Chapter 15: CH- 15

Isabella POV

The coin gleams in the pale hallway light. One side glistens clean. The other—streaked in blood—sticks to the velvet like a curse.

Marco doesn’t touch it. Neither do I.

We just stare at it.

“Same coin?” he asks.

I nod. My throat is too tight to answer properly. Selene’s message couldn’t be clearer.

She wants me to play her game.

To make a choice.

To kill or be killed.

To accept Aria or erase her.

To save Dante… or leave him bleeding behind enemy lines.

Marco finally lifts the coin from the box, using the edge of his shirt like it’s radioactive.

“We can track the blood,” he offers. “Run it through the satellite logs. Maybe it’s Dante’s. Maybe not.”

But I already know.

It is Dante’s.

I felt it the moment I saw the coin—like a tether snapping inside me.

The kind of knowing you don’t need science to confirm.

The kind you feel in your bones, in your blood, in the places that never really stopped aching for him.

“Wake Luciana,” I say hoarsely. “And get me the map of Selene’s strongholds. If she wants a war…”

Marco’s jaw tightens. “We bring it.”

I close the box and hold it to my chest, as if I can crush Selene’s choices with the weight of my grief.

But she’s not just playing with my emotions anymore.

She’s drawing battle lines with blood.

\=============

Thirty Minutes Later

The safehouse is alive with low voices and clinking weapons. Luciana spreads out a parchment-thin map on the dining table, her fingers tracing borders soaked in history and bloodshed.

“Selene’s consolidating forces in the east,” she murmurs. “Volkov territory. But she’s not stupid—she won’t push too far without securing Palermo. The opera house was just the beginning.”

“Aria,” I say. “She’s not just a decoy.”

Luciana looks up sharply. “You think she’s… part of the plan?”

“No. I think she is the plan.”

Flashback: Last Night, the Opera House

After the coin flipped and Aria raised the gun, there was a moment—just a blink—where time fractured.

I pulled the trigger.

But I didn’t aim at Aria.

I aimed past her.

Straight into the shadows where Selene was disappearing.

The bullet grazed her shoulder.

She shrieked like a dying viper, but vanished behind red curtains before I could follow.

Then—Aria lowered her weapon.

Not at me.

At Veritas.

And he froze.

It wasn’t fear I saw in his eyes. It was fury. The moment her loyalty wavered, even for a breath, he knew his control was cracking.

I reached Dante in a blur, dragging him behind the set walls as gunfire broke out above us. Aria didn’t shoot again.

She just… watched me leave.

Present Day

I shake the memory loose and refocus on the map.

“She let me go,” I say aloud. “Aria.”

Luciana frowns. “Why?”

“She didn’t know what side to stand on. Not really. She’s been trained, molded, but not chosen. She’s still waiting for someone to choose her.”

Luciana exhales. “So what’s the plan?”

“We turn her.”

Marco scoffs. “The hell you mean ‘turn her’? She aimed to kill you. That girl’s a ghost raised in a prison of knives.”

I stare at the coin again.

“No,” I say. “She’s a mirror. And mirrors don’t kill. They reflect.”

Marco curses under his breath, but Luciana nods slowly. “Then we need to reach her before Selene seals her fate.”

“And before Veritas finds a new way to make her bleed,” I whisper.

Elsewhere… That Same Morning

Dante POV

Pain is a language I know fluently.

But this—this is a new dialect.

Not just the split skin and broken ribs.

It’s the ache of failure.

The weight of watching Isabella walk away while I knelt in my own blood, unable to help her.

They moved me after the opera house—Selene’s men.

Blindfolded. Beaten. Shackled.

Now I hang in a cellar reeking of damp stone and sulfur.

And in front of me, Veritas watches.

Like a man studying a starving dog.

“You should’ve stayed dead, Valeri,” he murmurs.

“You had your chance to disappear.”

I smile through a broken lip.

“You had your chance to matter. But I see you’re still licking boots for a woman who doesn’t love you.”

His fist slams into my jaw. I hear the crack before I feel it.

“Selene doesn’t need love,” he hisses.

“She needs loyalty.”

I spit blood onto the floor.

“Then she should’ve bought a dog.”

He raises the knife next.

But before it touches skin, a voice cuts through the chamber.

“Enough.”

Aria.

She steps into the light. Hair still braided in gold thread.

Face unreadable. But her eyes—they flicker. Not at Veritas.

At me.

“You’re going to kill him?” she asks.

Veritas grits his teeth. “Eventually. Right now, I’m softening him.”

Aria steps closer.

And she does the last thing I expect.

She kneels beside me.

Whispers:

“She’s coming for you.”

My heart stutters.

She stands again.

“You want her broken, Veritas?” she says coldly. “Let him live. Let her come see what you’ve done.”

Veritas tilts his head. Suspicious. But nods.

“You’re learning,” he says. “You’ll make a fine queen.”

But Aria doesn’t smile.

She looks back at me once more—just for a moment.

And in her eyes…

I see war.

And mercy.

Both pointed straight at the De Luca name.

\================

Back at the Safehouse

Isabella POV

The sun breaks over the hills.

My decision is made.

“Luciana,” I say. “Get the car.”

Marco raises an eyebrow. “We moving now?”

“No. We’re hunting.”

I tuck the coin back into the box and snap it shut.

“Selene gave me a choice,” I murmur. “Here’s mine.”

I look at both of them.

“We burn her kingdom to ash.”

In a secret chamber beneath the Volkov estate, Selene dips the tip of a dagger into a vial of black liquid.

Veritas kneels behind her.

“You saw what she did,” he says. “She hesitated. Aria hesitated.”

Selene’s smile is slow. Icy.

“She still bleeds De Luca. But so did Isabella once.”

She turns.

Holds up the dagger.

And carves a bloodline sigil into the stone altar before her.

“Blood will bind them.”

She presses the blade to her own palm.

“And blood will end them.”

.