Love becomes real when it terrifies you.The penthouse was still—too still. The kind of silence that didn’t soothe but unsettled. Shadows from the city lights danced across the marble floor, long and distorted, like ghosts stretching their limbs. The glass walls offered a sweeping view of Manhattan, but Damian wasn’t looking. His mind was somewhere darker. Somewhere colder.Damian sat at the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched, shirt wrinkled from where she had tugged it, knuckles clenched tight. The words on the screen had long vanished, but they hadn’t left him.“You forgot rule number four, Damian. Never fall in love with a ghost. She belongs to us.”They hadn’t addressed her by name. But they didn’t need to.The word ghost clawed at something buried. Not just a warning. A message from the past. From the men who never spoke openly, who whispered threats in riddles and riddles in blood. “She belongs to us”?Who were they?Bratva? FSB? Or something worse—something that didn’t sign its
Obsession is a dangerous kind of devotion.It was 5:16 a.m.The sky outside was still a navy bruise, and Manhattan was eerily quiet, like the city itself was holding its breath.So was she.Isabella blinked sleepily, alone in the vast bed that still smelled of Damian—salt and cedarwood and sin. Her limbs ached in the most delicious ways, reminders of everything that had happened just hours ago. But it wasn’t the ache that woke her. It was the silence. The kind of silence that didn’t feel peaceful, but alert—like a held breath before a scream.She reached out instinctively, fingers grazing the cold side of the bed. He was gone. And with him, the warmth that had wrapped around her just hours ago.A shiver ran down her spine, more from intuition than cold. Something was off. Something was wrong.The coldness of the sheets beside her. The familiar hum of Damian’s security system being recalibrated. The quiet clack of a keyboard in the next room.She slipped out of bed, a faint frown on he
Some truths cut deeper than lies.“Tell me the truth, Damian. What did you do to her?”The question tasted like acid in Isabella’s throat, but she refused to swallow it. She had seen the fear in Eva’s eyes—and worse, the pity. The warning had shattered something fragile inside her.A tremor worked its way down her spine. She wasn’t sure if it was anger or fear—or both. She hated how Eva’s words stuck in her chest like barbed wire, echoing over and over.What if she was right?What if she was next?Not because Damian meant to hurt her—but because he didn’t know how not to?For a second, Isabella saw her reflection in the glass window behind Damian. Pale. Tight-lipped. Hollow-eyed. And she wondered if Eva had once looked the same.Damian stood across the room, his back half-turned, jaw clenched, fingers twitching at his sides. For a long moment, he said nothing. The room felt too quiet, too sterile for the war unraveling between them.“This isn’t about her,” he finally said, voice low,
The encrypted screen flickered, the letters glowing crimson as the final message pulsed across the monitor like a threat branded into fire.“I know who she is. I know where she is. And so do the others.”Isabella’s heart stuttered. Her breath caught mid-inhale, and for a brief moment, the penthouse seemed to tilt.“They’re here…” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “In New York.”Her stomach clenched. Her legs felt weak. New York was supposed to be safe. A place to vanish, to start over. A city filled with life big enough to disappear into. But now, no matter how far she’d run, Russia was clawing its way back. She could still remember the taste of iron in her mouth the last time she’d looked over her shoulder in the snow.“They found me,” she whispered, mostly to herself.Damian’s hands were already moving, fingers flying over his matte-black custom keyboard with the precision of a man used to outrunning shadows. His jaw was steel, eyes locked on the data.“Two firewalls down,”
Scars aren’t weakness—they’re survivalAfter the envelope issues.The silence in the master bedroom felt sacred. It wasn’t like the silence of fear, or even grief. It was the kind of silence that held truths too raw for language—where breath and heartbeat replaced conversation. The kind of silence that comes after walls fall down, brick by brick.Isabella’s hands were still pressed to Damian’s chest from the moment she had whispered his name at the end of their kiss. But something in his eyes had changed. There was no hunger now. Only something older, deeper… haunted.She didn’t say a word. Just waited.Damian let out a quiet breath and stepped back, loosening the first button of his shirt. “There’s something I need to show you.”Isabella blinked, confused at first. Then startled. “Now?”“If I don’t do it now…” His voice was rough. “I might never have the courage.”She nodded slowly, heart pounding.She wasn’t sure what she expected—a confession, maybe. Not… this. Not him laying himse
Some names should stay buried, but the past always remembers.The name on the envelope made her stomach twist into a thousand silent knots.The air around her thickened, like something invisible had entered the room. A chill spread across her bare arms, even though no window was open. It was as if the name itself had teeth—biting through the peace she’d barely begun to trust.Martinez.Elegant. Cold. Inked in a handwriting that didn’t belong in this life she had fought to build.It shouldn’t exist here. Not in Damian’s penthouse. Not on top of the polished glass console table beside their gold-trimmed wedding frame. And certainly not staring back at her like a ghost.Isabella stared at it for what felt like hours. Her lungs barely expanded. Her pulse climbed and crashed and then climbed again. It was like someone had plucked her out of the present and thrown her into the past—into a snow-covered graveyard outside Moscow where her father’s name had been carved into stone just after his