Isabella's POV
The morning after was a strange, suspended reality. I woke up in my soft, familiar bed, sunlight streaming through the windows, and for a single, disorienting moment, everything was normal. Then the throbbing in my cheek and the sharp ache in my knee yanked me back to the present.
I was back. The failed escapee. The returned captive.
And I was waiting for the axe to fall.
The fear was a cold, constant companion, coiling in my stomach like a snake. What would he do? Dante Romano was not a man who tolerated disobedience. I had not just disobeyed; I had humiliated him. I had forced him to mount a search party, to trek through the forest, to put a bullet in a hyena to save the very person who had spat on his hospitality.
My mind, fueled by anxiety, began to conjure a horri
