Vows of Vengeance

Chapter 6: The First Escape

Chapter 6: The First Escape

****Dante’s Point of View****

You never forget the first time someone betrays you with a kiss.

It starts like a surrender. The tilt of her face, the wet shimmer of her lips, the way her breath stutters just enough to pull you in. Your mind screams trap, but your body forgets—because you want to believe. Because part of you wants to lose control.

That was the moment I knew Isabelle Raze would be the end of me.

But let me rewind.

It had been seventy-two hours since we unlocked Matteo’s files. Seventy-two hours of surveillance, decrypting, mapping out Victor’s trafficking routes and Luca’s sudden reappearance in high circles. Isabelle hadn’t slept either. She paced the halls like a caged animal, reading and rereading the transcripts Matteo left behind.

She didn’t cry. Not once.

Instead, she sharpened herself like a blade.

But I saw it—beneath the resolve, she was unraveling. Quietly. Elegantly. Like someone who had nothing left to lose.

I kept my distance. I told myself it was strategy. The less she knew about my next moves, the safer she’d be. But the truth was uglier—I was afraid.

Afraid that every second I spent near her, I’d want to forget why I started this.

Afraid I’d forget Matteo.

The plan was simple. Isabelle would pose as an unwilling informant and meet with one of Victor’s mid-level handlers. We’d trace the contact and get a line on the final supply chain.

She agreed too easily.

That should’ve been my first clue.

---

The meeting was held in a derelict greenhouse on the outskirts of New Haven. Glass walls broken. Ivy growing through the cracks. A once-beautiful place now rotted by time—fitting, considering the company we expected.

I stayed hidden, perched on a second-story catwalk in a crumbling support tower nearby. Sniper rifle in hand, eyes locked on Isabelle as she walked alone through the overgrown garden path.

She wore black jeans, combat boots, and a leather jacket. Nothing elegant. Nothing seductive. She didn’t need to dress like a pawn.

She was already the queen on the board.

The handler arrived late—tall, gaunt, Eastern European, reeking of stale cigars and vodka. He had a hand in the Raze smuggling operation for years. His name was Bogdan Petrov. He didn’t recognize me, but I knew him from the files.

He approached Isabelle with the swagger of someone who thought he owned the world.

“Princess,” he sneered in Russian. “Didn’t expect you to crawl back.”

She stood her ground. “Tell Victor I’m done playing house.”

I had to admit, she sold it well. The defiance in her voice. The slight tremble of her fingers. She looked every bit the fragile weapon, dangerous but desperate.

Bogdan took the bait.

And then he said something that made my blood boil.

“He’ll forgive you,” he laughed. “You’re still pretty enough to be worth the trouble.”

My finger twitched against the trigger.

But Isabelle didn’t flinch. Instead, she stepped forward and placed a small silver flash drive into his jacket pocket.

“Everything Victor needs to know is on that. Now get the hell out of my life.”

Bogdan grinned, turned—and that’s when Silas made the grab.

Ropes of tension snapped into action. My team emerged from the shadows, guns raised. Bogdan was tackled, disarmed, cuffed.

It was clean.

Too clean.

I radioed in the extraction and sprinted down from the tower, expecting to find Isabelle waiting near the clearing.

She wasn’t.

My heart stopped.

“She’s gone,” Silas radioed. “Dante. Isabelle is gone.”

I turned full circle, scanned the tree line. “How?”

“Must’ve slipped during the takedown. No sign of resistance. No struggle.”

I cursed. I knew that wasn’t an accident.

That was planned.

I retraced her steps back to the greenhouse. I found the corner of a broken window, a smear of blood—fresh.

And I found the note.

Scrawled on a torn page from Matteo’s notebook:

Don’t follow me. Trust me. I need to end this my way.

My hands shook.

She wasn’t escaping us. She was escaping me.

Because somewhere along the line, I had become a distraction.

---

Back at the safehouse, I tore through our records, desperate for any clue where she might have gone. I didn’t want to believe she’d run straight into Victor’s arms, but my paranoia whispered lies.

Then I remembered the kiss.

The night before the mission, she had knocked on my door. No words. No warning. She’d stepped inside and kissed me—hard. Like a storm.

It wasn’t tender.

It wasn’t about affection.

It was a goodbye.

And I had missed it.

---

Hours passed.

Silas tried to calm me. “She’s not stupid. She’s been planning something since before we met her.”

“I should’ve seen it coming.”

“You didn’t want to,” he replied. “Same reason Matteo didn’t. She makes you feel human.”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I pulled up our city grid and tracked any pings from the tracker I had secretly sewn into the lining of her jacket.

One faint signal.

Queens. An old hotel. Abandoned.

I grabbed my gun.

I didn’t care if it was a trap.

I had to see her.

---

I found her standing in a rain-soaked hallway, near a rusted elevator shaft.

Her hair clung to her face. Her lips were parted, like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the words.

She saw me.

And she ran.

Not away.

Toward me.

