Damian's body tightened. He moved so fast Isabella felt the world stop for a moment; the shadow stepped forward into the sliver of moonlight and the face that filled the clearing made her breath stop.
It wasn't Marco this time. It wasn't one of Antonio's men, at least not in the way she'd feared.
It was a man she had watched at family dinners, stood beside at funerals, laughed with when the cameras weren't on a face she'd considered neutral until that moment.
A man whose name she'd heard in Damian's clipped, private curses: Adrian.
Adrian Moretti.
He stood with a casual cruelty about him, coat open, the collar of his shirt wet with rain.
He'd cleaned up; he wore that polite, practiced smile that had always made Damian clench his jaw.
Behind him, two SUVs crouched like waiting beasts.
"Adrian?" Isabella whispered, though her voice sounded like someone else's.
She felt wrong-footed like she'd walked into a room and found a stranger in her own skin.
