Chapter 3
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Dante walked closer.
“Isabella.”
She looked at him.
“I made a mistake.”
It was not an easy sentence for him.
That was what made it dangerous.
Dante Moretti did not apologize often. Men like him were trained to survive by never admitting weakness.
But Isabella had never wanted him to be invincible.
She had wanted him to be human.
“I believe you think that,” she said.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you regret that I’m upset. I’m not sure you regret what you did.”
The words landed harder than she intended.
Or maybe exactly as hard as she intended.
Dante looked away.
And that was when Isabella knew.
Because he had no answer.
Not yet.
The next morning, Isabella woke before sunrise.
She had not slept.
Not really.
She had spent the night staring at the ceiling, remembering every small moment she had ignored because she loved him.
The canceled plans.
The sudden changes.
The meetings she learned about afterward.
The way everyone in Dante’s world knew what was happening before she did.
She had always told herself that loving a powerful man meant accepting certain things.
The secrets.
The danger.
The walls.
But sometime during the night, she realized she had confused patience with disappearing.
At six fifteen, she packed a suitcase.
Not dramatically.
Not angrily.
She folded her clothes carefully.
Her paintings.
Her journals.
The old sweater Dante had bought her because he noticed she was always cold while working.
She left the sweater.
That surprised her.
But she left it.
Some things belonged to memories, not people.
When she finished, she placed the suitcase beside the bedroom door.
Then she wrote a note.
Dante found it twenty minutes later.
He was downstairs speaking with Marco when he saw her walking through the entrance hall.
For one moment, he did not understand.
Then he saw the suitcase.
His entire expression changed.
“Isabella.”
She stopped.
The house was quiet.
Even the security team looked away.
Everyone in the Moretti world understood one thing:
Dante Moretti could handle enemies.
He could handle betrayal.
He could handle war.
But nobody had ever seen him handle losing something he loved.
“What are you doing?”
She looked at him.
“Leaving.”
His face hardened.
Not with anger.
With fear.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Isabella almost laughed.
“You don’t get to decide that.”