We collided, soaked and shaking, mouths crashing like waves against a cliff. Her hands were in my hair. Mine on her waist.

It wasn’t love.

It was desperation. Pain. Apology.

It was everything we hadn’t said.

But when I pulled back, she was crying.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I’m scared,” she whispered. “Of what happens next.”

I touched her cheek. “Then let’s face it together.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t running from the mission, Dante. I was running from losing myself in you.”

My heart shattered.

She looked down, pressed something into my hand.

A second flash drive.

“Matteo gave me this before he died. I’ve never shown anyone. Not even Victor knows it exists.”

“What’s on it?”

“Everything.”

And then, without another word, she turned and walked away.

And I let her.

Because some storms you can’t stop.

You just survive them.

****Isabelle’s Point of View****

Freedom didn’t come with unlocked doors or a cleared path. It came with silence. A silence so heavy it sank into your bones.

And that silence followed me the moment I left Dante behind.

I didn’t run because I was afraid of him. I ran because I was afraid of what I felt for him. That kind of connection—it was dangerous in our world. It made you reckless. Vulnerable. And I couldn’t afford either.

Matteo once told me, “Love is a distraction until it becomes your anchor. You need to know the difference.”

I wasn’t sure which one Dante was.

But I knew I couldn’t let myself find out. Not yet.

---

The old elevator shaft was cold. My boots echoed against rusted tiles as I climbed the fire escape in an abandoned hotel I’d memorized from Matteo’s maps. He called it a “ghost safe”—a place he swore only I knew about. A last resort.

There, I lit a single candle and opened the worn leather pouch Matteo once gave me. Inside it, the second drive. The one I had never shown Dante.

It wasn’t a backup. It wasn’t even meant for him. It was meant for me.

His voice played in grainy static:

“If you’re hearing this, Isabelle, it means you’re alive. And that means you’re stronger than I ever was. But you’re not finished yet.”

My hands shook.

He continued: “Victor isn’t the center of this. He’s the mouthpiece. The real power is beneath him, hidden under a thousand paper fronts and shadows. There’s a code—The Lazarus Sequence. You’ve seen pieces of it in the ledgers. Find it, and you’ll find what even Victor fears.”

The Lazarus Sequence.

I remembered Victor whispering that name once in his study, drunk on his own paranoia. He’d burned half a file before I could steal it. I’d thought it was myth. Something made up to keep us in line.

But Matteo believed it was real.

And now, so did I.

I stared at the screen. Lines of code danced in green and black. Hidden files. Coordinates. Pseudonyms. And one video file labeled: “Project M: Veil Protocol.”

I didn’t open it yet.

Because I knew the moment I did, the game would change. Again.

Instead, I sat in the cold and let myself feel. Just for a second.

I thought of Dante’s face when he realized I was gone.

I thought of the kiss. The way he clutched me like I was air after drowning. The way I kissed him back like it would be the last time.

Because it might’ve been.

That kiss wasn’t for seduction or manipulation. It was a pause. A fracture in the war. A moment when I didn’t have to be Victor’s weapon or Dante’s wildcard.

I just had to be… me.

---

I stayed hidden for hours. Long enough to know Dante would find the note. Long enough to be certain he’d follow, even when I told him not to.

He was relentless like that. Matteo always said his brother had the heart of a soldier and the eyes of a storm.

I’d seen both.

And when I heard footsteps at the edge of the hallway, I wasn’t surprised.

I turned slowly, heart hammering. There he was. Dante Vale. Rain-drenched, furious, desperate.

But he didn’t yell.

He didn’t demand answers.

He kissed me.

God help me, I let him.

Because in that kiss, I didn’t feel like a fugitive or a pawn.

I felt human.

For one fleeting moment.

When he pulled back, his eyes searched mine like they were looking for absolution.

“Why?” he asked.

I wanted to lie. To say I needed space. That I didn’t trust him. That I had to do this alone.

But I was tired of lies.

“Because I’m scared,” I whispered. “Of what happens next.”

He touched my face, his thumb brushing my cheek.

“Then let’s face it together.”

Part of me wanted to say yes.

But I shook my head. “I wasn’t running from the mission, Dante. I was running from losing myself in you.”

His expression broke.

I reached into my coat and pressed the second flash drive into his hand.

“Matteo gave me this before he died. I’ve never shown anyone. Not even Victor knows it exists.”

“What’s on it?”

“Everything.”

It was the last thing I said before I turned and disappeared into the shadows.

Not because I didn’t want him beside me.

But because I needed to finish this before I could.

Before love turned into leverage.

And my freedom became a leash.

---

Outside, the rain fell harder.

But I didn’t look back.

I never do.

Because if I did, I might not walk away.

And I still had one more lie to break.

The one that said I belonged to Victor Raze.

****Third-Person POV****

Storm clouds loomed over the skyline like a forewarning, heavy and relentless. The city beneath them stirred with uncertainty—power shifts and underground whispers running through every back alley and ballroom. The war between ghosts had begun to cast shadows in daylight, and those caught in between were starting to feel the pressure.

