She’s standing there against the ruined altar, her expensive suit splattered with other people’s blood, that cold smile still on her face like she’s posing for a magazine cover instead of staring down the barrel of a gun.
I hate her. I hate her so much it feels like poison in my veins.
“You don’t have the spine to pull that trigger.” Her voice is calm, almost amused. Like I’m a child throwing a tantrum and she’s waiting for me to tire myself out. “I’ve seen your type before,cara. Scared little nurses playing at being dangerous. You’ll hesitate at the last second, and when you do, my men will finish what we started.”
“Your men are dead.”
She blinks. Just once, the first crack in that perfect composure.
“Most of them anyway,” I continue, my voice steadier than I feel. “The ones who aren’t dead are running for their lives. It’s just you now, Isabella. Just you and me and six years of nightmares you created.”
“You think killing me changes anything?” She laughs, and it’s such a cold, empty sound. “The ledger is already out there. The families will fight over it for decades. You’ve started a war that will outlive all of us.”
“Maybe. But you won’t be around to see it.”
Her smile wavers a little. But enough for me to see the fear and uncertainty behind her cold facade.
Good. I want her to be afraid. I want her to feel even a fraction of what I felt when I was nineteen years old and trapped in her husband’s mansion, surrounded by girls who were just as scared as me, not knowing if we’d live or die.
“Think about what you’re doing,” Isabella says, and there’s an edge to her voice now. “I have connections. Resources. I can make you rich. I can make you disappear so completely that no one will ever find you again. You and your son, safe forever. Isn’t that what you want?”
“What I want is for those five girls to be alive. Can you do that?”
That stops her, and her eyes narrow.
“What five girls?”
“The ones you killed. The witnesses. The girls who were with me at the mansion, who saw what happened, who could have testified against you.” My hand is shaking now but I don’t lowerthe gun. “I found out about them. Every single one. Dead within a year of Antonio’s murder. Car accidents. Overdoses. Suicides that weren’t suicides. You hunted them down like animals because you wanted the ledger and you couldn’t risk anyone talking.”
Isabella’s face goes blank. Not out of denial or guilt. Just nothing, like I’m talking about something normal instead of five murdered women.
“They were loose ends,” she shrugs simply. “Loose ends get tied up. That’s how this world works.”
Loose ends.
Five girls with names and families and dreams and futures. Five girls who were just as scared and helpless as I was when Antonio’s men grabbed us. Five girls who survived his nightmare only to be murdered by his wife months later.
And she calls them loose ends. Like their lives meant nothing at all.
I think about the nineteen-year-old girl I used to be. Terrified. Helpless. Crying in a locked room while men in suits decided her fate. That girl couldn’t have held a gun. Couldn’t have looked a monster in the eye. Could barely get out of bed some mornings because the memories were so heavy.
I think about the girls again. They had futures that Isabella stole from them because they were inconvenient.
I think about Luca’s tear-stained face when we found him in that basement. His small body shaking. His voice breaking when he called for me. My son, terrorized because this woman wanted leverage.
I think about Marco throwing himself on that grenade. The light leaving his eyes while I held his hand. His last words asking me to take care of his family.
All of this because Isabella Marchetti wanted power. Wanted control. Wanted to tie up her loose ends no matter how many innocent people had to die.
“You should have stayed hidden,” Isabella says, and there’s venom in her voice now. The mask is slipping. “You should have kept running and never looked back. But you had to come back here, had to fall in love with another monster, had to drag your son into this world. Everything that’s happened is your fault. Those girls died because you survived. If you had just?—”
I pull the trigger.
The shot isn’t clean or heroic like in the movies. There’s no slow motion, no dramatic music swelling in the background, no sense of righteous victory washing over me. It’s just loud and violent and absolutely terrifying. The recoil jars my arms hard enough to hurt, the sound makes my ears ring, and the smell of gunpowder fills my nose until I almost gag.
Isabella jerks backward like someone shoved her, her eyes going wide with shock and disbelief. Her hand goes to her stomach where blood is already spreading across her expensive suit.
She looks down at the wound, then back up at me, and for the first time since I’ve known her, she looks human. Scared and confused. Like she can’t believe this is actually happening.
