Isabella's POV
Peace was a fragile, fleeting thing in the Salvatore mansion. The memory of the kiss was a ghost that haunted every quiet moment, a phantom heat on my lips that contradicted the cold fear in my gut. Dante had become a different kind of shadow—present, watchful, but distant. He wasn't locking me in, but the mansion felt more fortified than ever. New, unsmiling guards appeared at the gates. I caught Marco speaking in low, urgent tones in the halls. The air hummed with a tension I didn't understand.
Sofia, sensing my unease, had coaxed me into the walled garden. "The sun is medicine," she'd said, echoing her words from weeks ago. We sat on the same stone bench behind the rose trellis, the late afternoon sun dappling through the leaves. She was trying to distract me, talking about the music fundraiser next week, her eyes alight with a secret hope that made my own promise to cover for her feel like a lead weight in my stomach.
"You're sure it's safe?" I asked, my gaze drifting to Leo, who stood at a respectful distance by the garden door, a permanent, vigilant statue.
"David's friend is loaning us her apartment above the hall. We'll slip in, listen, and slip out. It's just… I need to hear him play," Sofia whispered, her fingers twisting together. "It's the only thing that feels completely real."
I understood. Since the kiss, nothing felt completely real. My old life was a distant dream. My new life was a gilded maze of danger and desire. Sofia's secret was a thread of normalcy, and I clung to my role in protecting it.
The first sound was wrong.
It was neither the distant city hum nor the chirp of sparrows. It was a sharp, truncated cry, followed by a wet thud from the direction of the side gate, just beyond the high garden wall.
Leo's head snapped toward the sound. His hand went to his ear, to the comm piece hidden there. His eyes widened. "Get inside! Now!" he barked, his hand moving to the gun under his jacket.
Sofia and I froze for a fatal second.
The garden door from the house burst open. Enzo, the other guard, stumbled through, his face a mask of urgency. "Breach! Side gate! Go! To the safe room!"
Chaos erupted.
From over the ivy-covered wall, two black-clad figures rappelled down, landing in a crouch on the manicured lawn. They moved with a terrifying, silent efficiency. They weren't like Dante's guards. They were ghosts. Assassins.
A third man violently kicked open the wrought-iron gate from the service alley.
Leo and Enzo were already firing. The roar of gunshots in the confined garden was deafening, shredding the peaceful afternoon. One of the black-clad men fell. Enzo cried out, grabbing his thigh as a bullet found its mark.
"RUN!" Sofia screamed, grabbing my arm.
We sprinted for the house door. The scent of gunpowder and torn greenery filled the air. My heart was a wild animal trying to escape my ribs. This occurrence is real. This is happening.
A hand like iron clamped onto my shoulder from behind, yanking me backward. I screamed, losing my grip on Sofia. She whirled, her eyes wide with terror.
"NO! Isabella!"
The man who had me was huge, smelling of stale tobacco and sweat. He locked an arm around my waist, lifting me off my feet. I kicked, scratched, and screamed. His grip was unbreakable. I saw Leo, locked in hand-to-hand combat with the second intruder by the roses. I saw Enzo, bleeding on the gravel, trying to raise his weapon.
The man began dragging me toward the broken gate. The world narrowed to the crushing pressure on my ribs, the sight of the dark alley beyond the wall, and the understanding of what waited for me there. Viktor Volkov. A warehouse. The end of everything.
"LET HER GO!"
The voice wasn't a shout. It was a roar that seemed to shake the very stones of the garden. It was a pure, undiluted, fury- given sound.
Dante.
He stood in the shattered garden doorway, a specter of vengeance in a suit, his face a carved mask of murderous rage. In his hands was a compact, black submachine gun.
Time seemed to slow. The man holding me hesitated, turning.
Dante didn't.
He was fired.
The sound was a brutal, ripping tear. Bullets stitched across the man's back. The impact slammed him forward, his grip on me vanishing as he crumpled. I fell to the gravel, gasping, the hot spray of his blood misting the side of my face.
I scrambled back on my hands, choking on screams. Dante was already moving, a predator unleashed. The second intruder, having overpowered Leo, raised his own weapon.
Dante was faster. He dropped the submachine gun and, in one fluid motion, drew a pistol from a shoulder holster. Two precise shots. Pop. Pop. The man's head snapped back, and he dropped like a sack of stones.
Silence, then. A ringing, horrific silence broken only by Enzo's pained groans and Sofia's quiet sobs where she huddled by the door.
Dante didn't look at the bodies. He strode to me, his eyes scanning me for injury, his face still that terrifying, empty mask. He knelt, his hands coming to my shoulders. "Are you hurt?"
I couldn't speak. I could only stare at him. At the man who had just ended two lives with a chilling, mechanical efficiency. At the blood spatter on the impeccable sleeve of his Tom Ford suit. At the eyes that held no remorse, only a fierce, burning check to see if I was intact.
This was the reality. The kiss, the tenderness, the shared confessions—they were a thin veil over this. This was the beast. This was the killer. This was the man who ruled a world where people rappelled over walls and died in flower beds.
He saw the terror in my eyes. My fear was not only due to the attack but also because of him. The mask cracked for a second, a flicker of something like pain in his depths. Then it was gone, sealed behind the Don's impenetrable control.
"Get her inside," he ordered, his voice gravelly. Marco and two other men had poured into the garden, weapons drawn, surveying the carnage. Marco moved to help Sofia up.
Dante stood, pulling me to my feet with him. His arm around me was solid and possessive, a cage of safety that felt as dangerous as the violence it had just wrought. He led me past the bodies, past the spreading dark stains on the white gravel. I couldn't look away from the man who had grabbed me, his sightless eyes staring at the sky.
Inside the mansion, the familiar opulence felt like a sick joke. Greta was already there with a blanket, her face pale but composed. Dante led me not to the bedroom but to his study, the inner sanctum. He sat me in a leather chair, crouching before me, his hands on the arms, caging me again.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice low.
I forced my eyes to his. They were dark and intense, but the killing frost had receded.
"They will not get to you again," he vowed, each word an iron promise. "This will not happen again."
He was saying it to reassure me. But all I heard was the echo of gunfire. All I saw was the casual way he had extinguished lives. He had saved me. He had murdered for me.
And the most terrifying part?
A secret, shameful part of me felt safer for it.
The terror was now a two-headed beast. I was terrified of the men who came over the wall.
And I was utterly, soul-shakingly terrified of the brutal, beautiful monster who had slain them and who looked at me as if I was the only thing in the world worth all that blood.