(Isabella’s POV)
I waited.
The silence of the penthouse was a heavy, suffocating thing, a stark contrast to the storm of activity in my own mind. I sat in the study, the ledgers of our fathers spread before me like a forgotten history, but I couldn't focus. My thoughts were two floors below, in the cold, sterile room where Alessandro was at work. I knew what he was doing. I knew the kind of man it took to extract secrets from a hardened killer like Viktor. The thought of it sent a chill through my veins, a cold counterpoint to the warmth of my love for him.
This was the paradox of Alessandro De Luca, and I was standing at the heart of it. He was the man who had held me at the beach house as if I were the most precious thing in the universe, and he was the man who could descend into a co
