Chapter 137: Marco’s Discovery

He walked away.

Left Isabella sitting alone in the café, tears streaming down her face, her cappuccino cold.

And for the first time since this whole disaster started, Isabella felt the full weight of what she’d lost.

Not Dimitri....she’d never had him to lose.

But Enzo.

The one person who’d loved her unconditionally.

The one person who’d been there for her no matter what.

The one person who’d seen her at her worst and stayed anyway.

Gone.

Because she’d used him. Taken advantage of his feelings. Proven that he meant less to her than a man who’d never wanted her at all.

Isabella paid for her coffee, left the café.

Walked the streets of New York for hours, aimless and alone.

She should go back to Rome.

Should listen to her father. Should leave this city and everything in it behind.

Should try to move on from the obsession that had cost her everything.

But she couldn’t.

Because three blocks from the café, she saw them.

Dimitri and Eve.

Walking together, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder.

Laughing about something. Looking at each other like they were the only two people in the world.

Happy. In love, And looking so perfect.

Everything Isabella had wanted. Everything she’d dreamed of since she was nine years old.

And watching them, feeling the familiar ache in her chest, the desperate need that never went away....

Isabella knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

Couldn’t go anywhere.

Because even after everything, after nearly dying, after losing Enzo, after destroying every relationship that mattered....

She still loved Dimitri.

Still wanted him.

Still believed, somewhere deep and irrational and completely insane, that someday he’d choose her. ℴℴ𝘮

So she’d stay.

She’d keep her distance like Enzo had ordered. She’d maintain her cover like Antonio had commanded. She’d play the role of innocent victim like her father expected.

But she’d watch.

She’d wait.

She’d hope.

Even if that hope was killing her.

Because letting go of Dimitri Valentino would mean letting go of the only dream she’d ever had.

And Isabella didn’t know how to be anyone other than the woman who loved him.

Even if that love was destroying her.

***

POV: ENZO

Enzo sat in his car three blocks from the café, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white.

That had been harder than he’d expected.

Seeing Isabella. Hearing her apologies. Watching her cry.

Every instinct had screamed at him to comfort her. To tell her it was okay. To forgive her and pull her into his arms and promise to protect her no matter what.

But he hadn’t.

Because his father was right.

Isabella would never love him back.

Would never choose him over Dimitri.

Would use him until there was nothing left and then move on without a second thought.

And he was tired.

Tired of being second choice. Tired of sacrificing for someone who didn’t value him. Tired of loving someone who saw him as nothing more than a convenient tool.

His phone buzzed.

A text from one of his lieutenants about a territory dispute in Brooklyn.

Business.

Something he could control. Something that didn’t involve feelings or heartbreak or impossible love.

Enzo started the car, pulled into traffic.

He had an empire to build.

Territories to expand. Deals to make. Power to consolidate.

All without Isabella.

All on his own.

It should have felt liberating.

Instead, it just felt empty.

But empty was better than destroyed.

And if he kept telling himself that, maybe eventually he’d believe it.

***

POV: MARCO

Marco had been awake for thirty-six hours straight.

His eyes burned. His third pot of coffee sat cold and untouched on the desk beside him. His team had rotated out twice, gone home to sleep, come back to find him still in the same chair, staring at the same screens.

But he couldn’t stop.

Not when he was this close.

Two weeks.

Two weeks of following digital breadcrumbs that Antonio Valentino had buried so deep most people would never find them. Shell companies nested inside holding corporations nested inside offshore trusts nested inside foundations that existed only on paper.

But Marco wasn’t most people.

He’d been Dimitri’s head of security for eight years. Before that, he’d been special forces, the kind that didn’t exist on any official record, the kind that specialized in finding things people thought they’d hidden forever.

And he’d found something.

Marco pulled up the file again, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating from exhaustion.

PROMETHEUS LABORATORIES

Registered: Cayman Islands, 2008

Primary Operations: Pharmaceutical Manufacturing & Research

Classification: ILLEGAL / BLACK MARKET

Owner: Traced through seventeen shell companies back to... Antonio Valentino.

Marco leaned back in his chair, rubbed his face with both hands.

Dimitri’s father owned an illegal pharmaceutical company.

Not some small side operation. Not a front for money laundering.

A full-scale manufacturing and research facility that produced substances banned by every legitimate medical authority in the world.

Marco had been digging through the production records for hours, and the list made his stomach turn.

Current Production Inventory -- Prometheus Laboratories:

* High-grade methamphetamine (industrial quantities)

* Synthetic opioids (fifty times stronger than morphine)

* Designer stimulants (cardiac arrest in 60% of users)

* Experimental hallucinogens (permanent psychosis documented)

* Neurotoxins (paralysis, respiratory failure)

* Cardiac arrest inducers (untraceable in autopsy)

* Cellular degradation compounds (slow death over weeks)

* Experimental viruses (weaponized, engineered for lethality)

The viruses were what made Marco’s blood run cold.

Prometheus wasn’t just producing drugs and poisons.

They were engineering biological weapons.

He clicked through the research files, reading documentation that should never exist.

Viral strains modified for increased transmission. Pathogens designed to target specific genetic markers. Hemorrhagic fevers engineered to kill within days instead of weeks.

And they were testing them.

The test subject logs went back years.

Prisoners. Homeless people. Refugees. Anyone who wouldn’t be missed.

Injected with experimental viruses. Monitored as they deteriorated. Autopsied when they died.

All of it documented with clinical detachment, like they were lab rats instead of human beings.

Marco felt bile rise in his throat.