Chapter 60: Isabella Is In Town

"Of course."

Isabella walked to the windows, looking out at the city Dimitri had claimed as his empire.

She’d heard the rumors, of course. Antonio had been eager to share, his son had taken up with some American nobody. A divorced woman who ran a talent agency. Someone completely unsuitable for the life they led.

Someone who would break easily when the pressure came.

Isabella had been raised among killers. Trained by her father’s best men. She spoke five languages, could disassemble and reassemble a Glock 19 in under thirty seconds, and had been taught from childhood that emotion was weakness.

This Eve Thorne, whoever she was, couldn’t possibly compete.

The knock came at exactly nine o’clock.

Punctual. That was something Isabella had always appreciated about Dimitri.

She opened the door herself, letting Chiara handle the shadows.

And there he was.

Six-four of lethal grace in a charcoal suit, silver-gray eyes that assessed everything in seconds, dark hair perfectly styled. He looked like every fantasy she’d constructed since she was a girl, powerful, dangerous and untouchable.

"Dimitri." She smiled, warm and welcoming. "It’s been too long."

"Isabella." He didn’t move to embrace her, didn’t step inside. Just stood in the doorway like a man at a business meeting. "May I come in?"

So formal. So cold.

"Of course." She stepped back, gesturing him inside.

He walked past her, and she caught his scent.....expensive cologne, something dark and woodsy. The same scent she’d smelled once when she was seventeen, when he’d come to her father’s estate for a meeting and she’d orchestrated a chance encounter in the garden.

He’d been polite. Distant. Completely uninterested.

She’d spent the next six years trying to change that.

"Champagne?" she offered, moving to the bar where Chiara had left the Krug on ice.

"No, thank you."

"Of course. You never did drink much." She poured herself a glass anyway, needing something to do with her hands. "So. Let’s not pretend this is a social call. You know why I’m here."

"Antonio told you about Eve."

The name landed between them like a stone.

"Yes." Isabella took a sip of champagne, studying him over the rim of the glass. "He said you’ve taken up with some woman. That you’re refusing to honor your engagement to me."

"I never agreed to that engagement," Dimitri said quietly. "Antonio arranged it when I was fifteen years old. I was too young to fight him on it then. I’m not anymore."

"So you’re breaking our arrangement because you’ve found someone new?" Isabella set down her glass, her voice carefully neutral. "That seems... impulsive. Unlike you."

"It’s not impulsive when I’ve wanted her for seven years."

The admission hit Isabella like a slap.

Seven years.

Seven years, and he’d never once looked at Isabella with anything beyond polite indifference.

"I see." She smoothed her dress, buying time to school her expression. "And this woman....Eve, she knows what she’s getting into? The life you lead? The enemies you’ve made?"

"She knows everything."

"Everything?" Isabella’s voice sharpened. "She knows about the torture you inflict? The people you’ve killed? The businesses you run? The blood on your hands?"

"Yes." Dimitri’s eyes were steady on hers. "She knows all of it. She’s seen it. And she chose to stay anyway."

Isabella laughed....a brittle, disbelieving sound. "You showed her the warehouse? The real you? And she didn’t run screaming?"

"No. She watched me break a man’s fingers one by one, then asked me to take her home."

The image was so absurd, so impossible, that Isabella almost laughed again.

Almost.

"Then she’s either insane or lying to herself," Isabella said flatly. "No woman with any sense would choose this life willingly. Not when she has other options."

"She chose it." Dimitri’s voice was steel. "She chose me. And I’m choosing her. Which is why I came here tonight, to tell you, face-to-face, that the engagement is over. It was never real to begin with, but now it’s officially done."

Isabella felt something crack in her chest.

Fourteen years.

Fourteen years of preparation, of training, of molding herself into the perfect mafia wife. Fourteen years of imagining her life beside this man, ruling empires, raising children who would inherit everything.

Gone.

Because of some nobody who’d stumbled into his club at the right moment.

"You’re making a mistake," she said, and she couldn’t keep the ice from her voice now. "This woman...she’s not built for our world. She’ll crack. She’ll break. And when she does, when she runs or betrays you or gets herself killed, you’ll have burned every bridge that mattered for nothing."

"She won’t break."

"You sound very certain."

"I am."

Isabella studied him, searching for weakness, for doubt, for anything she could exploit.

She found nothing.

Dimitri Valentino...the Devil, the Don, the man she’d been promised to since childhood was absolutely, unshakably certain about this woman.

"Does she know about us?" Isabella asked quietly. "About the engagement? About what your father and mine arranged?"

"Yes. I told her everything last night."

"And?"

"And she said anyone who tries to take her from me will regret it." A ghost of a smile touched Dimitri’s lips. "She’s fiercer than you think, Isabella."

"I’d like to meet her." The words were out before Isabella could stop them.

Dimitri’s expression shuttered. "No."

"Why not? If she’s so strong, so certain, surely she can handle a simple meeting."

"Because you’ll try to manipulate her. Test her. Find her weaknesses and exploit them." Dimitri took a step closer, and the temperature in the room dropped. "And if you hurt her, Isabella, if you so much as make her uncomfortable.....I will forget every reason I have to keep you alive. Do you understand?"

It should have frightened her.

It didn’t.

It confirmed everything she needed to know.

"You love her," Isabella said, and it wasn’t a question. "You actually love her."

"Yes."

"Antonio said it was just an infatuation. That you’d grow bored and come back to the arrangement."

"Antonio is wrong." Dimitri’s voice was absolute. "I’m going to marry her, Isabella. When the time is right, I’m going to ask her, and she’s going to say yes, and then I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure she never regrets choosing me."

The conviction in his voice made Isabella’s chest ache.

She’d wanted that. That certainty. That devotion.

And he was giving it to someone else.