Chapter 73

Isabella

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Not that I didn’t try. I had lain there in my old bed, staring up at the ceiling, and maybe the room hadn’t changed, but everything else had. The feel of the room, the warmth it no longer gave, the new memories I had, and even my father…

Although, everything here smelled the same—that tired mix of floor polish, tobacco, and fading lavender. I used to think it was comforting, but right now, I couldn’t tell if I was suffocating on the scent of nostalgia or if it was the weight of everything I’d seen, everything I knew, and everything they never told me.

The house no longer felt like home. I could barely remember when last it did—not since the auction, not since Alessandro, not since I had been dragged into a world sewn together with bloodlines and bullets. And right now, sleeping in what used to be my room, on what I could no longer call my bed, I didn’t know what else.

I had met Dagger and the Varones, but it was har