Isabella's POV
Sleep was a foreign country. Every time I drifted, the dark alleys and the scent of blood and roses pulled me back. My mind replayed the fear, the violence, and the confession. I would do it a thousand times.
I finally threw off the covers. The mansion was a tomb of polished silence, the kind of quiet that comes after a storm. The guard outside the door—a new man with a kind, weary face—nodded as I passed, his eyes watchful but not restrictive. Dante had given orders. I was not a prisoner tonight.
I didn't know where I was going until I was there.
The doors to his study were slightly ajar. The room was dark, lit only by the cool blue moonlight from the open balcony doors. He stood out there, a silhouette against the sprawling, sleeping city. A glass of amber liquid dangled from his fingers, forgotten. His shoulders were slumped, not in defeat, but in a profound, bone-deep weariness I'd never seen in him before.
He wasn't the invincible Don. He wasn't the cold killer. He was just a man, standing in the dark, holding the weight of a world that had almost stolen something from him.
I stepped onto the balcony. The night air was cool, carrying the distant hum of the city. He didn't turn, but I knew he sensed me. He always did.
"I couldn't sleep," I said, my voice small in the vast night.
"Neither could I." He took a slow sip of his drink, his gaze fixed on the horizon. "Every time I close my eyes, I see you in that garden. I see his hand on you. I see the van waiting. I see a thousand different ways it could have gone wrong in the seconds it took me to get there."
His voice was a raw scrape of sound. It wasn't guilt. It was terror. The terror that followed was from a man who had nearly lost his most prized possession and who knew, with chilling certainty, that the threat was not yet over.
"You got there," I whispered.
"This time." He finally turned to look at me. In the moonlight, his face was all stark angles and shadows, his eyes bottomless pits. "And next time? The time after that? This is my life, Isabella. A constant war. And I just dragged you into the trenches."
The truth of it settled between us. There was no going back to a life before the garden, before the kiss, before the contract. I was in the trenches. The only choice was who I stood with.
I took a step closer. The fear was still there, a cold thread in my blood. But a stronger, more terrifying current pulled me toward him. Not despite the violence, but woven through with it. The violence was for me.
"When I was on the ground," I said, the words coming slowly, dragged from a place of absolute honesty, "and I saw you in the doorway… I wasn't scared of you."
He went perfectly still.
"I was scared for you. Scared a bullet would find you before you could… before you could do what you did. Scared I'd see you fall." The admission left me trembling. It was the core of it. In the heart of the nightmare, I realized that my terror was not for myself or even for him. It had been about losing him.
The glass in his hand cracked. Not from pressure, but from the sudden, violent tremor that went through him. He set it down on the balcony ledge with a sharp click, the sound final.
He turned fully to face me, closing the distance between us in one stride. He didn't touch me. He just looked down at me, his expression a battleground of awe and agony. "Don't," he breathed. "Don't say that. Don't give me that hope. I can survive your hate. I can't survive your care."
"It's too late," I echoed his own words from a different confession. The dam inside me broke. "I don't want to want you. I don't want this life. I don't want to love a man who…" I gestured helplessly toward the garden below, toward the memory of gunfire.
He caught my hand, his grip warm and firm. "Who would kill for you? Who would die for you? Who is so fucking terrified of the depth of what he feels for you that it feels like madness?" His voice dropped to a ragged whisper. "That man is me, Isabella. And you're right. It's too late. We're both damned."
And then he kissed me.
It wasn't like the desperate, furious kiss in the bedroom. It wasn't the possessive branding in the café. This was a surrender. A communion. His lips were soft, seeking, tasting the salt of my tears. I hadn't known I was crying. It was an apology and a vow, a welcome and a claim all at once. A sob caught in my throat, and I kissed him back, pouring every ounce of my confusion, my fear, and my terrifying, undeniable need into it.
This time, I didn't pull away.
My hands came up to cradle his face, my fingers tracing the rough stubble on his jaw and the tension in his temples. He groaned, a deep, broken sound, and his arms wrapped around me, crushing me to his chest. I could feel the frantic beat of his heart against mine, a twin rhythm of chaos and coming home.
"Isabella," he murmured against my lips, my name a prayer. "Tell me to stop. Now. Or I swear to God, I won't be able to."
I didn't tell him to stop. I pulled him closer, my answer clear.
He lifted me into his arms as if I weighed nothing, carrying me from the balcony, through the dark study, to our bedroom. He laid me on the dark sheets, coming down over me, his weight a delicious, grounding pressure.
There was no rush. This wasn't about the contract's consummation. This was a revelation. He worshipped me with his hands, his mouth, and his eyes. He mapped every inch of my skin as if memorizing a holy text, tracing the scars of my old life and the new, invisible wounds. He kissed the hollow of my throat, the inside of my wrist, and the sensitive skin behind my knee, whispering words in Italian I didn't understand but felt in my soul.
When I touched him, my hands sliding under his sweater to feel the hard planes of his chest and the ridged scar on his ribs, he trembled. The mighty Dante Salvatore, brought to his knees by a touch. It gave me a power I'd never imagined. I was not a passive recipient. I was a participant, an equal in this dark sacrament.
When we finally joined, it was with a slow, shuddering intensity that stole the breath from both our lungs. There was pain, a sharp, fleeting burn that melted into a feeling of such profound rightness it brought fresh tears to my eyes. He stilled above me, his forehead pressed to mine, his eyes screwed shut as if in prayer, giving me time, letting me adjust, letting me accept.
"Look at me," I whispered.
He opened his eyes. In the dim light, they held a universe of emotion—tenderness, passion, a possessive fire, and a vulnerability that shattered me completely. This was the man. The whole man. The beast, the protector, the lonely boy, the ruthless king. And he was mine.
"Tesoro," he breathed, and began to move.
It was not gentle. It was passionate, raw, and utterly consuming. It was the physical manifestation of everything between us—the hate, the fear, the obsession, and the dawning, terrifying love. We moved together in a rhythm older than time, chasing away the ghosts of the garden, rewriting the contract with our bodies. I clung to him, my nails scoring his back, my cries swallowed by his kisses. He whispered my name like a mantra, each thrust a promise, a claiming, a surrender.
The climax was a supernova. It didn't tear me apart; it fused me together. I shattered around him with a broken cry, and he followed, his own release a guttural roar muffled against my neck, his entire body shaking as he spilled himself inside me.
After, he didn't roll away. He gathered me to him, turning so I lay sprawled across his chest, my ear pressed over the frantic, slowing drum of his heart. His arms were locked around me, his face buried in my hair. We were slick with sweat, tangled in the sheets, utterly spent.
No words were needed. The silence was full, complete.
Sometime in the deepest part of the night, I woke. We had shifted, but we were still entangled. His leg was thrown over mine, his arm a heavy, warm band across my waist, his hand splayed possessively over my stomach. My head was pillowed on his shoulder. In the faint dawn light, I could see the peaceful, unguarded lines of his face in sleep. He looked younger. He looked at peace.
I carefully lifted my hand and touched his cheek, the stubble rough under my fingertips.
He didn't wake, but a faint, contented sigh escaped his lips, and he pulled me infinitesimally closer.
I lay there, wrapped in the scent of him, sex, and safety, and I knew with certainty that it was both exhilarating and terrifying.
Everything had changed.
I had chosen the devil.
And in his arms, I had found my heaven.