Harper
from her. Again. The heavy iron gates of the Bellini estate were locked tight. Without Luca's permission, she couldn't take a single step outside.
"Last month you snuck into underground bars twice. You ditched your bodyguards on your motorcycle, and then you got caught up in a shootout at the docks." Luca stood in front of her, his disappointment impossible to miss. "Isabella, when are you going to settle down ?"
"Then how am I any different from a prisoner you keep locked up on your estate?"
"If you didn't keep risking your life, I wouldn't have to rein you in at every turn. You're my wife. As Mrs. Bellini, you represent this family. You're not some ordinary woman who can come and go as she pleases."
"I just want to be myself. I don't want to spend my whole life locked in the safe little cage you built for me."
"You can be Mrs. Bellini, or someone else can."
After that, she gave up allthing. She stopped going out alone with a gun, and she stopped talking back to the Bellini elders in public. That lasted until the night of a grand banquet for both families. A woman she had never seen before was wearing the emerald necklace Isabella's late mother had left behind, and she viciously mocked the dead woman in front of everyone.
Isabella raised her hand and slapped the woman across the face.
Her father, Antonio Moretti, say the woman's name in a low, heavy voice. "Viola.She's my daughter too."
Luca walked over to Isabella and took the gun off her hip himself.
"I should have kept my wife in line."
Five years of dating, three years of marriage. She had filed down every sharp edge for him. She get one offhand remark: "I should have kept her in line."
Isabella turned and ran out of the glittering banquet hall.
Ten minutes later, she was ambushed at the street corner.
She reached for her hip on instinct. But her fingers found only an empty holster.
When she opened her eyes again, she had been reborn.Back to the time before she married Luca.