She hasn’t looked away, she hasn’t blinked. She stands there like the final witness to a war the world will pretend never happened.
And I point to Lorenzo.
Then to her.
“Look at her,” I say, glancing down at him.
He doesn’t move.
“Look at her,” I repeat, voice flat, almost bored.
He turns his head with the stiffness of a puppet whose strings are wet.
And she looks back.
“Plead,” I tell him. “Beg her. Beg the girl you erased.”
He doesn’t.
So I fire a shot.
It rips past his calf, explodes into the floor next to him. He yelps, collapses further.
“Try again.”
Now he speaks.
“Please,” he gasps, crawling slightly toward her. “Isabella—I didn’t mean for this— I didn’t know you got abused. I was trying to protect the name, the business, you—I thought if I—”
“Louder.”
His voice breaks on the next word.
“Please,” he sobs, “please, I’m sorry—”
And that’s when I speak.
“Step closer.”
Isabella doesn’t move.
Her chest rises sharply. I see it, the breath she tries to hold, the way her fingers twitch slightly at her sides. Her knuckles go white. Her lips part, but no sound escapes. She doesn’t look away, but she doesn’t step forward either.
She’s scared, and I understand. Because she’s not looking at me right now. She’s looking at the thing she’s rarely seen before, not in books, not in case files, not in folders.
She’s looking at a man butcher a legacy.
Execute history.
And make the Devil look like a priest.
She swallows, the line of her throat trembling.
I don’t move. I don’t coax her. I don’t need to.
But I want her to hear it.
“This is the man who gave me fucking PTSD. This is the man who chained me in a bunker. Starved me. Denied me food, light, sleep. Made me piss in a corner. Fed me static and silence. This is the man who used me as leverage, and used you, Isabella,to get to me.”
