Chapter 7
Even there, even then, the old Isabella flashed through.
It nearly brought him to his knees.
The final rope snapped.
He pulled her up.
The stage floor suddenly trembled.
A low boom rolled beneath them.
Valentina had not lied.
The theater was wired.
Enzo shouted from below, “Move!”
Luca wrapped one arm around Isabella and pushed her toward the stairs at the side of the stage. Smoke thickened. Heat crawled up the curtains. Behind them, flames climbed like hands.
They stumbled into a backstage corridor lined with cracked mirrors.
For a moment, Luca saw them reflected again and again.
A bleeding man.
A bruised woman.
A marriage multiplied into ruins.
Then Valentina stepped from the smoke at the far end of the corridor.
Her gun was gone.
In her hand was a detonator.
Her eyes were wet.
Not from smoke.
From betrayal.
“You knew,” she said to Luca. “You knew what my father was, and you let the world think you killed him for power.”
“I let the world think many things.”
“Why?”
Luca’s answer came slowly. “Because the children he hurt deserved to disappear from the story. Not be dragged through it.”
Valentina’s face twisted.
For the first time, she looked young.
Not innocent.
Never that.
But young enough for grief to still have teeth.
Marco’s lies had built her life. Luca’s silence had shaped it. Her father’s sins had poisoned it before she ever had a chance.
Isabella stepped forward despite Luca’s hand tightening on her wrist.
“Valentina,” she said softly.
Valentina looked at her.
“You can still walk away.”
A bitter smile touched Valentina’s mouth. “You sound like someone who has never been left with nothing.”
Isabella’s gaze did not move.
“I was left last night.”
Luca flinched.
Valentina stared.
Smoke curled between them like a veil.
Then, from somewhere beyond the theater walls, sirens began to wail.
Not police.
Fire engines.
Too late.
Valentina looked down at the detonator.
Then she looked at Luca.
“You came for her,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But would you lose everything for her?”
Luca did not hesitate.
“Yes.”
Isabella turned to him.
The answer was immediate.
Too immediate to be strategy.
Valentina saw it too.
She laughed once, broken and sharp.
“How beautiful,” she whispered. “How useless.”
She pressed the detonator.
Nothing happened.
For half a second, no one moved.
Then Valentina looked down.
Confusion crossed her face.
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
Behind her, a door opened.
A man stepped through the smoke.
Tall. Dark-haired. Serious.
The man from Isabella’s photograph.
The one who had written: Always, if needed.
In his hand was the removed firing receiver from the explosives.
Valentina turned slowly.
“You?” she breathed.
Isabella whispered, “Matteo.”
Luca looked at her.
The name hit him harder than the bullet.
Matteo’s eyes never left Valentina. “It’s over.”
Valentina backed away. “You were supposed to be dead.”
“So were you.”
Luca’s voice dropped. “Isabella. Who is he?”
She did not answer fast enough.
That was an answer.
Matteo glanced at Luca only once.
“Her brother.”
The word froze the corridor.
Luca stared at Isabella.
“You told me you had no family.”
May you like
Her eyes filled.
“I thought I didn’t.”
