Chapter 108 -ISABELLA’S CAPTURE
Isabella sensed it before it happened.
Not fear—she’d learned to live with that—but a wrongness in the air, a subtle shift that tightened her lungs. The safehouse had been quiet all day, too quiet. No sirens. No distant gunfire. No frantic messages filtering through the fractured networks that still whispered Lorenzo’s name like a curse and a prayer.
She stood at the window, watching dusk bleed into night.
“Something’s wrong,” she murmured.
Lorenzo looked up from the table where he’d been dismantling a weapon with surgical calm. “You’ve said that every day since Matteo.”
“And every day, I’ve been right.”
He didn’t argue. He never did anymore.
The knock came three seconds later.
Sharp. Controlled. Confident.
Lorenzo froze.
No one knocked like that unless they wanted to be heard.
“Stay here,” he said quietly.
Isabella’s hand closed around his wrist. “Don’t.”
Their eyes met—everything unspoken flickering between them. He nodded once, a concession he would have never given before.
They moved together.
Lorenzo reached the door first, gun raised. He checked the peephole.
Nothing.
That was the second warning.
The explosion blew the door inward.
The force threw Lorenzo back into the wall, the impact rattling the room. Smoke and debris flooded the space as figures poured in—black-clad, masked, disciplined.
Isabella barely had time to scream before hands were on her.
“Lorenzo!” she shouted as someone slammed her to the floor.
Gunfire erupted—deafening, chaotic. Lorenzo fought like something feral, dropping one man, then another, blood splattering the walls. But there were too many. This wasn’t an attack.
It was a snatch-and-grab.
A needle bit into Isabella’s neck.
“No—!” she gasped, thrashing.
A voice leaned close to her ear. Familiar. Silken. Impossible.
“Easy,” it said. “I’d hate to ruin the reunion.”
Her vision blurred as the world tilted.
The last thing she saw before darkness took her was Lorenzo on his knees, pinned, roaring her name like a wound torn open.
Isabella woke to cold stone and the slow drip of water.
Her wrists were bound behind her, the rope tight enough to numb her fingers. A single bulb swung overhead, casting long, swaying shadows across a room that smelled of mold and iron.
She tested the restraints once.
Pointless.
“Well,” a voice said lazily, “this brings back memories.”
Her blood went cold.
“No,” Isabella whispered. “You’re dead.”
Matteo stepped into the light.
Alive.
Pale. Bruised. One arm held stiffly against his side, bandaged beneath his coat. But unmistakably him—eyes sharp, smile intact, hunger undiminished.
“Disappointed?” he asked. “You should know by now—death is rarely what it looks like in our family.”
She stared at him, heart hammering. “Lorenzo—”
“—believes you’re already halfway to hell,” Matteo finished pleasantly. “Which makes this much more effective.”
Rage flared through the fear. “You used him. Again.”
Matteo tilted his head. “I used you.”
He circled her slowly, like a man admiring a weapon he’d just disarmed. “You see, Isabella, you were always the fulcrum. Lorenzo’s conscience. His weakness. His excuse.”
She spat at his feet. “You lost.”
He smiled wider. “Did I?”
He stopped in front of her, crouching to meet her gaze. “Venturi betrayed me. Lorenzo executed the version of me he needed to believe existed.”
Matteo leaned closer. “But wars don’t end because one man pulls a trigger.”
He stood and snapped his fingers.
A screen flickered to life on the far wall.
Live footage.
Lorenzo, bound to a chair, blood running down his temple. Alive. Furious. Watching.
Isabella’s breath caught. “What did you do to him?”
Matteo’s expression sharpened. “Nothing. Yet.”
Lorenzo strained against his restraints on the screen. “Matteo,” he growled. “You touch her and I will—”
“You’ll what?” Matteo interrupted lightly. “Kill me? Again?”
He turned back to Isabella. “You see the problem? He’s already crossed every line. So have you.”
She forced herself to breathe. “What do you want?”
Matteo’s eyes gleamed.
“I want him to choose,” he said. “What he never could.”
He gestured toward the screen. “Power—or you.”
Isabella’s heart twisted. “He already chose.”
Matteo laughed softly. “No. He chose you while believing the world would still burn without him.”
He leaned in, voice dropping. “I want him to choose you knowing it will cost him everything.”
She shook her head. “You’re insane.”
“Perhaps,” Matteo agreed. “But I’m honest.”
He straightened. “Here’s how this works. I release information—final evidence. Names. Locations. Enough to ensure Lorenzo is hunted until his last breath.”
Isabella swallowed. “And if he refuses?”
Matteo’s gaze slid back to the screen. “Then you die slowly, and he watches.”
Lorenzo shouted her name.
She met Matteo’s eyes, refusing to look away. “He’ll kill you.”
Matteo smiled. “Eventually.”
He leaned close one last time. “But first, he’ll break.”
He turned and walked toward the door. “Give them a minute,” he told his men. “Let them say goodbye.”
The door slammed shut.
The screen remained.
Lorenzo’s voice came through, raw and shaking. “Isabella. Listen to me.”
She forced a smile she didn’t feel. “You look terrible.”
He laughed once, broken. “I told you not to trust silence.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Matteo wants you to choose.”
Lorenzo’s eyes burned. “There is no choice.”
“There is,” she whispered. “And you know it.”
“No,” he said fiercely. “I will not trade you for absolution.”
She leaned back against the cold stone, heart aching. “Then he’ll kill us both.”
“Then we die knowing we didn’t become them,” Lorenzo replied.
Tears stung her eyes. “You always were stubborn.”
“And you,” he said softly, “were always worth the cost.”
Footsteps approached.
The screen cut to black.
Isabella closed her eyes as the door opened again.
Somewhere in the city, Lorenzo De Luca was being forced toward an impossible decision.
And Matteo was smiling—because bait only mattered if it was alive.