Chapter 7 7

Isabella POV

The black rotary phone beside my new telegraph machine sat like a dormant bomb. When it finally rang, the shrill sound shattered the heavy silence of the warehouse, making my heart violently seize.

I snatched the receiver. "Marta?"

"Donna Bella..." Marta's voice was thick with the flu and sheer terror. "It's Elena."

My blood turned to ice. Through broken sobs, my loyal housekeeper explained the nightmare unfolding in the penthouse. Sarah, the clueless temporary maid hired to cover Marta's illness, had made Elena breakfast. Peanut butter toast.

"She's choking, Bella. She turned blue," Marta wept.

I could perfectly envision the chaos. Dante, roaring like a caged beast, tearing through the kitchen for the red EpiPen kit on the side of the fridge-the one I had emptied of spares when I left, assuming he would restock it. He hadn't. While Sarah frantically called an ambulance, Dante could only pace the foyer, his expensive leather shoes trampling over the torn pieces of our blood oath still scattered on the floor.

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. Lenox Hill Hospital.

Marta whispered into the receiver, hiding in a sterile corridor. "The doctor tore into him, Bella. Treated the *Underboss* like a negligent child in front of everyone."

I could picture Dante's jaw ticking, his fragile pride bleeding out on the linoleum floor.

"And Adriana?" I asked, the name tasting like poison on my tongue.

"Complaining that the antiseptic is ruining her Chanel," Marta scoffed weakly. "But Elena woke up. She cried for you. When Adriana tried to touch her, the sweet girl pushed her away. She pointed right at her and said she smelled like cheap gin and lies."

A fierce, tragic pride swelled in my chest. *My brave girl.*

"Dante took out his phone," Marta continued, her voice breaking. "He was going to call you. I saw it in his eyes. But Adriana looked at him, challenging him... and he put it away."

My grip on the receiver tightened until my knuckles turned white. Dante chose his ego over our daughter's tears. He would rather let Elena suffer than admit to his mistress that he needed his wife.

By Tuesday evening, the shadows in the safe house grew long and oppressive. I sat frozen on the edge of my cot when the private line-the one I had taught Elena to memorize through a lullaby-suddenly rang. It was an unverified connection from the penthouse.

I pressed the receiver to my ear, my hand trembling uncontrollably.

"Mamma...?"

The tiny, raspy voice broke me. Tears instantly spilled over my lashes, hot and desperate. "Elena, *amore mio* (my love), I'm here-"

"Don't call her!"

The screech was unmistakable. Adriana. I heard the sound of a scuffle, the phone fumbling against the nightstand.

"She doesn't want to speak to you, Elena," Adriana's sickeningly sweet, fake voice echoed into the mouthpiece. "Now, look what Auntie Adriana bought you..."

*Click.*

The dial tone buzzed against my ear, a flat, dead sound that echoed in the cavernous warehouse.

I slowly lowered the receiver. The tears on my cheeks went completely cold. That usurping whore, a mere *Associate's* daughter, had just severed the lifeline between a mother and her child. She had crossed the final, unforgivable line.

I wiped my face, my posture straightening as a chilling, absolute calm washed over me. I turned toward my encrypted telegraph machine. The air in the warehouse was growing heavy and thick, the faint, distant rumbles of an approaching thunderstorm vibrating through the concrete floor.