THE FINAL GAME
Isabella POV
The wine cellar smells like earth and old secrets, but it's Marco's silence that makes my skin crawl. He stares at the gun in his hands like it holds answers instead of bullets, while Salvatore's men breathe down our necks like hungry wolves.
"Choose quickly, Marco," Salvatore says, his voice echoing off stone walls. "Elena grows impatient."
I press my palm against the gunshot wound in my shoulder, blood seeping through my fingers. The pain keeps me sharp, focused on the slight tremor in Marco's jaw that tells me he's thinking. Always thinking.
"There's a third option," Marco says finally, lowering the weapon. "Elena wants Isabella in Chicago to destroy her father from within. I'll take that contract."
My breath catches. He's agreeing to betray me again, but something in his eyes—a flicker of calculation I've learned to read like scripture—tells me to trust him one more time.
Salvatore laughs. "You think Elena trusts you enough for that mission after your little escape attempt?"
"She needs someone Vittorio trusts to get close enough." Marco's voice carries the cold professionalism that once fooled my father. "Isabella hates her now. Perfect motivation for revenge against the mother who tried to kill her."
The lie tastes bitter on the air between us, but I nod slowly. "I want to watch Papa burn for what he did to my mother."
Even saying it makes me feel sick, but Salvatore's eyes gleam with interest. He speaks rapidly into his radio, then waits for Elena's response. When it comes, static-filled and decisive, he holsters his weapon.
"She agrees. But Marco—one wrong move, and Isabella dies screaming. Understood?"
"Understood."
Twenty minutes later, we're in Salvatore's car racing through Sicily's winding mountain roads. I lean against Marco's shoulder, letting him feel my pulse hammering with fear that isn't entirely fake. When I speak, it's barely a whisper.
"Tell me you have a plan."
His hand finds mine beneath the jacket covering my wound. Three quick squeezes. Our old signal from those stolen nights in Chicago. Trust me.
"Elena thinks she taught me manipulation," he murmurs against my hair. "But she never learned the most important lesson—the student can become the master."
The phone in his pocket buzzes with Elena's instructions. We're to return to Chicago immediately, where I'll play the broken daughter seeking revenge while Marco ensures Vittorio's empire crumbles from within. Then, when Papa is dead and his organization destroyed, Elena's people will eliminate us both.
"She's mobilizing everyone," Marco says after reading. "Calling in favors from every family that ever hated your father. This won't be assassination—it'll be war."
My stomach churns. "How many innocents will die?"
"Too many. Unless we stop her first."
The airport comes into view, but Marco doesn't turn toward the private terminal. Instead, he pulls into a parking garage and kills the engine.
"What are you doing?"
He reaches for his phone, fingers flying across the screen. "Sending three messages simultaneously. One to your father's security chief, one to Elena's lieutenant, and one to the FBI contact who's been trying to build a case against both families for years."
I stare at him. "You're exposing us to the FBI?"
"I'm exposing Elena. Her communications, her network, her plans for Chicago." He shows me the screen—photographs, audio files, location data. "Everything I've gathered over the past three years. Enough to bring down her operation and stop the war before it starts."
"And us?"
His thumb hovers over the send button. "That depends on whether you trust me to get us out of this."
I think about the locket lying shattered in the villa's courtyard, about Lucia dying with my name on her lips, about Elena's cold smile when she admitted using me as a weapon. Then I think about Marco taking a bullet meant for me, about his hands shaking the first time he touched me without pretense, about the way he whispers my name like prayer in the darkness.
"Send it."
The messages disappear into cyberspace, carrying Elena's secrets with them. Marco's phone immediately starts buzzing with incoming calls, but he turns it off and tosses it out the window.
"Now what?"
"Now we disappear. New identities, new life, somewhere Elena's influence can't reach." He cups my face in his hands. "But first, we need to make sure your father survives long enough to benefit from the FBI's protection."
I pull back. "You want to warn Papa?"
"I want you to warn him. From a payphone, anonymously. Tell him Elena's people are already in Chicago, that the attack comes at dawn." His eyes are steady, certain. "Give him a fighting chance."
The idea of saving the man who raised me on beautiful lies should feel wrong, but it doesn't. Papa may be a monster, but he's my monster. And somewhere beneath all his sins, he loved me enough to kill for me.
"There's a phone booth two blocks from here," I say.
Marco nods and starts the car. But as we pull out of the garage, red and blue lights flash in the distance. Too many of them, moving too fast.
"Police?" I ask.
"Or Elena's people. Does it matter?"
He's right. Everyone wants to use us, control us, or kill us. But for the first time in my life, I know exactly what I want.
"The amphitheater," I say suddenly. "The ruins where Elena first showed her true face."
"Isabella—"
"No. I'm done running, done being everyone's pawn." I think about the ancient stones that have witnessed centuries of human drama, about the ghosts of gladiators who fought on their own terms. "If this ends tonight, it ends where I chose to see the truth."
Marco studies my face, then slowly smiles. It's the first genuine expression I've seen from him since the wine cellar, and it transforms him back into the man I fell in love with despite every reason not to.
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking the student is about to become the master." I reach for his phone before remembering he threw it away. "Find me a phone. I have some calls to make."
"To who?"
"Everyone. Papa, Elena, the FBI." I taste copper and possibility on my tongue. "I'm done being the weapon everyone else wants to wield. Time to see what happens when Isabella Torrino chooses her own target."