Adrian stalked through the smoke-choked corridor like a god descending into hell.
Gun in hand.
Eyes locked forward.
The mansion trembled around him — his empire under siege on the night he was supposed to take control of it all.
Someone had planned this down to the breath.
They knew where his men would be.
They knew the blind spots.
They knew when he'd be distracted…
With her.
And still, he couldn't stop thinking about the way Isabella had looked at him.
Not with fear.
Not with guilt.
With warning.
He kicked open the scorched doors to the east hall. Two guards were pinned behind a marble column, blood seeping through one of their jackets. A third was lying dead — eyes open, throat torn out.
"Status," Adrian barked.
"They're splitting us up," one of the men gasped. "Not just a hit — they're after something."
"The vault?"
"No, sir. Lower. Sublevel two."
Adrian's jaw clenched.
Only five people alive knew Sublevel Two even existed.
And none of them were supposed to be in this house tonight.
He turned and spoke into his comm. "Antonio. Change of plans. Get Isabella to Sublevel Two. Now."
"Adrian, she's not cleared—"
"She has the file. And she might be the only one who knows what the hell is going on."
He ended the call before Antonio could argue.
If Isabella was part of this — she'd lead him right to the heart of it.
If she wasn't…
Then Marco Romano had just put his own daughter in the middle of something even Adrian didn't fully understand.
And that made her the most dangerous thing in the house.
He reached the old chapel doors and pressed his thumb to the concealed scanner beneath the altar. A low mechanical groan followed, then a spiral staircase unfolded from the ground.
As he descended into the red-lit dark of Sublevel Two, something shifted.
A memory.
Julian's face.
His brother's laugh echoing through this very place.
Back before Marco's betrayal. Before the war.
Back when Adrian believed family meant loyalty.
Now?
It meant leverage.
He reached the bottom.
Steel walls. Surveillance monitors. Lockboxes of cash and weapons. And at the very back — a biometric vault with black-glass panels pulsing like a heartbeat.
Adrian stopped dead.
The vault door was already open.
Impossible.
No one but him and—
Footsteps.
He turned, gun raised—
And found Isabella standing in the corridor, alone, sweat-slicked and breathing hard. Antonio was nowhere in sight.
"I told him to let me come alone," she said.
"You don't give orders in my house," Adrian growled.
"No. But right now, someone has to be thinking."
He advanced slowly. "You've been lying since the moment you walked in wearing white."
"I didn't lie."
"You destroyed evidence. You came in with a weapon. You withheld a file that could collapse my empire—"
"I didn't know what was on the file!"
"You knew enough to be scared."
She stepped forward, chest rising with every breath. "Because for once, I wasn't a pawn. I was the bomb."
Adrian stared at her.
"Explain," he said quietly.
Isabella looked past him — toward the vault. Her voice dropped, haunted.
"My brother didn't die in a car crash. That was the lie my father told. The truth? He disappeared inside this vault five years ago. After your brother did."
Adrian froze.
She met his eyes. "Whatever they were building together… they both bled for it. And now my father wants to burn every piece of it."
Adrian turned slowly, looking at the open vault door behind him.
Inside: darkness.
No sound.
No movement.
But for the first time in years, Adrian felt it — the chill of something unfinished.
The vault wasn't just storage.
It was a grave.
A message.
A beginning.
Adrian holstered his gun, stepped toward the threshold.
"Are you going in?" Isabella asked.
He glanced at her. "Only fools walk into the dark without knowing what's waiting."
"And what about kings?"
Adrian's eyes narrowed. "Kings don't walk. They drag the dark out by the throat."
He stepped inside.
And the vault door slammed shut behind them.