Victor Raze stood in his penthouse study, dressed in a silk vest tailored to perfection, a glass of aged whiskey in one hand and a silent fury brewing behind his eyes. Below him, traffic crawled through the city, unaware that the very balance of power was slipping like sand through fingers.

He turned toward the monitors embedded in the walls. Several feeds flickered across the screens—one showing the interior of the greenhouse where Isabelle had met Bogdan Petrov. The footage was clear: Isabelle handing him a drive, Bogdan smirking, and then chaos—gunmen, a takedown, and Isabelle disappearing between shadows.

Victor stared at the frozen frame. Her face was tilted slightly up. Determined. Not afraid.

“She’s not who we thought she was,” Elijah muttered from the corner, arms folded, his eyes reflecting both admiration and contempt. “She played everyone.”

“No,” Victor replied without looking away. “She’s becoming who I designed her to be.”

“You think this is part of your plan?” Elijah stepped forward. “She’s rogue. She’s dangerous.”

Victor sipped his drink. “She’s free.”

Elijah’s lips thinned. “So is Dante.”

Victor’s gaze darkened. “Not for long.”

He pressed a button beneath the desk. A drawer hissed open, revealing a sealed envelope marked in crimson wax: Lazarus Protocol – Override.

“Call in the Syndicate,” Victor said. “Activate the Red Cells.”

“Are we going to war?”

Victor smiled faintly. “We already are.”

---

In another part of the city, Luca Moretti stood in the backroom of a derelict cathedral, turned meeting ground for old-money arms dealers and syndicate loyalists. The stained glass behind him cast kaleidoscopic shadows across his face, but the light couldn’t disguise the steel in his voice.

“She’s moving on her own now,” Luca said, pacing the cracked stone floor. “Isabelle has the Lazarus coordinates.”

A voice answered from the darkness. “And you think she’ll hand them over to Dante?”

“She already has.”

Gasps spread among the gathered men. A few began to murmur about shifting loyalties.

Luca raised a hand. “But she doesn’t trust him. Not fully. And that gives us time.”

One of the older lieutenants stepped forward, grizzled and scarred from the old wars. “So what’s the plan?”

“We let her think she’s ahead. We keep Dante chasing shadows. And when they get close enough to uncover what the Lazarus Protocol really is…” He smirked. “We take it from both of them.”

---

Back at the safehouse, Silas was staring at the monitor that now tracked Isabelle’s brief appearance near the old hotel in Queens. She’d gone completely dark again. No signal. No trace.

Dante stood by the window, his body still soaked from the storm, hair plastered to his forehead.

“You found her,” Silas said, not a question.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She gave me a second drive.”

Silas turned fully now. “What’s on it?”

“Everything Matteo didn’t want to risk uploading. A protocol he called Lazarus.”

Silas moved quickly to the desk, where Dante set the drive down like it was a loaded gun.

As they plugged it into the system, encrypted files blinked into existence. Most of them unreadable without a key. But one folder had a name that froze both of them: PROJECT M: VEIL PROTOCOL.

“What the hell is this?” Silas muttered.

Dante’s expression turned to stone. “Matteo once told me that Victor wasn’t the real enemy. That there was something beneath him. Something deeper than the drugs, the guns, the politics.”

He clicked the folder.

Inside: a list of names. Hundreds of them. Many already dead. Some very much alive.

At the top: Isabelle Raze.

Below her: Luca Moretti.

Further down: Elijah Raze.

And then—

Matteo Vale.

Dante’s breath caught.

“What is this?” Silas whispered.

“A kill list,” Dante said grimly. “But not for enemies. These are Victor’s assets.”

---

Elsewhere, Isabelle moved through a back entrance of an underground library—the kind that didn’t exist on maps. Matteo’s files had pointed her here: a dead drop, left behind in a carved-out section of a hollow column.

Inside: a metal box.

She opened it.

Inside, a photo of a young Victor Raze, standing arm-in-arm with a man she didn’t recognize. Behind them, a flag—a black ouroboros on a crimson background.

On the back of the photo: “Before the Lazarus Pact, we were brothers. After, we were gods.”

A chill ran down Isabelle’s spine.

She tucked the photo into her coat and turned.

The war wasn’t about territory.

It was about ideology.

And she was caught between two monsters who wanted to rewrite the world in their own image.

She pulled out her phone and dialed a secure number—one even Dante didn’t know she still had.

A voice answered after three rings.

“I told you never to call this line.”

“I found it,” she said. “Matteo’s real work. The Lazarus code.”

“Do you understand what it means?”

She hesitated. “It means no one’s clean. Not Victor. Not Luca. Not even Dante.”

The voice paused. Then, “Good. You’re finally ready.”

The line went dead.

---

From rooftops and penthouses, from cathedrals and crypts, the pieces began to move faster.

Victor’s Red Cells activated. Luca’s shadows spread. Dante’s mission evolved.

And Isabelle?

She stopped being a pawn.

She became the detonator.

And the countdown had begun.