Chapter 3

Isabella's POV

My whole body went rigid. I stammered, "I... I just wanted to go outside..."

Alessandro didn't even let me finish. He crossed the room in a few strides.

One hand clamped around my throat and hauled me off the ground.

"Go where?" His voice came out laced with poison. "Crawl back to that filthy brothel and lose your mind again?"

"Three years of getting fucked by strangers wasn't enough for you? Want to go sell yourself under the Corsica family name now?"

The pressure closed off my air instantly. My vision started to white out.

I clawed at his arm, but all that came out of my throat was a broken rasp.

"Al... Alex..."

He let go without warning, hurling me into the glass coffee table beside us.

I crashed to the floor, shattering the jar full of bullet casings underneath me.

The glass made a sharp, brittle sound.

Countless brass casings, each one carved with words, scattered across the floor with a rattling clatter.

Words I had carved when I was barely a teenager.

Now mixed in with broken glass, scattered everywhere.

He stood with his back to the light, looking down at me from above.

"Don't even think about running." His voice was flat. "Stay here and learn some manners."

"Tomorrow's Vittoria's birthday dinner. You're attending."

He turned toward the door and called out, "Carlo."

A bodyguard stepped in, standing at attention.

"Watch the door," Alessandro ordered coldly. "If she so much as sets one foot outside this room, break her other leg."

"Yes, Boss." The guard nodded and posted himself at the doorway.

I lay sprawled on the floor, a thick, metallic taste rising in my throat.

Blood spattered onto the floor as I coughed hard.

I stared at the stain and let out a laugh.

"It's fine, Isabella," I murmured to myself. "This still hurts less than having your fingernails pulled."

I pushed myself up, weak as I was, and tried to gather the blood-stained casings.

My fingers shook so badly that the moment I touched one, I collapsed back down.

The click of heels approached, crunching over broken glass and scattered brass.

Vittoria crouched in front of me, her smile gentle and cruel all at once.

She grabbed my chin hard, forcing my head up.

A phone screen hovered in front of my face, a photo glowing on it.

Me at fifteen, a diamond tiara on my head, my smile bright as a flower in bloom.

Back then, I was the envy of the entire underworld.

I remembered that day. Alessandro had placed that tiara on my head with his own hands.

I thought it meant something.

At fifteen, I told myself, naively, that the Don just wasn't good at showing his feelings.

He ran hot and cold with me, and I kept telling myself he cared, deep down.

Now I understood. It wasn't that he didn't know how to love.

He simply never loved me.

Accepting my engagement ring back then had only been a way to make Vittoria jealous from across the ocean.

I was nothing but a pawn. I always had been.

Vittoria's finger swiped across the screen, flipping through photo after photo.

Then the image shifted.

A grainy, low-quality video started to play.

In it, I was naked, a chain around my neck, locked in a cage like an animal.

A crowd of vile-looking men surrounded me, laughing with obscene delight.

The filth, the humiliation — it all detonated in my chest at once.

I clapped my hands over my ears and let out a raw, broken scream.

Vittoria yanked my hair hard, forcing me to keep watching the screen.

"And you still had the nerve to come back and beg for Alessandro's pity?"

"You think you deserve that?" Her laugh grew sharper, crueler.

"Tell me — if your dead parents could see you now, wouldn't they crawl out of their graves out of pure disgust?"

Something inside me snapped, completely and irreversibly.

"Shut up!" I screamed, a raw, animal sound tearing out of me. "Shut UP!"

I lunged at her.

"You planned all of this!" I clawed at her hair, out of my mind. "You're the one who sold me!"

Her screams tangled with my own fury, exploding through the room.

I grabbed the brass candlestick off the coffee table, eyes burning red, and swung it down at her head as hard as I could.

DIE!