DANTE POV
The file on my desk contains two years of Isabella Romano's life, and I've memorized every page.
I lock the door to my private office on the fourth floor. This is where real work happens. Marco's office downstairs is theater. Mine is where empires are built and enemies disappear.
I open the file even though I don't need to. The photographs are burned into my memory. Isabella leaving her apartment at seven every morning. Isabella at the art gallery where she worked, explaining paintings to wealthy buyers who wouldn't know beauty if it burned them. Isabella having coffee alone at a café on Thursdays, always ordering the same thing: black coffee with two sugars, a blueberry muffin she never finishes.
I know her morning routine better than she probably knows it herself.
I know she reads poetry before bed. Emily Dickinson mostly. The sad ones about death and loneliness.
I know she touches the frame of her bedroom window when she can't sleep, like she's trying to reach something beyond the glass.
I know everything about her except the one thing I actually need to know: will she survive what I'm about to do to her?
My phone buzzes. Security footage alert. I pull up the feed from the kitchen and watch Isabella make tea at two in the morning. She's wearing pajamas that cost less than the cup she's holding. She hasn't bought herself anything new since moving here. She's careful with money in a way that comes from growing up without it.
She moves like she's aware of being watched. Good instincts.
I should leave her alone. Let her make her tea and go back to bed and pretend this marriage is normal. But I've never been good at leaving things alone when they matter.
I go downstairs and find her in the kitchen. We talk. I tell her she's smart. I tell her intelligence creates options. I tell her the truth in ways she doesn't fully understand yet.
Then I leave before I say something I can't take back.
Back in my office, I pull up the oldest file in the cabinet. The one that started everything. The surveillance report from two years and three months ago.
The day I first saw her.
I wasn't supposed to be at that auction. I don't attend public events. I don't put myself in places where I can be seen, photographed, or remembered. But Sofia needed a legitimate buyer for a Caravaggio we'd acquired through less than legal channels, and I went to make sure the sale happened correctly.
Isabella was there with her father. Vincent was trying to impress potential investors, using his daughter as decoration. She wore a simple black dress and looked bored by the entire event.
Until they unveiled the Caravaggio.
"The Calling of Saint Matthew," 1600. Dark and violent and beautiful. The moment when Christ points at Matthew and changes his entire life with a single gesture.
Isabella's expression transformed. She stared at that painting like it was speaking directly to her soul. Her lips parted. Her eyes went soft. She touched her throat absently, unconsciously, in a gesture of pure longing.
I watched her watch that painting for seventeen minutes. She didn't bid. Her father couldn't afford it. But she looked at it like she wanted to burn the image into her memory so she could carry it forever.
That's when I understood. Isabella Romano was drowning in her father's failures, trapped in a life she didn't choose, surrounded by people who saw her as currency instead of a person. But she could still see beauty. She could still feel it deeply enough to ache.
She was lonely. Hungry. Fighting to survive while trying not to lose herself in the process.
I recognized her because I recognized myself.
I had my investigators start a file the next day.
At first, it was professional curiosity. Who was Vincent Romano's daughter? What did she do? What vulnerabilities could I exploit if I needed to pressure her father?
But the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. The more I watched, the harder it became to stop watching.
Isabella worked at a gallery for three years, underpaid and undervalued. She had a degree from Columbia in Art History that she earned through scholarships and night jobs. She spoke French because she taught herself using library books and YouTube videos. She visited museums on her lunch breaks and stood in front of paintings for exactly twelve minutes before moving to the next one.
She was building herself into something remarkable using nothing but willpower and determination.
I became obsessed with her the way I become obsessed with anything worth having: completely, methodically, with every resource at my disposal.
My therapist would probably call this unhealthy if I still saw therapists. I stopped going five years ago when I realized they couldn't help me. You can't fix someone who doesn't want to be fixed.
I don't want to be fixed. I want to be powerful. I want to control outcomes. I want to never be vulnerable again.
Wanting Isabella contradicts all of that. Wanting anything makes you weak.
But I've been alone for sixteen years. I've built an empire from my father's ashes. I've eliminated enemies and made alliances and become exactly what I needed to become to survive. And at the end of every day, I return to an empty apartment and sleep four hours and wake up still alone.
Isabella made me feel something other than empty for the first time in memory.
So when her father's debt came due and marriage became the payment, I had a choice. I could have erased the debt. I could have refused the arrangement. I could have protected her from this life entirely.
Instead, I let it happen. I watched her walk down the aisle toward my brother while knowing she should have been walking toward me. I trapped her deliberately because trapping her was the only way to keep her close without admitting how badly I needed her close.
I'm not a good man. I stopped pretending to be good the day my father beat my mother so badly she stopped breathing. I was fifteen. Old enough to understand what I was watching. Too young to stop it.
I became my father's son that day. Strategic. Ruthless. Willing to do whatever necessary to survive and win.
But Isabella looks at paintings like they're prayer. She reads poetry about death like she's trying to understand something important. She makes tea at two in the morning because she can't sleep in a house full of people who frighten her.
She's better than me. She deserves better than me.
But I'm going to have her anyway.
Tomorrow night, I'm putting my cards on the table. I'm telling her that Marco is stealing from the family business. I'm telling her she needs to help me stop him. I'm giving her the illusion of choice while making sure the only choice she can make is the one that keeps her in my orbit.
It's manipulative. It's wrong. It's the only way I know how to love anything.
My phone buzzes. Encrypted message from James, my head of security. I open it expecting routine updates.
Instead, I get this:
"Marco has been siphoning funds to offshore accounts. The theft is extensive. Six million over eight months. He's also meeting with Victor Castellano's men. Phone records confirm three meetings in the last two weeks. He's making deals without authorization. The situation is accelerating faster than expected."
My blood goes cold.
I knew Marco was stupid. I didn't know he was suicidal.
Victor Castellano is our biggest rival. He's been trying to break us for years. If Marco is meeting with Victor's people, he's not just stealing. He's committing treason against his own family.
This changes everything.
I was going to move slowly with Isabella. Give her time to adjust. Let her come to trust me before asking for her help.
But Marco just eliminated that option. If he's working with Victor, I need to move against him now. Before he destroys everything I built. Before he puts Isabella in danger.
I pull up the security feed again. Isabella is back in bed, reading. She has no idea that her husband is a thief and a traitor. She has no idea that her marriage just became even more dangerous than she imagined.
Tomorrow night, I'm telling her everything. I'm offering her protection in exchange for betrayal. I'm forcing her to choose between her husband and her survival.
She's going to choose survival. She's too smart not to.
And once she chooses me, she's never getting away.
My phone buzzes again. Another message from James: "Victor's men were seen near the penthouse today. They're watching us. Marco's actions have put everyone at risk."
I close my eyes and count to ten. Strategic thinking requires calm. Panic is weakness.
Marco has to be stopped. Not just contained. Eliminated as a threat entirely.
And Isabella is the key to doing it without destroying the family publicly.
I open my laptop and start planning. By sunrise, I have a strategy that will use Isabella's intelligence, her position as Marco's wife, and her survival instinct to trap my brother in his own crimes.
It's ruthless. It's effective. It's going to hurt her.
But it's also going to save her life. And in this world, that's the closest thing to love I can offer.