All Chapters of BLOOD AND ROSES: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

For the first time since her arrival, Isabella did not feel like prey. She stayed up long after Damian left, tracing her fingers over the maps, memorizing corridors, hidden exits, storage routes, the outlines of places where freedom was a matter of inches. When the candle finally guttered out, she closed her eyes and whispered to herself, “Knowledge is armor.” The next morning, she woke before the guards came. The world inside Damian Moretti’s mansion had its own rhythm, like a clock wound centuries ago that refused to stop. The staff began their movements at dawn—quiet, efficient, trained to never linger. The men in black rotated through the corridors, weapons always at their side. But today, Isabella noticed things she had ignored before: the way Marco subtly nodded to each shift, the coded knocks on each door, the way Damian’s shadow passed through the hall once every hour, not by coincidence, but calculation. She followed the rhythm. When Damian entered the train

Isabella's POV The bruises had faded, but the ache remained — not on my body, but somewhere deeper, where fear and defiance constantly fought for control. It had been weeks since Damian decided i needed to “learn how to survive,” and every morning began the same: with the echo of a gunshot in the training yard. I hated the sound at first. Now, it was as familiar as my heartbeat. Marco oversaw my training most days. He wasn’t cruel, not like Damian could be, but he was relentless. “Again,” he would bark when my arms trembled from holding the pistol too long. “Again,” when I failed to land a hit on the dummy’s chest. And when I finally hit it dead center, his only response was a curt nod — approval measured in silence. By the third week, I could load and fire in under five seconds. I’d learned to anticipate recoil, how to steady my breathing, how to not flinch when a bullet tore through the air. But it wasn’t just the training that wore me down. It was the unspoken reason

The convoy left the mansion at dawn. The air was cool, sharp with the faint scent of gun oil and damp gravel. Isabella sat beside Damian in the back seat, her pulse echoing in her ears louder than the quiet hum of the engine. Two black SUVs followed close behind, shadows guarding shadows. Damian hadn’t spoken much that morning. His eyes were fixed on the world outside the tinted window — steel-gray streets, the occasional stray dog, the broken rhythm of the city waking up. Yet, the weight of his silence wasn’t cold like it used to be. It was different now — heavy with thought, not anger. “Where are we going?” Isabella finally asked. He looked at Isabella, his expression unreadable but softer than it would’ve been months ago. “A meeting. Not one you need to talk at — just observe.” Isabella nodded. He’d been teaching her more lately — subtle lessons woven between breakfasts and strategy sessions. How to read people, when to keep quiet, how to sense danger before it arrived. B

Isabella's POV The echo of gunfire still lived in Isabella’s bones. Even after the night fell silent again, it hadn’t really ended because silence was never true peace. It was only what lingered between heartbeats, between the living and the dying. The moment replayed on a cruel loop in her mind: Damian on the ground, the red spreading beneath his hand, the air tearing open with sound. She’d moved before thinking—before remembering who he was or what he’d done. She’d thrown herself toward him, shouting his name, pressing her hands to the wound that had nearly ended him. Her voice, raw and pleading, had felt like someone else’s. Now, hours later, the mansion stood still under a dim wash of lamplight. The scent of smoke still clung to her hair and his jacket—both of which lay across a chair, bloodstained and stiff. Marco’s men had swept the estate, leaving only restless quiet and the metallic ghost of fear behind. Damian had survived. Because i’d saved him. And that was wha

The silence in the study was different now. It wasn’t the quiet of restraint or calculation—it was the kind that came after the world had shifted, when something unseen had broken and couldn’t be mended the same way again. Damian stood before the wide desk, hands braced on the polished wood, eyes fixed on the folder Marco had left. Inside it were names, phone records, coded messages, and photographs—proof that the attack hadn’t come from outside their world but from within it. And more damning than that—one of those numbers led back to a man Isabella once called family. Her father. The man who had smiled at their wedding, who had toasted to their “union of power.” Damian didn’t move for a long while. He just stared at the papers, the muscle in his jaw tightening with every breath. Behind him, Isabella stood by the door, her hands clasped before her, fingers trembling. She hadn’t dared speak since Marco left, but she felt the weight of the truth pressing into her skin, crus