Isabella expected Dominic to avoid her after that night.
Instead, he began noticing everything.
The way she stirred his coffee twice but never three times.
The way she opened curtains halfway because direct morning sunlight triggered his headaches.
The way she never asked whether he was feeling better.
Everyone else asked.
Every doctor.
Every visitor.
Every captain who came upstairs wearing concern like an expensive suit.
Isabella didn't.
If Dominic was angry, she let him be angry.
If he was exhausted, she made the room quiet.
If he dropped something, she picked it up without making his inability to reach the floor into a tragedy.
It was infuriating.
And addictive.
Three days after the firing-that-wasn't, Dominic sat in the wheelchair for the first time.
Gerald locked the brakes.
Dominic's hands gripped the armrests.
His bedroom looked different from three feet lower.
That alone was enough to make rage move through him.
"Ten minutes," Gerald said.
"I can manage a chair."
"This isn't about the chair."
"I know what it's about."
Gerald nodded.
Dominic hated professionals who refused to be intimidated.
Gerald stepped outside to speak with the nurse.
Isabella entered carrying fresh sheets.
She stopped when she saw Dominic.
He waited for pity.
It did not come.
Instead she said, "You're blocking the linen cabinet."
Dominic stared at her.
"Excuse me?"
"The cabinet."
She pointed.
"You're in front of it."
His expression darkened.
"Move me."
"No."
"Isabella."
"You have functioning arms."
He looked at the wheels.
Then at her.
Her eyebrows lifted.
Dominic turned the chair himself.
It required more effort than expected.
His palms slipped once.
He hated that she saw.
But she said nothing.
When he cleared the cabinet, Isabella opened it.
"Thank you."
Dominic watched her remove the sheets.
"You're enjoying this."
"Immensely."
"You realize I could still fire you."
"You tried that."
"It didn't take."
"So I've noticed."
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Later that afternoon, Marco entered carrying a folder.
The smile disappeared.
"We found something."
Dominic immediately understood the tone.
"About the shooting?"
"Maybe."
Marco laid photographs across the desk.
A delivery van.
License plate.
A grainy security image.
A man wearing a baseball cap.
"Van was stolen forty-eight hours before the hit," Marco said. "Driver vanished afterward."
"Rinaldi?"
"That's what we're supposed to think."
Dominic studied the photograph.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning Rinaldi's sloppy. This wasn't."
Dominic leaned back.
"Who benefits if I blame him?"
"Half the city."
That was true.
Dominic looked toward the window.
"Keep digging."
Marco hesitated.
"What?"
"We also found something strange in the staffing records."
Dominic's attention returned.
"Whose?"
"Isabella's."
The room seemed to change temperature.
Dominic's voice stayed neutral.
"What about her?"
"Her employment file came through a household placement agency two years ago."
"So?"
"The agency never existed."
Dominic stared at him.
Marco continued.
"Business registration is fake. Address belongs to an abandoned storefront. References trace to disconnected numbers."
"Background check?"
"Clean."
"Too clean?"
Marco nodded.
Dominic's jaw tightened.
"When did you discover this?"
"Today."
"Why was she hired without verification?"
"The previous house manager handled it."
"Where is he?"
"Dead."
Dominic's eyes hardened.
"How?"
"Car accident eight months ago."
Coincidences made Dominic suspicious.
Multiple coincidences made him dangerous.
"Bring Isabella."
Marco waited.
"Now."
Ten minutes later, Isabella entered the office.
She looked from Dominic to Marco.
"Am I fired again?"
Dominic did not smile.
"Sit down."
She did.
Marco remained by the door.
Dominic slid the employment file across the desk.
"Tell me about Reyes Domestic Placement."
Isabella looked at the page.
The color slowly left her face.
That was enough.
"You know it's fake."
She didn't answer.
"Isabella."
"I suspected."
"Suspected?"
"My employment arrangement wasn't normal."
Dominic felt anger rise.
"Explain."
She folded her hands.
"My father owned a small trucking company."
Dominic said nothing.
"He borrowed money when my mother got sick."
"From whom?"
"I don't know."
"Try harder."
"I really don't."
Her voice tightened.
"The paperwork came through a man named Victor Salvi. My father thought it was a private business loan."
Marco swore softly.
Dominic's gaze sharpened.
"You know him?"
Marco nodded.
"Salvi brokers dirty debt. Extortion, forced transfers, leverage."
Isabella continued.
"My mother died anyway. My father's business collapsed. Then the loan changed."
"Changed how?"
"The amount tripled. Interest appeared that hadn't been in the original contract."
Dominic knew exactly what kind of arrangement she was describing.
"Your father paid?"
"For a while."
"And then?"
Isabella looked down.
"He killed himself."
