Burn the body,” I ordered. “Scatter the ashes. No trace.”

The men moved without question, their efficiency as sharp as the weapons strapped to their belts. I climbed the stairs, each step echoing with the weight of choices I could never undo.

---

Upstairs, the halls were quiet. Too quiet. I found Isabella standing near the shattered glass doors of the balcony, her arms wrapped around herself against the chill. The moonlight painted her in silver, fragile and unyielding all at once.

Her eyes met mine, searching, questioning, but she said nothing. Perhaps she already knew where I had been, what I had done. Perhaps the blood on my knuckles betrayed me.

I wanted to go to her. To gather her against me and swear that nothing, no rival, no enemy, no shadow, would ever touch her again. But the words felt hollow when my world was built on blood and broken promises.

Instead, I kept my distance. “It’s over for tonight.”

Her brow furrowed. “For tonight?”

I couldn’t lie to her, not anymore. “They’ll come again. But they won’t take you from me.”

Her lips parted as if to argue, but she closed them, swallowing whatever protest lingered on her tongue. She turned back to the night, shoulders trembling.

I hated myself then. Hated that the fear in her body was born from my world, my enemies, my choices.

I left before the silence could consume us both.

---

Hours later, as the mansion slept fitfully, I entered my office. The fire had burned low, embers glowing like the eyes of demons. A folder lay on my desk — intelligence reports, surveillance photos, names circled in red. None of it mattered. Every path led to the same truth: someone wanted Isabella.

And I would make the earth bleed before I let them touch her.

I poured a glass of whiskey, but before I could drink, a knock rattled the door. Matteo stepped inside, his expression darker than the night outside.

“We found something,” he said.

He set a small black envelope on my desk. My stomach turned to stone. Slowly, I opened it, revealing a card.

Thick. Matte. The kind used by men who lived and died in shadows.

A single line was scrawled across it in crimson ink:

“Even kings bleed. Will she?”

---

The glass slipped from my hand, shattering on the floor. For the first time in years, I felt cold fear crawl down my spine.