Isabella's POV
The library had become neutral ground. A territory of shared silence and, increasingly, of quiet conversation. The tension of the bedroom, with its large bed and charged history, felt too intimate, too dangerous. Here, surrounded by centuries of other people's thoughts, it was easier to breathe, to think, to be near him without feeling like the walls were closing in.
A week after the guard's removal, I found him there in the evening. He was standing by the tall windows, a book in his hand, his silhouette backlit by the fading blue dusk. The sling was gone, though he still moved his left arm with careful precision. He looked less like a patient and more like himself again, but a softer version, the hard edges blurred by the dim light and the lingering intimacy of our shared recovery.
"You're up late," I said, my voice echoing softly in the vaulted space.
He turned, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "I could say the same to you. Couldn't sleep?"
"The city is loud tonight," I lied, leaning against one of the heavy oak tables. The truth was, the quiet of the mansion was louder. The absence of conflict was a new, unsettling sound.
He placed the book back on its shelf with a familiarity that spoke of countless nights spent in this room. "This was my sanctuary when I was a boy. When my father's… business… became too much. When the house felt like a battlefield." He ran his fingers along a row of leather spines. "My mother's books are here. The poetry."
He pulled a slim, worn volume bound in faded blue cloth. Poesie di Ada Negri. He handed it to me. The pages were tissue-thin, the Italian script elegant and flowing. In the margin of a poem about loss, in a delicate, feminine hand, was a single word: Dante.
"She wrote your name," I whispered, tracing the ink.
"She said the poet's passion reminded her of me. Even as a child." He took the book back, his thumb brushing over the inscription, a gesture of such profound tenderness it stole my breath. "She was the only one who ever saw passion in me before it curdled into… what it is now."
He was showing me a piece of his soul. Not the scarred, hardened Don, but the boy who missed his mother. The revelation was more disarming than any display of power.
"What's your sanctuary?" he asked, replacing the book and turning to me. "When is the world too much?"
The question was so simple, so human. "I used to go to the Met," I said. "Not the crowded galleries. The American Wing courtyard. There's a skylight, and the light on the marble… it's peaceful. Or I'd sketch. Just lose myself in lines and shadows."
"You haven't sketched since you've been here." It wasn't an accusation. It was an observation.
"It felt… frivolous. Like playing house while under siege."
He nodded, understanding in his eyes. "And your gallery? The one you dreamed of?"
I looked away, hugging myself. It felt dangerous to share a dream with the man who had the power to grant it or crush it on a whim. But the quiet of the library, the shadow of his mother's book between us, made the walls feel softer. "It was going to be small. In the West Village, maybe. White walls, big windows, terrible coffee for the patrons. I'd feature artists no one had heard of. One has something raw to say. No pretension. Just… heart."
I could see it so clearly it hurt. The dream was a living thing I'd kept in a locked room in my mind, and I'd just spoken it into existence in the heart of his fortress.
He was silent for a long moment. "It sounds perfect."
Two words. Simple. Sincere. They did something to me. They acknowledged the dream as valid, as mine, not as a childish fantasy.
He walked to a different section, pulling out a large, flat folio. "My father collected these. He thought it was an investment." He laid it on the table and opened it. Inside were original architectural sketches of the mansion, intricate and beautiful. "I always preferred these to the finished building. You can see the thought process and the possibilities behind the design. The mistakes, too." He pointed to a scribbled-out wing. "The artist's hand is still in it."
I leaned over the folio, my shoulder inches from his. I could smell his scent—sandalwood, clean cotton, him. "You see the art in it."
"I see the intention," he said softly, his voice close to my ear. "The intention is everything."
Our eyes met as we looked over the yellowed paper. The air grew thick and warm. The library, usually so vast, felt like the smallest room in the world.
Then he did something that shattered my last defence.
He laughed.
It was over something stupid. I'd made a dry remark about one architect's overly ornate doodle of a gargoyle, calling it a "gothic pigeon." A low, genuine chuckle rumbled in his chest, transforming his face completely. The harsh lines smoothed, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and for a moment, he was just a devastatingly handsome man, amused and disarmed. The sound was rich, warm, and it wrapped around me like a physical touch.
I laughed too, a real, unfettered sound I hadn't heard from myself in months. It felt foreign and wonderful.
And that was the moment it became too real.
This wasn't a captor and captive negotiating a tense peace. This wasn't a nurse tending a patient. This was a man and a woman, sharing a quiet evening, laughing in a library. It was domestic. It was normal. It was everything our relationship was not supposed to be.
The warmth turned to panic. This was the most insidious trap of all. It was not the gilded cage itself, but rather the slow, seductive process of furnishing it to make it feel like a home. The goal was to make him feel like a partner.
I took a sharp step back, the laughter dying on my lips. The sudden movement made him straighten, the amusement fading from his face, replaced by cautious confusion.
"Isabella?"
"I should go," I said, my voice too high, too tight. "It's late. You need to rest your shoulder."
"It's fine."
"No, it's not." I was backing away toward the door, putting distance between us and this terrifying, beautiful new world we'd just glimpsed. "Goodnight, Dante."
I didn't wait for a reply. I fled the library, my heart hammering a frantic, warning rhythm against my ribs. I didn't stop until I was back in the master bedroom, the door closed behind me. I stood in the centre of the room, breathing hard; the ghost of his laugh was still echoing in my ears, and the vision of his softened face burned in my mind.
I had to remember the bars. I had to remember the contract, the purchase, the possessions. I couldn't let a shared laugh and a few quiet conversations make me forget the fundamental truth: I was here because he owned me.
But as I stood there in the silent, opulent room, a colder, more terrifying truth settled over me.
The person I was most afraid of forgetting that truth… was me.
Dante's POV
He stood alone in the library, his hand resting on the cool wood of the table where her warmth had just been. The echo of her laughter, bright and unguarded, seemed to hang in the dusty air, a haunting, beautiful chord.
He'd shown her his mother's book. He'd told her about the boy in the sanctuary. He'd listened to her dream of a gallery with terrible coffee, and he hadn't just heard a business plan—he'd seen the light in her eyes, the passion she tried to hide. And when she'd made that sarcastic little joke about the gargoyle, the joy that had burst from him was so sudden, so pure, it had shocked him more than the bullet to his shoulder.
He'd made her laugh. And for a second, none of the weight of the empire, the blood on his hands, or the ghost of Volkov in the shadows existed. There was only her smile, her intelligent eyes, and her presence that filled the spaces of his life he hadn't even known were hollow.
Then she'd run. He'd seen the fear flash in her eyes—not fear of him, but fear of this. Of the normalcy. Of the connection.
He looked down at the architectural folio, at the scribbled-out mistake. The intention is everything.
His intention had started as possession. He aimed to make a strategic acquisition that would settle a debt and serve as a symbol.
However, somewhere between the blood at the dock and the dusk in the library, his intention shifted.
He wasn't just obsessed anymore.
He was falling for her.
The realisation was a quiet avalanche in his chest, terrifying and exhilarating. It was the ultimate weakness. The fatal flaw. Viktor Volkov had sensed it. And Isabella Romano, with her fierce heart and frightened eyes, was causing it.
She was right to run. This was dangerous. More dangerous than any ambush.
Now, he wanted more than just to own her.
He wanted her to choose to stay.
And that was a war he had no idea how to win.