Rage.
Not for me.
But for what she’s finally tearing out of herself, and handing back to him.
She doesn’t give him space to plead.
She gives him the truth. The kind you don’t recover from.
“You didn’t protect me. You orchestrated me.”
My throat is dry, but I stay still. I could step in. I could end it. But I won’t. Because this? This is hers.
“You stole me from my family. From my name. From every part of me that should have had a choice.”
“I learned blood doesn’t matter.”
“Bloodlines don’t define who you are. Choices do.”
She steps closer, standing tall.
“I’m not Gambino blood.”
Her gaze cuts through him.
“And I never will be.”
She turns her head—just slightly—toward me.
“I’m Bratva blood.”
A breath.
A truth.
“Karamazov blood.”
Isabella
And then I feel him behind me.
Aslanov.
His presence folds over me like shadow, but it isn’t cold. It’s steady. Unshakeable. It anchors me even now, with blood on his hands and a name on my lips that was never mine to begin with, but isnow.
His mouth finds my ear. Close. Familiar. Low.
“Command me, Isabella.”
The same words. The same tone.
He spoke them to me once in a concrete bunker, before I had ever pulled a trigger. When he killed for me for the first time, he ordered me to look away back then. This time he won’t.
But before I can speak, before my breath becomes a verdict, there’s movement.
Lorenzo opens his mouth and croaks out the last coward’s question.
“Was it worth it?”
