POV: Isabella
The rain tapped a nervous rhythm against the windowpane, a sound I'd always found comforting. Tonight, it sounded like a countdown. I was finishing a sketch, charcoal dust smudging my fingertips, when the heavy knock came. Not a friendly rap. A thunderous boom that shook the door in its frame.
My father, Giovanni, flinched so violently he spilled his whiskey. The amber liquid spread across the unpaid bills littering our kitchen table like blood on a battlefield.
"Isabella," he whispered, his face pale as parchment. "Don't answer it."
The knocking came again, more insistent. A voice, cold and smooth as polished marble, cut through the wood. "Giovanni Romano. Open the door. We have business."
I knew that voice. Everyone in our corner of Brooklyn knew it or knew of it. It was the voice that settled disputes without judges, the voice that offered loans with impossible interest, and the voice that owned the shadows of this city.
Salvatore.
My heart hammered against my ribs. "What did you do, Papa?"
His silence was confession enough. The gambling. Always be gambling. The track, the backroom card games, the desperate, hopeful gleam in his eye that always turned to ash.
"I'll handle it," he said, standing on unsteady legs. He straightened his stained sweater, a pathetic attempt at dignity.
He opened the door, and the world I knew ended.
Two men filled the doorway. The one in front was not what I expected from the stories. He wasn't a hulking brute. He was elegance and menace distilled into human form. He was tall—so tall that he had to duck slightly under our low frame—and he wore a suit that likely cost more than our entire building. Midnight black, perfectly tailored to shoulders that were broad and powerful. His hair was jet black, swept back from a forehead that hinted at a classical statue, and his eyes—god, his eyes. They were the color of dark roast coffee, almost black, and they swept the room with a dispassionate, analytical coldness that froze the air in my lungs.
This was Dante Salvatore. Il Diavolo. The Devil of New York.
Behind him stood a larger, more conventionally intimidating man with a scar through his eyebrow and watchful eyes. Marco, his shadow. He was the one who handled tasks that the Don refused to do himself.
But it was my father who captured my horrified gaze. Dante didn't touch him. He didn't need to. Marco stepped forward, a single, brutal shove that sent Giovanni sprawling into the room. He hit the floor with a grunt, and that's when I saw the blood. A fresh cut above his eye, bruises blooming like ugly flowers on his cheek.
"Papa!" I rushed forward, dropping to my knees beside him. The charcoal on my hands smeared red as I touched his face.
"Five million dollars, Giovanni," Dante said, stepping inside. He closed the door softly behind him, a final, ominous click. He didn't look at the blood, the chaos. He looked at our poverty. His gaze flickered over the peeling wallpaper, the second-hand furniture, and the art supplies scattered on my corner desk. His expression was unreadable. "Your debt is due. Where is my money?"
"Dante… Don Salvatore, please," Giovanni babbled, pushing himself up on his elbows. "I need more time. A week. I have a system—"
"You have nothing," Dante interrupted, his voice still calm, almost bored. "You have less than nothing. Your system is a fantasy that cost my family five million dollars." He finally looked at me. A slow, deliberate assessment that felt more invasive than a touch. I glared back, my fear hardening into defiance under that gaze.
"Who is this?" he asked, though something in his eyes suggested he already knew.
"My daughter," Giovanni said, a tremor in his voice. "Isabella. She has nothing to do with this."
"Everyone in your life has something to do with your failures, Giovanni. They are the collateral you never consider." Dante took another step, his polished Oxfords silent on the worn linoleum. He stopped before me. I stayed kneeling, refusing to cower, tilting my head up to meet his impossible eyes. Up close, he was even more arresting. There was a faint scar near his temple, a small imperfection on a canvas of ruthless control. He smelled like sandalwood and cold winter air.
"Get up," he said.
It wasn't a request. It was a command that vibrated in my bones. I stood, forcing my legs to stop shaking, wiping my bloody, charcoal-dusted hands on my jeans. I didn't break eye contact.
A flicker of something—not interest, not yet—perhaps mild surprise, passed through his dark eyes. "You're not afraid," he observed.
"I'm terrified," I answered truthfully, my voice surprisingly steady. "But I won't grovel for a man who beats old men in their homes."
Behind Dante, Marco tensed. My father made a choked sound of warning.
Dante's lips did not smile, but something shifted in his expression. A sharpening. "He wasn't beaten for the debt, Isabella. He was beaten for the insult of trying to flee the city. He was punished for believing he could escape from me. He turned back to my father, dismissing me. "You have no money. You have no assets of value. The debt must be paid. You understand the terms of our agreement."
