(Alessandro’s POV)
The drive back to the Citadel was a silent journey through a city that felt alien to me. I had just won the most significant battle of my life, a war ten years in the making, yet there was no triumph, no elation. There was only a hollow, echoing quiet in my soul. I had my brother in a cage, but the victory felt cold, heavy. The ghost was captured, but I was still the one who felt haunted.
I bypassed my own private elevator, instead taking the service lift from the sub-level garage, the same one my men had used to transport their prisoner. I needed the extra moments, the sterile quiet of the rising car, to shed the skin of the ruthless commander who had just dismantled his own blood and become the man who had to walk back into Isabella’s light.
She was waiting for me i
