All Chapters of The king of Ashes : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

(Isabella’s POV) The car was silent on the way back to the Citadel, but it was a loud, heavy silence, filled with the echo of Vittorio Bianchi’s final words. You have forgotten about my ghost. And he is coming for her. The words wrapped around my heart like a band of ice. Her. He meant me. The triumphant, powerful feeling I had felt after the Commission meeting was gone, replaced by a cold, creeping fear. The war was no longer about empires or justice. It was about me. I was the target. I risked a glance at Alessandro. He was staring straight ahead, his handsome face carved from stone. But it was a different kind of anger than I had seen before. This was not the cold fury of a king planning his next move. This was the raw, primal rage of a man whose most precious person had been threatened. I could see the storm in his golden eyes, and for the first time, I understood that his love for me was not just his greatest strength, but also his greatest weakness. And our enemy knew

(Alessandro’s POV) I stared at Isabella, at the unwavering strength in her beautiful, determined face. Every instinct inside me, every fiber of my being that had been trained to protect, to control, to command, screamed at me to say no. To lock her in this penthouse and surround her with an army of guards until the threat was gone. To wrap her in my arms and never let her go. But when I looked into her eyes, I did not see a fragile woman asking for permission. I saw a queen, demanding the respect of her king. She was right. Forbidding her, locking her away, would make me a tyrant. It would make me no different from my controlling father, or from the men in our world who saw women as beautiful, breakable property to be owned and protected. And Isabella was not property. She was my partner. My love for her was a fierce, desperate thing. But my respect for her, for the brilliant, brave woman she had become, was just as strong. And in that moment, I knew that true love was not abo

(Alessandro’s POV) The decision was made. The hunt was on. The quiet, controlled atmosphere of the Citadel penthouse transformed into the tense, focused energy of a command center preparing for war. There was no time to waste. Every second that passed gave the ghost, Marco, more time to disappear into the shadows. “We travel light,” I commanded, my voice sharp and clear. “A small team, one vehicle. A large convoy would attract too much attention.” I looked at my most trusted men. “Lucian, you’re with me. Marcus, you drive. Anya, you will be our eyes and ears from here. You do not sleep until we have him.” As my men prepared, I saw Isabella in the bedroom, packing a small bag with a few essential items. Her face was a mask of cold, quiet determination. The part of me that was a king knew that she was essential to this mission. Her knowledge of Marco was our greatest weapon. But the part of me that was a man, the part of me that loved her more than my own life, screamed at me to

(Alessandro’s POV) The world exploded into sound and light. The blaring alarm was a scream in the quiet dawn, and the peaceful farmhouse became a deathtrap. The time for stealth was over. The time for war had begun. “Go! Go! Go!” I yelled into my comms, the order a sharp crack in the sudden chaos. The line to Isabella and Anya immediately went dead, a protocol to protect their location from being discovered during a fight. A cold knot of fear tightened in my gut, but I pushed it down. There was no time for fear. There was only time to fight. Guards appeared from rooms I hadn't known existed, their faces hard, their guns already firing. The narrow hallway lit up with muzzle flashes. Lucian, Marcus, and I, who had been silent shadows just a moment before, became a brutal and efficient machine of violence. We fell back into our training, our movements perfectly in sync. We took cover behind a corner, the wall beside me exploding in a shower of plaster from incoming bullets. My

(Alessandro pov ) The name felt like a betrayal. “It’s Moretti’s wife. It’s been her all along.” The silence that followed was heavier and more profound than the vast, empty landscape that surrounded us. The name hung in the air, an impossible truth that shattered our understanding of the world. Liliana Moretti. The Serpent’s wife. The Hidden Queen. The ghost who had been orchestrating this war was not just some unknown enemy; she was the wife of the most powerful man on the Commission, a man who had just given me his blessing to destroy her pawns. My mind, which had been racing to connect the dots, now felt frozen by the sheer scale of the deception. For twenty-five years, she had hidden in plain sight, a ghost wearing the protection of the most respected name in our world. For twenty-five years, she had been plotting her revenge, moving her pieces across the board while the rest of us were blind. Don Moretti himself was either the greatest fool in the history of our world,