Chapter 3 3

Isabella POV

The ride in the gleaming Cadillac was a silent, suffocating nightmare. The tinted windows obscured the New York streets until we pulled up to a heavily fortified brownstone in a quiet, respectable neighborhood. The Falcone Soldier escorted me inside, the heavy door locking behind us with a definitive click.

The interior smelled of expensive whiskey, leather, and an unspoken threat. And there he was.

Damien Falcone.

He stood by a dark mahogany desk, his amber eyes locking onto me with the predatory stillness of a hunting cat. The man I had drugged to escape this exact fate was now my captor.

"You," I breathed, terror and confusion warring in my chest. "What is this? Are you going to kill me?"

He ignored my questions. His cold gaze swept over my trembling frame before he closed the distance between us. His large hand gripped my upper arm, pulling me toward the bedroom. Panic surged through my veins. I thrashed against his iron hold, digging my heels into the floor.

In the violent struggle, my carefully pinned hair came undone. The sharpened metal hairpin I had spent weeks grinding against a brick wall clattered loudly onto the polished hardwood floor.

Damien stopped. He looked down at the makeshift weapon, then back at me. The slight amusement in his eyes vanished, replaced by a terrifying, blank hardness.

"Premeditated defiance," he murmured, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.

He shoved me onto the dark silk sheets of the large bed. There was no sedative to soften the edges this time. He took me with a cold, punishing clarity, stripping away my defenses and asserting his absolute dominance. I fought, but my resistance only seemed to fuel his ruthless intent.

When I lay broken and gasping beneath him, he finally spoke, his breath ghosting over my ear. "I intercepted a delivery meant for Rico Moretti. Turns out, it was you."

He rose, adjusting his clothes with chilling nonchalance. "You belong to me now. You are mine to do with as I please." He looked down at me, his eyes devoid of warmth. "I'll be sending for your father, Silas. He will come here, and he will kneel and kiss my ring at your feet. A man who sells his daughter is lower than the dirt I walk on. My property, however, deserves more respect."

The word *property* echoed in my hollow chest. Desperate to find a single shred of humanity in the monster who had just claimed me, I pulled my torn dress up slightly, exposing my raw, weeping knees.

"Did you know they beat me for what I did last night?" I whispered, my voice trembling as I showed him the wounds from the rock salt.

Damien didn't even flinch. "You deserved it," he said flatly. "Consider it a lesson. You're lucky they got to you before I did. My rules are stricter."

Later that night, the darkness of the bedroom offered no solace. The agony in my knees was a white-hot fire, making it impossible to rest.

"My knees," I whispered into the suffocating silence. "They hurt too much to sleep."

Damien lay beside me, his breathing even. "Then lie there in pain," he commanded coldly. "Pain helps you remember. It will teach you to think before you act."

I survived the night, but my spirit felt fractured. The following evening, I woke up famished. I found Damien sitting in the small, enclosed courtyard, reviewing a thick financial ledger. Unseen guards lingered in the periphery; I could feel their eyes from the shadows.

Damien looked up, his gaze sweeping over my ruined, blood-stained dress. "Go clean up," he ordered curtly, gesturing toward a washbasin in the corner.

My breath hitched. *Clean up.* Another demeaning order to make my body presentable for his use. Humiliation burned my throat, but survival demanded compliance. I walked hesitantly to the basin and, with trembling fingers, began to unbutton the front of my dress.

A chair scraped violently against the stone.

Damien exploded in a sudden, quiet rage. "What the hell are you doing?" he snarled, his voice a low, lethal growl.

He slammed the ledger shut, his eyes flashing with a fierce, almost pathological possessiveness as he glared at my exposed skin, then shot a murderous look toward the shadows where his Soldiers stood. He closed the distance and shoved past me, his jaw clenched tight.

"I said wash your hands for dinner, you idiot."

He stormed back inside, leaving me standing half-undressed in the courtyard, flushed with shame and a sudden, sharp realization of the dangerous game I was trapped in.