Dante's POV
The fragile peace of the library had shattered the moment she'd fled. For two days, she'd been a ghost again, taking meals in her room and avoiding the common spaces. She wasn't cold, just… absent. It was a different kind of torture. Before, her anger had been a fire he could feel, a challenge he could engage with. This quiet withdrawal was a void, and it made the memory of her laugh seem like a mirage.
He was in his office, forcing himself to focus on the legitimate ledgers of the shipping company, trying to find solace in clean numbers, when Marco entered without his usual knock.
"We have a… personal situation," Marco said, his voice uncharacteristically tentative.
Dante didn't look up. "Define 'personal'."
"A man. He's been asking around Brooklyn. He has been enquiring discreetly, yet with unwavering persistence. Asking about Isabella Romano. Where she went. If she's okay."
The pen in Dante's hand stilled. A cold drip of acid started a slow burn in his gut. "Who?"
"Name's Marco Costa. No relation," Marco added with a grim twist of his lips. "He was her… boyfriend. Before."
Before. The word was a detonation. Before me. Before this.
The image was instantaneous and brutal: Isabella, smiling up at another man. Her laugh, the one that had just begun to feel like his, being given freely to someone else. Her body, which had only known his touch in violence and clinical necessity, wrapped in another man's arms. Her choice. She had chosen him.
The cold acid erupted into a geyser of white-hot, irrational jealousy. It burned through the remains of the softer man from the library, incinerating reason, strategy, and everything else.
"Find him," Dante said, his voice a low, guttural scrape. "Bring him to me."
"Dante," Marco began, the voice of reason. "He's a civilian. An art teacher. He's just worried. If we touch him, it's a problem we don't need."
"I didn't ask for an assessment," Dante snarled, slamming the ledger shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the quiet room. "I gave an order. Find him. I want to know his life, his debts, and his secrets. I want to know what he smells like. And then you bring him to the warehouse on Tenth. I will have a conversation with him about the consequences of asking questions that are no longer his business."
The possessive fury was a living thing, coiling around his spine. Mine. The word wasn't a statement anymore; it was a biological imperative. She was his wife. His property. His obsession. The thought of another man's shadow falling across her, even in memory, was an existential threat.
Marco saw the fire in his eyes and knew argument was futile. He gave a curt nod and left to carry out the order.
Dante paced his office, a caged panther. Every beat of his heart pulsed with the sickening image of Marco touching her, kissing her, being the recipient of her passion, her trust. The man had had what Dante was only now, terrifyingly, starting to crave. And he was sniffing around, threatening to remind her of a life where she had autonomy, where she had chosen.
He didn't hear her enter. He was too deep in the jealous inferno.
"What did you do?"
Her voice was like ice water. He turned. She stood in the doorway, her face pale, her green eyes blazing. She must have overheard Marco in the hall.
"I'm handling a security matter," he said, his voice tight.
"You're having Marco tracked down," she shot back, stepping into the room. "My Marco. Because he's asking about me? He's worried about me, you monster!"
My Marco. The words were knives. She still claimed him. The jealousy roared back, drowning out any semblance of control.
"He is no longer your concern!" Dante roared, advancing on her. "You have no 'Marco'! You have a husband! Me! His worry is irrelevant. His existence, as it pertains to you, is now a nuisance."
"A nuisance?" She spat, not backing down an inch, meeting his fury with her own. "He's a person! A good person! You have no right—"
"I have EVERY RIGHT!" The explosion shook the room. He was in front of her now, his body vibrating with rage. "You are mine! Every breath, every thought, every memory! That man is a ghost from a life that is OVER. And I will burn him out of your past if I have to!"
She stared at him, her chest heaving, but her eyes held no fear now. Only a dawning, disgusted understanding. "This is what you are. This is all you are. Not a protector. A controller. A jailer who can't stand the thought of his prisoner having a life before the cage. You're pathetic."
The insult, along with its underlying truth, struck him deeply. He grabbed her upper arms, not to hurt her, but to make her see, and feel the magnitude of his claim. "You think this situation is about control? This is about the fact that the thought of his hands on you makes me want to tear this city apart with my bare hands!" The confession was ripped from him, raw and ugly. "I can't stand it, Isabella. I can't stand the thought of you with anyone else. Ever. Do you understand that? You. Are. Mine."
He was panting, his face inches from hers, his grip unbreakable. He saw the shock in her eyes, the flicker of something that might have been fear, but also a fierce, defiant triumph. She had pulled such strength out of him. She had reduced the titan Dante Salvatore to a jealous, raving animal.
And she used it as her final weapon.
She went utterly still in his grasp. Her voice, when it came, was lethally calm, each word a precisely aimed bullet.
"I was his first, Dante."
He flinched as if struck.
"My first kiss. My first… everything." Her eyes held his, unblinking, forcing him to see the truth. "And you know what? I chose him. I welcomed him. I loved him." She let the past tense hang, a brutal distinction. "I didn't choose you."
She wrenched herself out of his suddenly slack grip. The words echoed in the ringing silence, more devastating than any physical blow.
I didn't choose you.
It was the fundamental, unbearable truth at the heart of their entire twisted union. It was the one thing his money, his power, his violence, and his growing obsession could never buy, never force, and never change.
She had given herself, willingly, to a man named Marco. A nobody. An art teacher.
And she had been taken from him, unwillingly, by a man named Dante. A king. A monster.
The jealousy didn't vanish. It curdled into something black and hollow in his chest. He stood there, emptied by her truth, the ruins of his possessive rage smouldering around him.
She looked at him, at the devastation she had wrought with a few simple sentences, and there was no victory in her eyes. Only a deep, weary sorrow.
Without another word, she turned and walked out of his office, leaving him alone with the echoing, unanswerable truth.
He was hers.
But she had never been, and might never be, his.
Not in the way that mattered.