Chapter 2
Luca Rossi had heard men beg.
He had heard liars swear on their mothers, traitors bargain with names they should never have spoken, enemies cry when they realized money could not buy back the seconds they had wasted.
But nothing in his life had prepared him for the sound of that woman’s voice.
Soft.
Calm.
Almost amused.
“Now you understand what pride costs.”
The line clicked dead.
For a moment, the kitchen of Isabella’s childhood home seemed to tilt around him. The little yellow curtains by the window. The chipped mug near the sink. The framed photograph of Isabella as a girl, sitting on her mother’s lap, both of them smiling at a future that had not yet learned how to be cruel.
And on the table, the note.
You left her alone. So we took her.
Luca reached for the chair beside him and missed.
His hand closed around air.
Enzo, his oldest guard, stepped toward him. “Boss?”
Luca did not answer.
He stared at the note until the words became a blade.
You left her alone.
He had.
No enemy needed to invent that part.
No rival had forced him to turn his back while his wife stood trembling in his foyer. No gun had been placed against his head when she asked for a ride home. No knife had touched his throat when she waited by the car, hoping he would follow.
He had let her go.
He had chosen pride.
And now someone else had chosen the punishment.
“Lock down the city,” Luca said.
His voice was quiet, but every man in the room went still.
Enzo lowered his phone slightly. “Already moving. Airports, stations, private docks—”
“Everything,” Luca cut in. “I want every camera. Every toll road. Every alley. Every doctor who treats wounds without questions. Every motel owner who takes cash. Every driver who saw a woman matching her description. Wake the dead if they have eyes.”
Enzo nodded once and began issuing orders.
Luca picked up the note with two fingers.
The paper was ordinary. Cheap. Torn from a small notebook. No scent. No signature.
That made it worse.
Amateurs wanted recognition.
Professionals wanted time.
Whoever had taken Isabella was not panicking.
They were waiting.
Luca walked through the little house room by room. Every step felt like trespassing inside a life Isabella had rarely spoken about in detail. This was where she had grown up before the Rossi name wrapped itself around her like armor and a cage. This was where she had learned to make coffee too strong, where she had kept books under her bed, where her mother had died slowly while Isabella learned to smile politely at doctors.
In the hallway, a picture had fallen from the wall.
Luca bent to pick it up.
It was Isabella at eighteen, younger and thinner, wearing a blue graduation dress. Beside her stood a man Luca did not recognize. Dark-haired. Serious. One hand resting protectively behind her shoulder, not touching her, but close enough to suggest he once had the right.
Luca’s jaw hardened.
“Who is this?” he asked.
Enzo glanced over. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Luca turned slowly.
Enzo’s face tightened. “We checked her family, her school records, her known friends, former employers—”
“Then check again.”
Luca looked back at the photograph.
The man’s eyes were not smiling.
On the back, written in faded ink, were three words.
Always, if needed.
No name.
Luca slipped the photo into his coat.
Outside, rain began again.
Not heavy.
Just enough to make the world look guilty.
By nightfall, the city had changed.
Cars were stopped without sirens. Men whispered into phones from the corners of restaurants. Hotel clerks suddenly remembered guests they had forgotten. Security footage was copied, bribed for, stolen, destroyed, restored.
The Rossi name moved like weather through the streets.
People who feared Luca answered quickly.
People who hated him answered carefully.
And people who owed him answered before he asked.
Still, Isabella was gone.
At midnight, Luca returned to the mansion because every search led nowhere, and nowhere had become a room he could not stand inside.
The house looked the same.
That was the insult.
The marble floors still shone. The chandeliers still glowed. The staff still moved in silence. The guards still stood at their posts as if the world had not cracked open under the roof.
May you like
Luca walked into the foyer.
He saw her there.
