The darkness in the penthouse was absolute.
Not just the absence of light—but a living thing, thick and suffocating, pressing against Adrian’s skin like a shroud. He hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. The fire at the research center still burned behind his eyes, but it wasn’t the only flame. Another one flickered deeper—older—more vicious.
Her.
Isabella.
She came to him now not as memory, but as presence—a ghost wrapped in smoke and silence, stepping through the years like she’d never left.
He saw her again—really saw her—not in the photo on his desk, not in the polished lies of the DeLuca estate, but in that filthy Genoa tenement, snow falling outside like ash, the walls sweating damp, the air thick with mildew and despair.
He was nine. Shivering under a thin blanket. She sat by the window, me
