All Chapters of BOUND TO THE BEAST : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

POV: AriaAfter Luca left to coordinate security measures, I sat on my bed feeling like a prisoner again. The brief moments of honesty we'd shared over breakfast felt like they'd happened years ago instead of hours. Now the mansion was on full lockdown, guards stationed everywhere, and Isabella was out there somewhere planning to kill me.I pulled my knees to my chest, trying to calm my racing heart. The collar felt heavy around my neck. I touched it absently, remembering what Luca had said. Not just a prison, but his way of knowing I was alive.A soft scraping sound at the door made me freeze. I waited, barely breathing, but no knock came. No one entered. After a long moment, I stood and moved cautiously toward the door. When I opened it, the hallway was empty except for two guards stationed at the end of the corridor. They hadn't seen anything.But there, on the floor just inside my room, was a photograph. I picked it up with trembling hands. It was old, the edges yellowed and worn.

POV: AriaIsabella stood in the doorway with two armed men flanking her, a gun in her hand and murder in her eyes. But she didn't shoot. Not yet. She smiled instead, slow and cold."Well, isn't this cozy? My ex-fiancé, his little wife, and the man who killed his brother. All together in one room. I couldn't have planned this better myself."Luca moved in front of me instinctively. "Isabella, don't do this.""Don't do what? Kill the girl who ruined everything? Or kill all three of you and solve multiple problems at once?" She tilted her head, considering. "Decisions, decisions."More footsteps in the hallway. More guards, but I couldn't tell whose side they were on anymore. The mansion had become a war zone, and I was trapped in the middle with two men pulling me in different directions and a woman who wanted me dead."Everyone stop!" My voice came out stronger than I expected. "Just stop. All of you."Isabella laughed. "The little mouse found her voice. How adorable.""I'm not running

POV: AriaI stared at the diamond collar around my neck, my fingers trembling against the cold metal. Luca was unconscious on the couch, bleeding out, and I had to make a choice that could kill us all.Take it off and we'd be invisible. Isabella and Viktor couldn't track us. But Luca's men couldn't find us either. We'd be alone, vulnerable, with a dying man and no medical help.Keep it on and we'd have help. But we'd also have a target on our backs."Aria, decide." Dante's voice was urgent. He had his hands pressed against Luca's wound, his fingers slick with blood. "I need you focused. Is that thing staying on or coming off?"I looked at Luca's pale face. His breathing was shallow, labored. He was dying right in front of me."It stays on." I moved to Dante's side. "We need help, and Luca's men can provide it. What do you need me to do?""Medical supplies. Isabella's looking, but this place better be stocked or he's not going to make it." Dante's jaw was tight. "Check that cabinet aga

POV: AriaThe bullet never came. Isabella's gun was pointed at me, her finger on the trigger, but she didn't fire. Instead, she tilted her head and studied me like I was a puzzle she couldn't quite solve."Lower your weapons!" she called out to her men. "All of you."The gunfire stopped abruptly. An eerie silence fell over the warehouse parking lot. Behind me, I could hear Dante's harsh breathing and Luca's pained gasps as he struggled to stay upright."What are you doing?" one of Isabella's men asked, confused."I said lower your weapons." Her voice was ice. "Anyone who fires without my permission will answer to me personally."The men obeyed, though they kept their guns ready. Isabella lowered hers too, but didn't holster it. She took three steps toward me, then stopped."You stepped in front of a bullet for him." It wasn't a question. "For Dante. The man you barely know.""I stepped in front of a bullet for someone who didn't deserve to die." My hands were still shaking, but I kept

POV: AriaIsabella's blood was warm on my hands as I knelt beside her body. Her eyes stared up at nothing, empty and lifeless. The woman who'd tried to kill me, who'd offered me power, who'd revealed the truth about the necklace, was gone."Aria." Dante's voice cut through my shock. "We need to move. Now."But I couldn't move. I was staring at Isabella's face, at the slight curl of her lips that might have been a smile. She'd died trying to tell me something. Something important about the necklace."Wait." I leaned closer to her, desperate. "What did she say? Right at the end?""She said it was a kill switch." Luca's voice was hollow. "That Viktor could activate it and..""No, after that. She said something else." I replayed the moment in my mind. Isabella's lips moving, barely audible over the sound of Viktor's men leaving. "She said... press the center.""Press the center?" Dante knelt beside me. "Of what?""The necklace." My hand went to my throat, to the cold metal and diamonds th