His to Break.

The Second Signal

The guest room was smaller than the one she had been given the night before, but no less controlled. White walls. A single bed. A bathroom with no mirror above the sink—only a sheet of brushed metal that reflected her in warped, incomplete pieces. The window was a narrow slit of reinforced glass that showed nothing but rain and the dark edge of the neighboring tower.

Isabella sat on the edge of the bed with the lights off, the gold chain cold against her collarbone, and counted the hours.

Seventy-one.

Seventy.

Sixty-nine.

Somewhere beyond the locked door, a man shifted his weight. The soft scrape of a shoe against marble was the only proof she was not completely alone. Dante had meant what he said. A guard remained in the hallway. The door would not open unless someone on the other side decided it should.

She did not try the handle. She did not test the window. She simply sat in the dark and tried to keep the image of Luca’s face from eating through the last of her composure. The gold watch in the second photograph kept returning to her mind—the same watch that had caught the light on her father’s dead wrist. Whoever held her brother had been inside the house the night everything ended. They had stood over the bodies. They had taken trophies.

And they believed she knew the rest of what her father had promised them.

Isabella pressed her palms against her eyes until the pressure hurt. She did not know. That was the truth. Her father had spoken of insurance in vague, late-night warnings, never details. Never locations. Never names. Only that if the worst happened, someone would come for her, and she was to go with them without question.

Someone had come.

They had just not been the ones he intended.

Time moved strangely in the dark. At some point the rain stopped. The silence that followed felt heavier than the storm. Isabella lay down on top of the covers fully dressed, the red gown still clinging to her skin, and stared at the ceiling until exhaustion finally dragged her under.

She woke to the sound of the lock turning.

Gray morning light leaked through the narrow window. The door opened. The same woman in the black uniform from the day before entered, carrying a folded set of clothes and a tray. She set both on the small table without speaking, then left. The lock engaged again.

Isabella sat up slowly. Her body ached from the tension she had carried through the night. On the tray was black coffee, toast she would not eat, and a single sealed envelope with her new married name written across the front in sharp black ink.

She stared at it for a long time before she opened it.

Inside was a photograph.

Not of Luca this time.

Of her.

Taken through a high window the previous evening while she sat alone on the black sofa in the penthouse living room. The angle was impossible. No neighboring building should have had a line of sight into Dante’s top floor. And yet the image was clear—her profile, the red dress, the gold chain at her throat, the exact moment she had touched the pendant after Dante left.

On the back of the photograph, four words were written in the same thick marker as before:

We can see you.

Sixty-eight hours.

Isabella’s hands began to shake.

She was still staring at the image when the lock turned a second time.

Dante stepped into the room. He was dressed in black again, the faint dark stain near his cuff from the night before now gone. His eyes went first to her face, then to the photograph in her hands. He crossed the space between them in three long strides and took it from her without asking.

He studied the image in silence. Something cold and precise moved behind his expression.

“When did this arrive?”

“With the tray. Just now.”

Dante turned the photograph over, read the message, then looked at the narrow window as if calculating angles and distances. His jaw tightened once.

“Stay here.”

He left. The door locked behind him. Isabella heard low voices in the hallway, then the sound of several sets of footsteps moving quickly away. She remained on the edge of the bed, the empty envelope still in her lap, and waited.

Minutes stretched. Somewhere in the penthouse a phone rang once and was silenced. The air itself seemed to grow thinner.

When Dante returned, he was not alone.

Two men followed him into the room. One of them carried a black case. The other closed the door and remained in front of it. Dante stopped in front of Isabella and held up the photograph again.

“This was taken from a position that should not exist,” he said. “Which means either someone has access to a neighboring tower I do not control… or they have a device inside this building that I have not yet found.”

He nodded to the man with the case. The man opened it, revealing a set of small electronic tools and a handheld scanner. Dante looked back at Isabella.

“Stand up.”

She did.

“Remove the dress.”

The words were spoken without heat, without anything that could be mistaken for desire. Only command. Isabella’s pulse slammed against the gold chain. She hesitated for half a second too long.

Dante’s voice dropped. “Now.”

She reached back and unzipped the gown. The heavy red fabric slid down her body and pooled at her feet. She stood in front of him in nothing but the gold chain and the platinum ring, arms rigid at her sides, refusing to cover herself. The two men did not look at her. Their eyes remained on the walls, the ceiling, the window.

Dante took the scanner from the open case and moved it slowly over her bare shoulders, down the line of her spine, across the chain at her throat. The device remained silent. He checked the ring. Still nothing. Only when he passed the scanner a second time over the pendant itself did a single soft tone sound.

He met her eyes.

“The tracker is clean. Which means the photograph was not taken through this.” He lowered the scanner. “Get dressed. New clothes are on the table. You have three minutes.”

Isabella pulled on the black trousers and soft black sweater that had been left for her. The fabric was expensive and impersonal. When she was covered again, Dante dismissed the two men with a single look. The door closed. The lock turned.

He remained.

“Someone is inside my building,” he said quietly. “Or close enough that the difference does not matter. They want you to know they can reach you. They want you afraid enough to make a mistake.”

Isabella forced her voice to steady. “What do they want from me?”

“The same thing your father promised them. Whatever it is, it is valuable enough that they are willing to risk open war with me to get it.” Dante stepped closer. “And they believe you are the only one left who can deliver it.”

He held her gaze for a long moment.

“Sixty-eight hours, Isabella. That is all the time they have given you. After that, your brother dies. And if I cannot find them first… they will come for you next.”

Outside the narrow window, a crow landed on the ledge of the neighboring tower, stared directly at the glass as if it could see through it, and then took flight.

Dante’s phone vibrated once in his pocket.

He glanced at the screen. His expression did not change, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop.

“It appears,” he said softly, “they have just sent the next message.”

He turned the phone so she could see the new image.

This one was not a photograph of her.

It was a live video feed of Luca, seated in the same chair as before. A man stood behind him with a gun pressed to the back of his head.

A digital timer in the corner of the screen had already begun counting down.

67:59:59