(Isabella’s POV)
My question hung in the air of the quiet study, heavy and sharp. Are we going to destroy an innocent woman, an innocent family, just to get to a monster?
Alessandro didn't answer right away. He walked to the vast window and looked out at the Chicago skyline, his back to me. I saw the conflict in the tense line of his shoulders. The old Alessandro, the King of Ashes I had first met, would have seen this as a simple, effective weapon. He would have used Bianchi’s daughter without a second thought, seeing her as nothing more than a tool to win a war.
But the man standing before me now was different. I had seen the change in him. I had helped cause the change in him.
My own heart was at war with itself. A fierce, burning part of me, the part that remembered my father’s sto
