I leaned in, reached out, and my fingers barely brushed the edge of the laptop in Jemma Donnelly’s arms.
Isabella’s breath caught when my body touched hers, but she didn’t pull away.
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
The air grew thick with unspoken threats and possibilities. We were locked in our own world of tension and challenge, the Irish girl forgotten beside us.
Isabella’s lips parted, either to deny or deflect or cuss me out, but something in her expression shifted. Recognition, perhaps? Or calculation?
“You’re not as convincing as you think you are,” I whispered, close enough that my breath stirred her hair.
“Neither are you,” she countered, voice equally soft but sharp as a blade. “Tell me, what’s your real interest here? Because we both know it’s not being part of this wedding.”
Before I could respond, heavy footsteps approached. Vincenzo Salvini’s voice cut through the tension. “What’s going on here?”
He strode toward us, flanked by two of his men, his face a mask of controlled anger. I took a deliberate step back from Isabella but kept my eyes on her. The mask of the innocent Mafia princess slipped back into place so smoothly it was almost believable. Almost.
Vincenzo narrowed his eyes, his gaze moving from the laptop to Jemma, then Isabella, and finally landing on me. “You should’ve made a run for it,” he growled, then nodded at his men.
I gave him a lopsided grin and lifted my hands in mock surrender. “I rather enjoy your hospitality,” I said, thenbowed slightly in Isabella’s and Jemma’s direction. As I straightened, I caught Isabella’s gaze one last time. Something passed between us—a challenge, a warning, a promise.
I allowed myself to be escorted back toward the house, my mind racing. The laptop. Her trained movements. The calculated intelligence behind her eyes.
Each step away from her felt like a puzzle piece clicking into place, even if I couldn’t see the full picture yet. The way she’d positioned herself between me and the laptop. The fluid grace of her movements. The sharp wit beneath the sugary words. None of it fit the profile of a vapid socialite.
Isabella was not all she pretended to be.
As if the spark of attraction I’d felt during our confrontation wasn’t dangerous enough without this added layer of intrigue.
And yet, as Vincenzo’s men led me back into the house, I found myself looking forward to unraveling every piece of this puzzle, even if it meant defying my mentor’s orders to “Execute the plan as fast as he wanted.”
Who are you really, Isabella Salvini?
The question echoed in my mind again. A challenge. Something I might have to find out, whether she wanted me to or not.
And judging by the spark of awareness I’d seen in her eyes when I came too close, and the way she blocked me from Jemma Donnelly and that laptop, she might have secrets even her powerful family didn’t know about.
This game was getting interesting, and I intended to win—even if playing meant breaking the rules and winning meant changing all the rules.
2
ISABELLA
“Fight for your life; don’t look back; don’t let them catch you; be brutal.”
Birdie’s fierce whisper zoomed me back to consciousness faster than anything.
I’d been slowly coming back, trying desperately to take stock of my body and figure out my whereabouts when Birdie came over and unfastened my tied wrists.
What the hell was going on?
Vince had trusted Hawk, Birdie, and the team from Raptor Security with our evacuation mere days after the wedding, had sent Jemma, Mira, and me away to keep us safe. And instead, our convoy to the private airfield had been attacked, we had been captured, and ended up…in a van? Clearly this must’ve been an inside job. How else could they’ve known? And who the fuck were they anyway?
The van cameto a stop.
Merda.
“Fight for your life; don’t look back; don’t let them catch you; be brutal.”
