Chapter 1 - The Lie Between Them
“Then why are you backing away?”
Isabella looked toward the closed study door.
That small movement changed everything.
Dante had spent years watching men conceal weapons, debts, and betrayal. He recognized the instant someone stopped being afraid of the person in front of them and started being afraid of whoever might be listening.
He lowered his hands.
“Isabella. Look at me.”
Her eyes found his.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid of someone else?”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
Her phone vibrated.
She flinched so violently that Dante felt it in his chest.
“Give me the phone.”
She clutched it harder.
“No. Please.”
He stopped himself from reaching.
For most of his life, people obeyed him because refusing seemed dangerous. He had never considered what that habit might look like to someone he loved when she was already terrified.
He stepped away from the door and sat in the chair beside his desk.
“All right,” he said. “Keep it.”
Isabella stared at him.
“You can stand wherever you want. You can leave this room. But before you do, I need you to answer one question.”
Her breathing shook.
“Did someone tell you to say those words?”
She closed her eyes.
There it was.
Not an answer.
Something worse.
A surrender.
Dante’s jaw tightened, but he kept his voice steady.
“Someone threatened you.”
The phone vibrated again.
Isabella looked down.
Then she made a sound he had never heard from her before.
A small, broken gasp.
He waited.
Finally, she turned the screen toward him.
The photograph showed her mother sitting in a plain room beneath a fluorescent light. Her handbag rested on her lap. Beside her stood a man wearing a security badge.
Below the photograph was a message.
Say it exactly. Make him believe you. If you tell him why, your mother does not leave.
For several seconds, Dante could hear only the grandfather clock.
“Where is your mother?”
“She had an appointment at the Vale Women’s Center this afternoon. They said they needed to repeat something from her screening.”
“Did you speak to her?”
“At six. She said they were keeping her for observation.” Isabella swallowed. “Then these messages started.”
“How long?”
“Since nine forty.”
Seventy minutes.
His wife had stood downstairs for seventy minutes, surrounded by his guards and his money and his supposedly impenetrable world, while someone frightened her into destroying herself.
He had been twenty feet away.
“What else did they tell you?”
“That you would kill anyone who made you look foolish.”
Dante looked up.
Isabella rushed on.
“I know you wouldn’t hurt me. But they sent pictures of men. News stories. Things about your family. They said if I told you, you’d send people, and my mother would be caught in the middle.”
He could have denied everything.
He could have told her the stories were exaggerated.
Some were.
Some weren’t.
The distinction suddenly felt disgusting.
“Have you been unfaithful to me?” he asked.
“No.”
The word came immediately.
Cleanly.
Fiercely.
“Is this our child?”
“Yes.”
Dante bowed his head.
Relief hit him so hard it almost felt like grief.
Isabella pressed a hand over her mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at her again.
“No.”
“I thought if you hated me, they would let her go. They said you had to throw me out before midnight.”
“No,” he repeated. “You do not apologize for trying to keep your mother alive.”
Another message appeared.
He is too quiet. Make him angry.
Dante stared at it.
Whoever was doing this expected an explosion. A shout. A slammed door. Something visible enough to carry downstairs.
Something someone could record.
“May I come closer?” he asked.
Isabella nodded.
He crossed the room slowly and knelt in front of her.
For once, the feared man of Chicago looked exactly as helpless as he felt.
“I believe you.”
Her face crumpled.
He held out his hand.
She took it.
“And I am going to help your mother,” he continued. “But I need to do this without giving whoever sent those messages what they want.”
Isabella looked toward the fireplace.
The study’s antique brass clock sat on the mantel, a gift from his uncle Adrian.
Beside it, a tiny green light blinked once.
Dante followed her gaze.
Neither of them spoke.
Then Isabella said, loud enough for the room to hear, “Please don’t make me leave.”
Dante understood.
He stood.
And for the first time that evening, he gave their audience exactly the performance it expected.
May you like
“Get out,” he said coldly.
But his hand remained wrapped around hers.
