KISS ME AND LET ME BURN

Isabella Torrino - POV

The crimson drops on white silk burn against my retinas like accusations I can't understand. My hands tremble as I touch the stains—still warm, still wet—while Chicago's pre-dawn skyline glitters beyond bulletproof windows that taste of prison disguised as protection. The blood isn't mine. I know this with the certainty of someone who has never bled for anything that mattered.

But someone bled in my room while I slept.

The metallic scent mingles with my mother's vanilla perfume that still clings to the air twenty-three years after Elena Torrino's death. My fingers find the silver locket at my throat, pressing the familiar weight against my pulse as if Mama's love could somehow explain the nightmare painted across my nightgown.

"What the hell?" The words slip out in Spanish, my accent thickening the way it always does when fear crawls up my spine like ice water. My bare feet hit cold marble as I stumble toward the mirror, and my reflection stares back—wild dark hair, eyes wide with shock, blood staining silk like spilled wine against snow.

That's when I see them. Handprints. Bloody handprints smeared across the mirror's surface, fingers splayed like someone was trying to claw their way through glass. My stomach lurches, copper pennies flooding my tongue as I step closer. The prints are too large to be mine, too deliberate to be accidental.

Someone was in here. Someone was watching me sleep.

My pulse hammers against my ears as I scan the room. Everything else looks untouched—Egyptian cotton sheets perfectly arranged, Waterford crystal on the nightstand catching streetlight, fresh white roses from yesterday's delivery still pristine in their crystal vase. Except...

The roses. One lies on my pillow, its petals blackened as if burned from within. A small card rests beneath it, elegant script bleeding across cream paper: Soon, princess.

"Jesus Christ." My knees give out, and I sink onto the bed, the dead rose crunching under my weight. The scent of decay mingles with vanilla and jasmine, and for a moment I'm eight years old again, standing beside Mama's coffin while white roses turned brown in the summer heat.

I need Papa. Now.

The silk nightgown clings to my sweat-dampened skin as I race through halls that smell of old money and older secrets. My bare feet make no sound against marble floors that have witnessed three generations of Torrino business, but my ragged breathing echoes off vaulted ceilings like prayers in an empty church.

Papa's office door stands slightly ajar, warm light spilling across Persian rugs worth more than most people's houses. I push inside without knocking, words tumbling from my lips in a mixture of English and rapid Spanish.

"Papa, there's blood—someone was in my room—"

Vittorio Torrino looks up from his mahogany desk, and the calm in his dark eyes stops me cold. No surprise. No alarm. Just the calculating expression he wears when counting money or signing contracts that make people disappear.

"Stellina." His voice carries the weight of three generations of authority as he sets down his Mont Blanc pen with deliberate precision. "Come here."

I cross the room on unsteady legs, the dead rose still clutched in my fist. When I reach his desk, he takes my free hand in his weathered palms—hands that once braided my hair, now steady enough to hold execution orders without tremor.

"Tell me exactly what you saw."

The words spill out like confession, every detail burned into memory with photographic clarity. The blood on silk, the handprints on glass, the blackened rose with its elegant threat. Papa listens without interruption, his thumb tracing circles on my knuckles the way he did when I was small and afraid of thunderstorms.

"This is the third threat this month," he says when I finish, and ice crystallizes in my veins.

"Third?" My voice cracks like broken glass. "What do you mean, third?"

Papa's smile doesn't reach his eyes. "The photographs in your mailbox last week. Someone standing in your bedroom doorway while you slept, stellina. Did you think that was coincidence?"

The room tilts around me. Those photographs—I'd assumed they were from overzealous paparazzi, another invasion of privacy that came with being Don Torrino's daughter. But someone had been inside. Someone had been watching.

"The flower arrangement that arrived with no card," Papa continues, his voice clinical as a surgeon's scalpel. "White lilies. Death flowers, Isabella. For someone who wasn't supposed to know you well enough to send condolences."

My free hand flies to my throat, finding the locket that suddenly feels heavy as anchor chain. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you were safe. Protected. But now..." He releases my hand and walks to the window, Chicago's skyline reflecting in bulletproof glass that I'm just realizing isn't there for show. "Now they're escalating."

