I hobbled closer, the crutches awkward on the rug. My palm brushed the bindings, the leather cool under my fingertips. My stomach had already dropped, my body recognizing what my mind tried to argue away.
I slid one of the volumes from the row. My fingers traced the gilt design again, the pattern so familiar it made my throat close. I had seen it before, inked into margins of ledgers pulled from the box my source had given me. Papers that never should have left the family’s hands. The same curling mark, bold and proud, crowning pages that tracked money and blood alike.
The book felt heavy as I fumbled it open. On the inside cover was a name stamped into the leather: Isabella Bellante.
I slid the book back onto the shelf with a shaking hand. My breath caught sharp, and the room spun with the force of my pulse. I lurched for the door. The hallway stretched ahead, dim but open. I forced my body forward, each swing of the crutches clumsy, unsteady, my ankle flaring in protest. Urgency shoved me past the pain. I needed answers, and I needed them now.
The stairwell came into view, shadows broken by the harsh sweep of the overhead light. Ellie stood at the top, rifle gripped tight, her shoulders squared to the world below. Tension radiated from her. Every line of her frame was coiled and sharp.
“Ellie! There are books—” The words tore out of me before I could catch my breath. “In the library. Bellante books. With their mark. Why are they here?”
Her head turned, eyes cutting toward me like steel, then back down the stairs. “You don’t understand,” she said, voice clipped. “Get back in the library until we clear the alarm.”
Dismissal. Cold, absolute.
My chest seized. If she wouldn’t explain, it was because she couldn’t. Because what I had seen was true. My mind reeled through the faces I had studied, the crimes I had traced, the bloodlines marked with that crest. And now it sat on the shelves around me, stamped on books they kept close.
They were with the Bellante family.
The thought hollowed me out even as the alarm roared on. I had walked into the lion’s den and told myself it was shelter. I had let them touch me, feed me, carry me, and every step had been deeper into their grip.
I leaned against the wall, trying to slow my spinning mind. Boots scuffed against the floor below, doors slamming, voices carrying sharp and low. Kara barked something I couldn’t make out. Cam’s deeper reply trailed after it. The rhythm of their return sent a tremor through the house, order snapping back into place as they moved. Ellie moved onto the stairs, talking to the others as though I hadn’t interrupted her at all.
Then another voice joined them. Different. Familiar.
The sound sliced down my spine, freezing me where I stood. It was threaded with command, but I knew it before the words even registered. The cadence was burned into me, electric and unmistakable. My fingers bit harder into the wood rail as the alarm was suddenly silenced. The house seemed to exhale, but my chest stayed locked.
I leaned forward, peering through the slats of the banister. The foyer stretched open below, the heavy door swinging shut on a gust of night air. Kara stripped her weapon harness loose, Cam shaking out her shoulders as if the false alarm had left its mark. They moved like they belonged here, solid and sure.
And then she stepped into view.
The overhead light caught her in the center of the foyer, the curves of her body sharp against the pale tile. She wasn’t just another soldier coming in fromthe cold. She was the presence I had tried to bury in memory, the voice I heard in my sleep. Recognition slammed into me, hot and cold at once.
My pulse spiked, every nerve on fire. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t breathe past the weight of it. The chaos below quieted as the women reset, rifles checked, voices dropping low. She was in the middle of it, not apart but central, as if the space had been waiting for her to return.
I gripped the railing until my knuckles ached, fighting the urge to scream, to demand an answer that wouldn’t come. The sound stayed locked in my chest, silent and jagged.
Fuck. What was she doing here?
17
Sabine
She lifted her head,her gaze pinning me in place at the top of the staircase. The sight of her split me clean through, a jolt sharp enough to stop breath in my throat. Her mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Hello, Sabine.”
The words tore through me like a knife. My throat dried, body gone rigid against the railing. My mind clawed at sense, but there was no denying it. My source. Dom. She was Domenica Bellante, the youngest daughter of the family whose shadow stretched over every violent report I had chased for months. She was not a whisper in my notes now, not a clandestine meeting in a seedy motel. She was here.
The floor seemed to tilt beneath me. Every detail I had buried to keep myself moving flooded back. Her smoke-filled voice in the greasy cafe, her hand gripping my hip the first time she bent me over a shipping crate. The glint in her eyes when she told me not all debts get paid in money. I had known her. Trusted her. Wanted her. She had never been a peripheral member of the family. She had been Bellante all along.
At the top of the stairs Ellie shifted, rifle steady, her face hard as steel. “She saw your mother’s books,” she muttered. The words dropped into the air, heavy as stone.
The walls closed in around me, velvet and walnut tightening like a vise. Mother’s books. Her mother’s. Isabella Bellante stamped in gold on the insidecover. It was not my imagination. It was not coincidence. Ellie knew. She knew what those books meant, and she was not surprised.
They had all known. I was in their hands, every move catalogued. Panic burned sharp in my chest. There was no safehouse. No protection.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Her voice rolled through the foyer, and then she was moving. One boot met the first stair, then the next, and the sound of it cracked through me louder than the alarm had. Each rise of her body stole the space between us, step by deliberate step, and it felt like watching doom climb into reach.