Silence filled the office.
Dominic remembered her words from the night she stayed beside him.
Nobody stayed for him.
"After his funeral," Isabella continued, "Salvi came to me. He said the debt belonged to the family."
Dominic's fingers tightened against the desk.
"He told you to work it off."
"Yes."
"Here."
"Yes."
"Why my house?"
"I don't know."
That answer bothered him most.
"Did he ask you for information?"
"No."
"Photographs?"
"No."
"Documents?"
"Never."
"Did you report conversations?"
"No."
Dominic watched her face.
He had interrogated liars for twenty years.
Isabella wasn't lying.
At least not about that.
"Did anyone contact you after you started working here?"
She hesitated.
Dominic saw it.
"Who?"
"Salvi."
"When?"
"Every few months."
"What did he want?"
"To make sure I hadn't left."
"Anything else?"
She swallowed.
"He would ask whether you were still living here."
Dominic's expression became stone.
Marco pushed away from the wall.
"Jesus."
Dominic understood immediately.
Isabella had never been planted as a spy.
She had been planted as something else.
A marker.
A piece waiting on a board.
"Where are the messages?"
"I deleted most of them."
"Most?"
She reached into her pocket.
"My phone."
Marco took it.
Dominic looked at her.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
A flash of anger crossed her face.
"Tell you what? That some criminal told me I owed money because my father died? I worked in the house of Dominic Corsetti."
"You thought I'd hurt you?"
"I thought you wouldn't care."
That landed harder.
Dominic looked away.
She wasn't wrong.
Two months earlier, he probably wouldn't have.
Now the idea infuriated him.
"You don't owe Salvi anything."
"You haven't seen the contract."
"I don't need to."
"Dominic—"
"You don't owe him anything."
It was the first time she had ever spoken his first name.
Neither mentioned it.
Marco's phone buzzed.
He looked down.
His face changed.
"Dominic."
"What?"
Marco turned the screen around.
Security footage showed the black sedan parked across the street.
It had appeared four times that week.
Isabella stared at it.
"I've seen that car."
Dominic's eyes moved to her.
"Where?"
"Outside the market yesterday."
Marco immediately stepped into the hallway, issuing orders.
Dominic looked back at Isabella.
"You are not leaving the estate."
Her eyebrows rose.
"I'm sorry?"
"Until I know what's happening."
"You don't get to imprison me."
"It's protection."
"It sounds suspiciously like imprisonment."
He leaned forward.
"Somebody planted you in my household. Somebody is watching you. And I was shot three weeks ago."
"You think they're connected."
"I think assuming they're not could get you killed."
She went quiet.
Dominic regretted the words as soon as he saw her expression.
But fear was better than a funeral.
That night the estate security doubled.
Isabella's room was moved from the staff wing to a guest suite closer to Dominic's floor.
At eleven thirty, Dominic heard a knock.
"Come in."
Isabella entered wearing a simple sweater and pajama pants instead of her uniform.
He looked up from his papers.
"Can't sleep?"
"No."
"Chair's available."
A small smile appeared.
She sat near the window.
For a while neither spoke.
Then Isabella asked, "Do you ever think about who you were before all of this?"
"Before what?"
She gestured vaguely toward the mansion.
"The empire."
Dominic considered it.
"No."
"That's a lie."
He glanced at her.
"I was seventeen when my father was killed."
Her smile disappeared.
"After that, who I had been didn't matter."
"I'm sorry."
"I don't need sympathy."
"I wasn't offering sympathy."
"What were you offering?"
"Understanding."
He looked at her for a long time.
That frightened him more.
At 12:17 a.m., the private line beside Dominic's bed rang.
Only six people had that number.
He answered.
"Yes?"
A man's voice said, "Good evening, Corsetti."
Dominic did not recognize it.
"Who is this?"
"You have something that belongs to me."
Dominic's eyes shifted toward Isabella.
She saw his expression and sat straighter.
"What?"
The voice laughed quietly.
"The girl."
Dominic's blood went cold.
"Choose your next words carefully."
"Isabella Reyes was never yours."
Dominic's hand tightened around the phone.
"She isn't property."
"Interesting response from a man in your profession."
"What do you want?"
"Send me the girl."
Isabella went pale.
Dominic's voice became deadly calm.
"No."
"You may reconsider."
"I won't."
"You don't know what she cost."
"I don't care."
A pause.
Then the stranger said, "You should."
The line disconnected.
Dominic immediately called Marco.
Before he could speak, Isabella whispered:
"I know that voice."
Dominic turned toward her.
She looked terrified for the first time since he'd known her.
"Who?"
Her lips parted.
"Adrian Vescari."
Dominic froze.
Because Adrian Vescari was supposed to have been dead for six years.
---