"They?"

"Enemies, stellina. Men who think hurting you will hurt me." His jaw tightens, and I see the monster that built an empire on other people's blood. "They're wrong. Hurting you won't just hurt me. It will damn them to hell."

A soft knock interrupts us, and Marco Torrino's head of security steps inside. Sal's been with our family since before I was born, his loyalty bought with blood and maintained through respect that borders on worship.

"Don Torrino," he says, voice rough from decades of Cuban cigars. "We've completed the security assessment. The breach came through the service elevator. Professional work—no cameras caught them, no prints except what they left deliberately."

"How many?"

"At least two. Possibly three. They knew exactly where to go, exactly how long they had." Sal's eyes find mine, and I see pity there that makes my stomach clench. "This wasn't random, Isabella. Someone's been watching the compound for weeks. Studying patterns."

Papa nods like this confirms something he already suspected. "Recommendations?"

"Enhanced security. Round-the-clock protection. And..." Sal hesitates, glancing between us. "Perhaps it's time for the backup plan we discussed."

The backup plan. I know without asking that this involves decisions made without my input, my life rearranged like chess pieces on a board I can't see. The taste of copper grows stronger, mixing with vanilla ghost-perfume until I want to vomit.

"What backup plan?" I demand, but Papa's already moving toward his safe, fingers dancing across the electronic lock with practiced ease.

He withdraws a folder thick with photographs, spreading them across the desk like tarot cards predicting a future I don't want. Each image shows a man—professionally handsome faces with eyes that hold violence like lovers hold secrets. Bodyguards. Killers dressed in Armani suits and practiced smiles.

"One of these men will shadow you everywhere," Papa says, his voice carrying finality that makes my chest tighten. "Eat with you, sleep outside your door, breathe when you breathe until this threat is eliminated."

I stare at the photographs, each face bleeding into the next until they become a parade of beautiful death. "I don't want—"

"What you want is irrelevant." Papa's tone brooks no argument, the don emerging fully as the father recedes. "Your safety is the only priority now."

My hands shake as I touch one photograph, then another. Pretty boys playing dress-up, trying to look dangerous while their manicured nails give away lives spent in luxury rather than violence. None of them look like they could protect me from a stern conversation, much less professional killers who leave blood on silk as calling cards.

Except...

The final photograph makes my breath catch in my throat. Sharp cheekbones that could cut glass, dark eyes that seem to see straight through the camera lens into my soul. There's something in his expression that makes my pulse quicken—not fear, but recognition of a hunger that mirrors my own desperate need for something real in a world built on beautiful lies.

"This one," I whisper, my finger tracing features that look carved from marble and midnight. "Who is he?"

Papa's smile returns, and this time it reaches his eyes. "Marco Santangelo. Former military, specialized training, impeccable references. He'll be perfect for you, stellina."

The way he says perfect makes my skin crawl with implications I don't understand. But I can't look away from the photograph, from eyes that promise salvation from a life of beautiful emptiness.

"When?" My voice sounds foreign to my own ears.

"Today. He arrives this afternoon." Papa begins gathering the other photographs, but leaves Marco's image on the desk between us like a contract waiting to be signed. "Until then, Sal will coordinate additional security. No leaving the compound, no visitors without approval."

I nod, still staring at the photograph. Marco Santangelo. Even his name tastes dangerous on my tongue, full of sharp consonants and hidden meanings.

As I turn to leave, something catches my eye. Mama's jewelry box, sitting open on Papa's credenza like an accusation. The box that should be locked in my room, filled with treasures I've guarded like sacred relics for twenty-three years.

My heart stops. Elena's wedding ring—the simple gold band she wore until death stole her fingers—is gone.

"Papa." My voice breaks like prayer. "Where is Mama's ring?"

He follows my gaze to the jewelry box, and for just a moment, his mask slips. I see something that might be guilt, might be fear, might be the weight of secrets too heavy for one man to carry.

"Insurance, stellina. Everything we treasure must be protected."

But I know lies when I hear them, and this one tastes of blood and vanilla and the promise of truths I'm not sure I want to discover.