Chapter 247: We’ll Deal With The Damage

She had no answer.

There was no answer. Because he was right about all of it.

Every word.

Enzo looked at her for a long moment, taking her in with those dark eyes that had always seen more of her than she was comfortable with.

Then he picked up his coat from where he’d set it on the arm of the sofa.

"Wait," Isabella said. "Enzo, wait..."

He walked to the door.

"We’ll deal with the damage," he said, his hand on the handle. "Together. Like we always do." A pause. "But tonight I can’t look at you." ℯ

He opened the door.

"Enzo, please...."

The door closed behind him.

The sound of it...quiet, careful, not slammed....was somehow worse than any anger would have been.

Isabella stood in the middle of her apartment, surrounded by candlelight and the scent of a wine she’d opened for a man who didn’t exist.

And then something broke.

Not dramatically. Not loudly.

Just a slow unraveling, starting in her chest, working its way outward....until she was sliding down the side of the sofa to the floor, her back against it, her knees drawn up, her face in her hands.

She cried.

Not the controlled, careful tears of a woman maintaining her image. Not the strategic vulnerability she’d deployed in other men’s presence.

She wept.

For the three months she’d spent feeling chosen by someone who’d been selecting her. For the information she’d given freely, thinking it was intimacy. For the look on Enzo’s face, that devastated, certain disappointment from the one person who had never once looked at her and found her lacking.

Until tonight.

***

POV: DIMITRI

His phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.

Eve was reading on the sofa, her legs folded under her, a glass of wine going warm on the side table.

Dimitri checked the screen.

Mike.

He answered. "Yeah."

"Come have a drink with me," Mike said. "Sinners. I’m already here."

Dimitri looked across the room at Eve. She was still reading. Or pretending to.

"Give me forty minutes," he said.

"I’ll be at the bar."

The call ended.

Eve turned a page.

"Your brother wants a drink," Dimitri said.

"I heard." She looked up then. "Go."

"I’ll be late."

"I know." She uncurled herself, came to him. Reached up and straightened his collar even though it didn’t need straightening. "Don’t drink too much."

"I own the club."

"That’s not what I said."

He kissed her. She pushed up onto her toes and kissed him back properly.

"Go," she said against his mouth. "He never asks unless he needs something."

"You know your brother the best" He said and kissed her again "I will try to come back early."

Dimitri changed his clothes and left.

***

Sinners was already alive by the time he got there.

The line outside stretched half a block. Bodies pressed behind the velvet rope, dressed for the night, phones out, waiting for the door to open and the darkness to swallow them whole. The bass from inside hit before you even reached the entrance. A physical thing. A pulse you felt in your chest before you heard it with your ears.

His security saw him coming. The door opened before he reached it.

He stepped inside.

The club hit him all at once.

Smoke and perfume and something underneath, the usual madness of people who wanted to forget themselves for a few hours. The lighting was low and red, the kind that made everyone look dangerous, Strobe cuts through the dark in slow pulses. On the main floor, the crowd moved like one organism....arms up, heads back, surrendered completely to the music.

The DJ was deep into something with a heavy baseline that vibrated through the floor, through the walls, through the expensive glasses lined up behind the bar.

Dimitri moved through it all without stopping.

The crowd parted for him. Not because anyone announced him. Not because anyone asked them to. Just because he was Dimitri Valentino and there was something in the way he moved that made people step aside without understanding why.

The bartenders clocked him. The floor manager appeared at his elbow for exactly three seconds.

"Everything good tonight, boss?"

"Fine," Dimitri said without breaking stride. "Keep it that way."

He took the stairs at the back. Past the second-floor bar, past the private dining rooms, up again to where it was quieter. Where the bass was still there but distant now, a rumble beneath your feet instead of inside your ribcage.

His private lounge.

Dark leather. Low lighting. A view down through the glass floor panel to the main floor below. A bottle of Barolo already breathing on the table.

Mike was in the far chair with his jacket off and his tie loosened, looking like a man who’d come straight from the office.

He looked up when Dimitri walked in.

"You actually came," Mike said.

"You called." Dimitri dropped into the chair across from him. Poured himself a glass. "How long have you been here?"

"Hour maybe." Mike picked up his own glass. "Watched the crowd come in from up here. Remembered why I don’t go to clubs anymore."

"You came to mine."

"Your club is different."

Dimitri looked at him. Mike had his thinking face on.

"How’s Eve?" Mike asked.

"Good."

"Yeah?" He swirled his glass. "She sounded different when I called her earlier. Lighter maybe"

Dimitri said nothing.

Mike looked at him. Read his face the way he’d been reading it for fifteen years.

"Okay," Mike said. "Okay." He laughed once, short. "About time."

"Don’t."

"I’m not saying anything."

"You’re thinking it."

"Loudly," Mike agreed. He took a drink. Set the glass down. "She’s happy?"

"Yes."

"Good." He meant it. No performance behind it, no older brother posturing. Just Mike, who loved his sister and had spent years watching her disappear inside a marriage that had been slowly hollowing her out. "That’s all I needed to know."

Below them, through the glass, the crowd kept moving. Someone had climbed up onto the elevated platform near the DJ booth. Security was already moving toward them.

"My father called me," Dimitri said.

Mike’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth.

"When?"

"This morning."

"What did he want?"