Chapter 8 8

Isabella POV

I looked down at his white-knuckled grip on my hand. The sheer desperation radiating from Hudson was pathetic. He wanted to use my body to ground himself, to prove he still owned something while the Don's silence stripped him of his sanity. He was trying to mask his possessive jealousy as a husband's need, but I knew better. He was terrified of the phantom touch of Don Damien Falcone on his property.

I slowly, deliberately pulled my hand from his grasp.

"Hudson," I murmured, injecting a perfect note of wifely apology into my voice. "Josie has been waking up in the middle of the night crying. She needs me. I can't leave her alone."

His jaw clenched, the rejection hitting him like a physical blow. But he couldn't argue against his own daughter without sounding like a monster. More importantly, he didn't have the courage to force the issue while his standing with the Falcone family was so precarious. Defeated, his shoulders slumped, and he turned back to his spilled whiskey.

The next morning, the suffocating tension in the townhouse finally snapped.

I was in the nursery, sitting on the plush rug and building wooden blocks with Josie, when heavy footsteps echoed in the hall. One of Hudson's low-level associates appeared in the doorway, breathless and wide-eyed.

"Mr. Higgins," the man panted as Hudson stepped out of his bedroom, still wearing his silk robe. "A message from Mr. Solis. He wants you at the Falcone private club downtown tonight. For a drink."

Hudson's face transformed. The sickly pallor of fear vanished, replaced by a blinding, arrogant ecstasy. *Frederick 'Freddie' Solis.* The Falcone family's Consigliere didn't just invite Associates for drinks. To Hudson, this was his coronation. This was the promotion he had tried to buy with my flesh.

"Get the car ready!" Hudson barked, not even bothering to dress properly before rushing down the hall, his mind already drunk on the illusion of power.

I pulled Josie into my lap, my heart hammering against my ribs. Freddie's summons meant Damien was finally making his move. But this was wrong. In my past life, there were no polite invitations for drinks. Freddie's men had simply kicked down the door and dragged me away. Damien was altering the rules of the game. He had investigated me, and now he was using his Consigliere to handle Hudson first. The unpredictability of the Don's new strategy sent a chill down my spine, but it also confirmed one thing: I had his attention.

That night, the master bedroom felt like a tomb waiting for a corpse.

When Hudson finally returned from the club, the arrogant swagger from this morning was entirely gone. He looked like a man walking to the gallows.

"Take Josie to the nursery," he ordered the nanny, his voice hollow and trembling.

I sat at the vanity, wearing a silk nightgown, pretending to brush my hair with sleepy indifference. Through the brass-rimmed mirror, I watched him sit heavily on the edge of our bed. He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. It took him a few moments to force the tears, pinching his thigh until his eyes were bloodshot.

"Isabella," he choked out, playing the role of the broken, tragic hero to perfection. "I... I don't know how to say this."

I turned around, letting the hairbrush fall to my lap. "Hudson? What's wrong?"

He looked up, his face a mask of fabricated agony. "It's the Don. Damien Falcone." He swallowed hard, making sure I saw his 'pain'. "Freddie told me tonight. The Don... he saw you at the club. He wants you, Isabella. He demands that I give you to him."

I stared at him, letting the silence stretch. He was shifting the blame entirely, painting his greedy, calculated transaction as a tyrannical *Don's Command*. He wanted me to believe he was a victim of the Mafia's absolute power, just like me.

"No," I whispered, letting my voice tremble as I stood up, playing the terrified, devoted wife. "Hudson, I'm your wife. You can't."

"I have no choice!" he cried, standing to grab my shoulders. "It's a command! If I refuse, he'll kill me. He'll kill all of us! It's for the survival of this family!"

I let a tear slip down my cheek, masking the cold, burning hatred in my chest. "Then we leave," I pleaded, gripping his lapels, looking up at him with wide, desperate eyes. "We take my dowry and we run. We can go to a small town in Ohio, far away from Chicago. We can hide from him, Hudson. Please."