Giovanni's face crumpled. He knew. He knew what came next. A life of indentured servitude? A bullet in a dark alley? My mind raced, imagining the worst.
Dante continued, his tone conversational, as if discussing a business merger. "There is, however, an alternative form of payment."
He turned back to me. This time, his gaze was a physical weight. It traveled from my tangled dark hair, down my paint-splattered shirt, over my worn jeans, and back to my green eyes. It was a valuation.
"No," I breathed, understanding dawning with a wave of nausea.
"A marriage," Dante stated, the word dropping into the room like a stone in a still pond. "A contract union between the Salvatore and Romano families. You give me your daughter in marriage. The debt is forgiven, erased as if it never existed. Your life is spared. Your… circumstances will be improved."
The room spun. I heard my pulse roaring in my ears. Marriage. A contract union. I was a piece of property, a bargaining chip to settle a score.
"You're insane," I whispered.
My father stared, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Hope, vile and desperate, warred with shame in his eyes. "You… you want to marry Isabella?"
"I want to settle a debt," Dante corrected coldly. "This is the method I am choosing. Do you accept, Giovanni?"
"Papa, no!" I cried, grabbing his arm. "You can't! This isn't the 18th century! He can't just buy me!"
"It's not a purchase, Isabella," Dante said, his eyes locking with mine. "It's an alliance. You will be my wife. You will live in my home. You will want for nothing. Your father will be under my protection. This is a mercy."
"Mercy?" A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. "This is slavery!"
"It is survival," he fired back, his voice gaining an edge of steel for the first time. "The alternative is his blood on this floor tonight and your descent into a poverty you cannot fathom. This is the only path where both of you walk out of this room alive and provided for."
He was right, and the horrifying truth of it strangled my protests. I looked at my father—weak, broken, ashamed, but alive. I thought of the eviction notice on the table, the empty refrigerator, and the constant, grinding worry. Dante Salvatore was offering a gilded cage, but it was a cage with food and heat and life.
Giovanni looked at me, tears in his eyes. "Bella… my sweet girl. I'm so sorry."
That was his answer. That was his acceptance. He didn't even have the courage to say the words. He just looked at me with utter apology and surrendered to me.
Rage, white-hot and purer than any fear, ignited in my chest. "I am not yours to give away!" I shouted at my father. Then I turned to Dante. "And I am certainly not yours to take!"
Dante didn't react to my outburst. He merely checked the platinum watch on his wrist. "I am not a patient man, but for this, I will make an exception. You have twenty-four hours."
He plucked a plain white card from his inside pocket and held it out to me. When I didn't take it, he let it fall. It fluttered to the floor between us, landing in the small puddle of spilled whiskey. There was a single address on the Upper East Side.
"Be at that address tomorrow night at eight o'clock. Bring only yourself." His gaze swept over me again, and this time, the intent was unmistakable. It was ownership. "Dress appropriately."
"And if I don't?" I challenged, my fists clenched at my sides. "If I run?"
For the first time, something resembling an emotion touched his features. It was a dark, chilling amusement that never reached his eyes. "Then I will find you. And the terms will change. The debt will be reinstated, with interest. Your father's life will be forfeit. And when I take you—and I will take you—it will not be as a wife offered the respect of my name, but as a prisoner who defied me." He took one final step, closing the distance between us until I could feel the heat radiating from him and could see the flecks of gold in his dark irises. His voice dropped to a whisper meant only for me, a caress that felt like a threat. "Come willingly, or I'll take you anyway. Either way, Isabella Romano…"
He reached out, and with a gloved hand, he brushed a stray strand of hair from my cheek. His touch was electric, shocking in its intimacy. I recoiled, but he had already turned away.
"…you're mine."
He walked to the door, Marco opening it for him. He didn't look back. The two men disappeared into the rain-slicked night, leaving behind a silence thicker than blood.
I stood rooted to the spot, the ghost of his touch burning on my skin. The card lay on the floor, the address blurring in the whiskey. My father wept softly into his hands.
Twenty-four hours. The cage door was open, inviting me to walk in. The alternative was watching it be ripped off its hinges.
I looked at my hands, stained with my father's blood and the charcoal of a drawing I would never finish. The life I knew was over. The question was, what kind of life would I choose to begin?
The rain continued to fall, its rhythm no longer a comfort but the ticking of a clock.