Semua Bab The Don's Ruthless Empire: Bab 51 - Bab 60

Point of view: Isabella“You understand that once you post this, every rival family from here to the northern docks will know exactly what you look like,” Enzo said, holding the phone toward me with a caution that made my hands go cold before I had even taken it, his eyes searching my face for any last flicker of doubt.I had rehearsed the words a dozen times in the mirror over the last hour, standing alone in the guest room that had somehow become mine, trying to strip away every trace of fear until only certainty remained, because I understood something Salvatore did not, that the coast did not respect softness, but it respected a woman who refused to be afraid in front of it.“I understand exactly what it means,” I said. “That is the entire point.”Matteo stood beside me, close enough that his presence felt like the only steady thing in a room full of moving parts, though he had said very little since agreeing to let me do this. I could feel the tension radiating off him, not disap

Point of view: Isabella“Your father was not the only one who loved her,” Salvatore said, his voice barely above a whisper, and I watched Matteo go absolutely still beside me, like a man bracing for a blow he could not see coming, his whole body suddenly rigid in a way that frightened me more than anything Dante had said on the phone.The room felt smaller suddenly, the weight of another buried secret pressing against walls that had already absorbed too many that night, the lamp in the corner casting long shadows that seemed to lean in and listen. I reached for Matteo’s hand without thinking, my fingers finding his automatically now, the way they had begun to over these three weeks, and he gripped mine back hard enough that I understood exactly how much this conversation was costing him.“Say it plainly,” Matteo said. “I am done with half truths tonight, Salvatore. Every one of them has cost us something we could not afford to lose.”Salvatore lowered himself into a chair, looking old

Point of view: Isabella“If you want him back safely,” the voice on the phone said, cold and unfamiliar, “you will come to the gala tomorrow night exactly as planned, and you will bring nothing that resembles a rescue.”I watched the blood drain from Matteo’s face as he listened, his hand tightening around the phone until his knuckles went white, and I understood before he even lowered it from his ear that whatever had just happened had changed the entire shape of the danger we were facing, the fragile plan we had only just built already crumbling.“Who was that,” I asked the moment he set the phone down.“I do not know,” he said. “But they have Enzo, and they are using him as insurance against whatever I might have planned for tomorrow night.”My stomach dropped, thinking of Enzo walking out of that room hours earlier, grief stricken and furious, straight into whatever danger had been waiting for him outside these walls, alone and unguarded in a way none of us had thought to prevent.

Point of view: Isabella"Someone knows where your mother is tonight, and she is not alone." I read the message twice before my hands understood what my mind already knew, that the danger had followed us home before we had even left the warehouse behind us.Matteo took the phone from my shaking hands and read it himself, his jaw tightening in a way I had learned to recognize as the moment his calm turned into something colder and more useful. "Where is Rosa supposed to be tonight," he asked, already reaching for his own phone before I could answer."At the house," I said. "With Nico. She never leaves the house past dark anymore, not since Papa died." My voice cracked on the last word, and Enzo, still bruised and leaning on the doorframe behind us, straightened despite his injuries."I will call the guard I placed outside her door two days ago," Matteo said. "Isabella, look at me. We do not know yet that this is real. It could be Dante trying to scatter us, to make us panic and run in t

Point of view: Isabella"You cannot walk into that gala tomorrow," Salvatore said, his voice raw with something I had never heard from him before, real fear, "not after everything that happened tonight."We had found Nico an hour earlier, shaken but unharmed, held in a locked office rather than anywhere truly dangerous, which told me Dante had never intended real violence, only pressure, only the promise of it hanging over our heads like a blade that had not yet fallen. Now the whole household sat gathered in the study at nearly four in the morning, exhaustion pulling at every face in the room except Matteo's, who stood at the window with his arms crossed, unreadable.Nico sat slumped in the corner chair, a blanket around his shoulders despite the warmth of the room, staring at the floor like he could not bring himself to look any of us in the eye. I wanted to go to him, to hold him the way I had when we were children and he woke from nightmares certain something was hiding under his