Chapter 88

Isabella

I could barely breathe, not because the air was heavy, not because of how dim the room had begun to feel or how quiet Alessandro had gone, but because something inside me had shifted in a way I didn’t recognize. Like I was falling through a place in my chest where my heart had once been steady. Like everything I thought I knew had tilted just a little off-center.

Even though I was upright, even though my lungs were moving, even though the room was still and the walls hadn’t caved in, I still felt out of air in my chest. I heard his voice break as he began telling me about her.

The screen had gone black again, but the images kept playing in my mind.

A man, his father, laughing with a drink in hand, careless and cruel, gambling a child as though she were no more than a number on a piece of paper. And then his uncle, Carlo, so calm, watching, almost smug with that dangerous grin. A bet, a loss, and a life handed over like a pawn in a game I hadn’