Page 60 of Shattered Engagement

“I don’t want to rule!” I call back, sliding between shadows toward the platform where Isadora strains against her bonds. “I want justice!”

His laugh is bitter, broken. “Justice? There’s no justice in our world, brother. Only power and those too weak to seek it!”

Another shot pings off metal inches from my head. I return fire, calculating angles, creating cover as I advance. The guards by the exit move to flank me, but I’m faster, taking one down with a clean shot to the leg, the other diving for cover as my bullet grazes his shoulder.

Not killing shots. I need them alive to testify against Giancarlo. To ensure his fall is complete and irreversible.

I reach the platform in a final desperate surge, vaulting over rusted railings to land beside Isadora. Her eyes lock with mine, wide and fierce and alive.

“Took you long enough,” she whispers, half a rope trailing from one wrist. She’s nearly free.

“Traffic,” I mutter, and for a heartbeat, we’re just us—Stefano and Isadora, caught in our own gravity, everything else falling away. I brush my fingers across her bruised cheek, cataloging injuries, noting the split lip, the rope burns on her wrists. “Can you run?”

“Better than you.” There’s a flash of her defiance, the fire that drew me from the start.

Our moment shatters as Luca appears at the edge of the platform, blood trickling from a graze on his temple where debris must have caught him. His gun is trained directly at my chest.

“Touching,” he sneers. “The ghost and the princess. Did you really think you could have her? That after destroying both our families, you’d ride off into the sunset together?” He laughs, the sound harsh and brittle. “You’re still living in a fairy tale, brother.”

I position myself between his gun and Isadora, calculating my odds of reaching him before he pulls the trigger. Not good.

“It doesn’t have to end this way, Luca.”

“It always had to end this way,” he counters, his finger tensing on the trigger. “One Calviño son standing, one fallen. Just like our father planned.”

Time slows. I prepare to lunge, knowing it’s likely futile, but unwilling to die without fighting. For Maria. For my mother. For Isadora.

But as Luca’s finger whitens on the trigger, Isadora explodes from behind me—a blur of movement, her restraints falling away as she throws herself sideways into Luca’s midsection with surprising force. The gun fires, the bullet embedding itself in the concrete inches from my foot.

They grapple on the edge of the platform, a desperate tangle of limbs and fury. I surge forward, reaching for Isadora as she twists away from Luca’s grip. For a heartbeat, our fingers almost touch.

Then, something cracks against the back of my skull, sending pain exploding behind my eyes. I stagger, vision swimming, barely registering the third guard I hadn’t accounted for as he raises his weapon for another blow.

I drop to one knee, fighting to stay conscious as Luca manages to pin Isadora, his gun now pressed against her throat.

“Enough!” he shouts, breathing hard. “One more move and she dies!”

The world narrows to this moment—Isadora’s defiant eyes, Luca’s desperate fury, the pounding in my skull threatening to pull me under. Blood drips warm down my neck as I straighten, hands raised in surrender.

“Let her go,” I manage. “Take me instead.”

“Noble,” Luca sneers. “But I think I’ll keep you both. Father will want to see his lost son before deciding how you die.”

Isadora’s eyes find mine, communicating without words. Together. We fight together. Her hand inches toward something in her sleeve—a shard of glass, perhaps, or a makeshift weapon she managed to conceal.

But before either of us can move, the massive loading bay doors at the far end of the warehouse slide open with a thunderous crash.

Silhouetted against the nightstands a figure I’ve spent twenty years preparing to face—silver hair immaculate despite the hour, shoulders straight with unassailable confidence, amber eyes so like mine scanning the scene with cold calculation.

Giancarlo Calviño. My father. The man who ordered my mother’s murder, who thought he’d erased me from existence.

“What a disappointment you both are,” he says, voice carrying across the silent warehouse. His gaze shifts from Luca to me, lingering with dawning recognition. “Hello, Stefano. Welcome home.”

The warehouse falls silent except for the distant rumble of thunder, nature’s accompaniment to a family reunion dripping with blood and betrayal. Isadora’s eyes find mine across the space that separates us, and I read the promise there—the same one I make silently to her.

Whatever comes, we face it together.

Even if it costs us everything.

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