Chapter 81 – An Old Lover Returns
****Isabelle’s POV****
The last few months had been quieter than I ever believed possible.
Silence, when you’ve lived your whole life with blood echoing in your ears, can be both a balm and a curse. Every morning I woke to Dante’s warmth beside me, our son’s soft breathing drifting down the hallway from the nursery, and the sharp taste of peace on my tongue. It was a fragile thing, brittle like glass, as though one wrong step might shatter it forever.
I tried to believe in it. Tried to believe that we had survived the storms, that the world had granted us mercy at last. But deep inside, where my scars still whispered, I knew better.
Men like Dante were not allowed peace. Women like me were not meant to live without shadows.
And when the past came for
