(Isabella POV)
I packed like a woman preparing for her own funeral. Not because I had much worth stealing, but because every item I touched felt like evidence of a life I was about to abandon.
A cardigan that still held traces of my mother's lavender soap in its fibers. A paperback copy of Jane Eyre with pages swollen from too many bath-time readings, the spine cracked where I'd bent it back to mark my place. A rosary my grandmother had pressed into my palm before she died—beads worn smooth by decades of desperate prayers I no longer believed would be answered.
One small bag. That was all Leonardo's man had allowed when he'd returned an hour after the contract signing.
"Pack light," Rico had said, his scarred face impassive. "You won't need much where you're going."
The storm outside hammered against our windows with the fury of something caged. Rain streaked the glass in chaotic patterns that reminded me of tears, and somewhere in the distance sirens wailed their familiar urban lament. The soundtrack of a city that ate its young.
I zipped the bag shut with trembling fingers and turned toward the bedroom where my mother lay dying by inches.
She looked smaller each day, as if the cancer were erasing her pencil stroke by pencil stroke. The treatments had carved away everything soft, leaving only the sharp architecture of bones beneath translucent skin. But her eyes still held light when I sat on the edge of her bed.
"Bella." Her voice was barely breath, but it carried the same warmth it had when she used to sing me to sleep. "Where are you going, mia cara?"
The truth stuck in my throat like swallowed glass. I couldn't tell her I'd traded myself to save the man who'd been slowly killing us all with his weakness. Couldn't explain that her daughter had just signed her name in blood to become collateral for a debt that should have been settled with bullets.
"Somewhere safe, Mamma."
Her fingers found mine, bird-bone fragile but insistent. "Safe doesn't wear thousand-dollar suits and break down doors, Isabella."
The tears I'd been holding back burned behind my eyes, but I forced them down. She deserved comfort in whatever time she had left, not the weight of my choices.
"I'll come back." The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, but some lies were merciful. "I promise I'll come back."
Her hand pressed mine against her chest, over the weak flutter of her heart. "You're stronger than him, tesoro." I didn't know if she meant my father or Leonardo Torrino. Maybe she meant all men who thought they could cage women with their needs and failures.
Maybe she was warning me about the man I'd just bound myself to.
When her breathing deepened into uneasy sleep, I stood on unsteady legs. My father hunched in the corner chair like a broken marionette, face buried in hands that still bore traces of dried blood from where Leonardo's blade had kissed his palm.
He hadn't moved since the contract was signed. Hadn't spoken. Hadn't even looked at me.
The rage I'd been holding back clawed at my ribs like something trying to escape. I wanted to scream at him, to tear into him with all the fury of a daughter whose childhood had been sacrificed on the altar of his addiction. But looking at him now—this hollow shell of the man who'd once carried me on his shoulders through Sunday markets—I couldn't find the words.
Instead, I said the one thing I knew would cut deepest.
"You'll never see me again."
His head jerked up, eyes red-rimmed and desperate. "Isabella, please—I never meant for this to happen. Your mother, she needs—"
"What she needs is a husband who doesn't gamble away her life savings." My voice came out steady, cold. I'd learned control from watching him lose it so many times. "What she needs is to die in peace, not wondering if the men at her door are coming for her daughter."
"They promised they wouldn't hurt you—"
"They promised?" I laughed, sharp enough to cut. "You believe the promises of men like Leonardo Torrino? You're more foolish than I thought."
But even as I spoke the words, something twisted in my chest. The memory of Leonardo's thumb against my jaw, the way his eyes had darkened when I'd signed my name. There had been something in his gaze that wasn't entirely predatory. Something that looked almost like... respect.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it sent heat spiraling through my veins.
I shouldered my bag and walked to the door. If I looked back, I'd break. And breaking was a luxury I couldn't afford where I was going.
The stairwell reeked of damp concrete and decades of other people's cigarettes. My footsteps echoed like countdown beats as I descended, each one taking me further from the life I'd known and closer to whatever waited in the shadows.
The building's front door stuck like it always did, warped wood swollen with moisture and neglect. When it finally gave way, the night hit me like a physical force—rain driving sideways, neon signs bleeding color into puddles, sirens screaming their eternal song of urban chaos.
And there it was.
The black sedan waited at the curb like a hearse, engine purring with expensive restraint. Headlights cut through the storm like interrogation lamps, illuminating the space where I was meant to surrender myself.
My breath formed clouds in the wet air. I clutched the strap of my bag until the leather bit into my palm, using the pain to anchor myself to the moment. To the choice I'd made.
That's when I saw him.
Across the street, half-dissolved in shadows beneath a flickering streetlamp, a figure stood watching. Too still to be a neighbor returning late from work. Too deliberate to be some drunk looking for shelter from the storm.
The silhouette had the patience of a predator, the kind of waiting that made prey animals go rigid with instinctive fear. Not one of Leonardo's polished soldiers—I'd have recognized the expensive cut of their suits, the military precision of their posture.
This was something else. Someone else.
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the street for a crystalline moment. But the figure had melted back into the darkness, leaving only the impression of eyes that had been cataloging my every move.
A chill that had nothing to do with the rain settled between my shoulder blades.
The back door of the sedan swung open with mechanical precision, interior light spilling across rain-slick pavement like spilled milk. Rico's silhouette filled the doorway, one hand resting inside his jacket where I knew a weapon waited.
"Time to go, Miss Rossi."
I took a step toward the car, then stopped. Some instinct made me turn back toward the building where I'd spent twenty-four years learning that love was just another word for sacrifice.
My mother's window glowed faintly on the third floor, a square of weak light in the building's dark facade. I wondered if she was awake, if she was watching me disappear into the night like smoke.
I wondered if I'd ever see that light again.
"Miss Rossi." Rico's voice carried a note of warning now. "The Don doesn't like to be kept waiting."
The Don. Already I belonged to him enough to be measured by his patience.
I turned away from my mother's window and walked toward the car. My heels clicked against wet pavement with the rhythm of a funeral march, each step an acknowledgment that Isabella Rossi—the girl who'd grown up in that crumbling building, who'd dreamed of escape but never imagined it would come wearing a collar—was dying.
Whatever emerged from that car on the other side of the city would be something else entirely.
Something that belonged to Leonardo Torrino.
The thought should have filled me with dread. Instead, as I slid into the sedan's leather-scented darkness, I felt something that might have been anticipation coiling low in my belly.
The door closed behind me with the finality of a coffin lid, and we pulled away into the storm.