His to Break.

Seventy-Two Hours

Isabella’s hands were cold.

She stared at the photograph on Dante’s phone until the image of her brother burned itself behind her eyes. Luca sat rigid at that small table, shoulders tight, eyes fixed on something beyond the camera. Alive. Unharmed. For now. The black envelope in front of him looked ordinary. The message written across the back of the photo did not.

The marriage changes nothing.

We still want what your father promised.

You have seventy-two hours.

Dante lowered the phone but did not put it away. He watched her with the same unreadable calm he had worn since the moment she first stepped into his penthouse.

“Sit,” he said.

Isabella did not move. “Where is he?”

“Somewhere I do not yet control.” Dante’s voice remained quiet. “That will change. But first you will tell me everything you know about what your father promised them.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“That is the first lie.” He stepped closer. The smear of darkness near his cuff looked darker under the penthouse lights. “Your father was not a man who kept secrets from his own blood for long. Especially not secrets valuable enough to start a war over. Sit down, Isabella.”

This time she obeyed. Her legs felt unsteady as she lowered herself onto the edge of the long black sofa. The red dress whispered against the leather. Dante remained standing, looking down at her.

“Speak.”

She forced the words out. “He never told me details. Only that he had something… leverage. Something that could protect us if things ever went wrong with your people. He said it was insurance.”

“Insurance,” Dante repeated, the word flat. “What kind?”

“I don’t know. He kept it off-site. Separate from the house. Separate from everything. He only said that if anything happened to him, I was to wait for a contact. Someone would come for me.”

Dante’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Someone came for you last night. They were mine.”

“Then maybe they weren’t the only ones who knew.”

Silence stretched between them. Rain tapped against the glass in irregular patterns. Dante studied her face as if he could peel the truth out of her skin by looking long enough.

“You will remain on this floor,” he said at last. “You will not leave. You will not attempt to contact anyone. If a message arrives for you through any channel, you will bring it to me immediately. Do you understand?”

“And my brother?”

“I will find him.” The certainty in his voice was absolute. “But understand this—your value to me has just increased. That means the people who hold him will try harder to take you. It also means I will not hesitate to use you if it becomes necessary.”

Isabella’s throat tightened. “Use me how?”

Dante did not answer directly. Instead he turned the phone toward her again and tapped the screen. A second image appeared—another angle of the same room, timestamped only hours earlier. In this one, a man in a dark coat stood partially in frame, his face turned away from the camera. On the table beside the black envelope lay a single object she recognized instantly.

Her father’s gold watch.

The one she had last seen on his dead wrist.

Isabella’s breath left her in a sharp, silent rush.

Dante watched the recognition hit her. “They want you to know they were there when he died. They want you afraid. Fear makes people careless.” He locked the phone and slid it into his pocket. “You will not be careless.”

He walked to the bar along the far wall, poured two fingers of something amber into a heavy glass, and drank without offering her any. When he spoke again, his voice was lower.

“There is a guest room prepared for you tonight. Different from the one you used before. The door will lock from the outside. A guard will remain in the hallway. If you need anything, you will ask him. You will not attempt to leave. You will not test the windows. You will not try to remove the chain around your neck.”

Isabella touched the gold pendant without meaning to. It felt heavier than before.

“And if I do?”

Dante set the glass down with a soft, precise click. “Then your brother will not be the only one who pays the price for your disobedience.”

He started toward the hallway that led to the private wing of the penthouse, then stopped.

“One more thing.” He did not look back at her. “The people who have him are not the only ones watching. Someone else activated a secondary signal on your tracker the moment it locked around your throat last night. I do not yet know who. Until I do, you are not safe—even inside these walls.”

Isabella’s pulse slammed against the gold chain.

Dante’s voice dropped even further.

“Which means from this moment on, Isabella… you do not take a single breath that I do not allow.”

He disappeared down the hallway.

The elevator at the far end of the penthouse chimed once, soft and distant, as if someone else had just arrived on a lower floor. Isabella sat frozen on the sofa, the photograph of her brother still burned into her mind, the gold watch gleaming in the second image like a promise of violence yet to come.

Seventy-two hours.

And somewhere in the building beneath her, a second set of eyes had already begun to watch the live feed of the tracker now sealed against her skin.