The Canary Who Learned To Fly

Dante Moretti POV

The reception hall was a gilded cage, suffocating and overly bright.

Five hundred guests pressed in on all sides, and the air grew heavy with the cloying scent of expensive perfume and desperation.

Isabella was hanging off my arm, her fingers digging into my bicep with a possessive vice grip. She had been anchored to me for four hours.

Her smile was bright, brittle, and entirely fake.

She waved her ring at everyone who walked by, flashing the diamond under the chandelier's glare like a trophy.

"Look at the size of it," she cooed to the Don's wife from New York. "Dante has such exquisite taste."

I didn't choose the ring.

My mother did.

I just footed the bill.

I took a long sip of whiskey. It burned going down, but not enough to numb the irritation crawling under my skin.

"Where is your sister?" a Capo from the Rossi family asked, swirling his wine.

Isabella stiffened against my side.

"She's ill," Isabella lied without missing a beat. "She went to London for treatment. Poor thing. She's always been... fragile."

*Fragile.*

I thought of Seraphina in the basement.

Fifty lashes.

She hadn't screamed. Not once.

She had stared at the wall with eyes that were ancient with pain, far older than her years.

Fragile wasn't the word I would use.

Broken, perhaps. But never fragile.

A waiter weaved through the crowd with a tray of juice.

A small child—the son of one of my soldiers—darted past.

Impact.

He bumped the waiter, and apple juice splashed onto the pristine white hem of Isabella's dress.

She gasped, the sound sharp and ugly.

"You little brat!" she shrieked.

The music seemed to die instantly.

Isabella raised her hand.

She was going to strike the boy.

I caught her wrist mid-air.

My grip was unforgiving.

"Enough," I growled.

She looked at me, eyes wide with shock.

"But he ruined my dress, Dante! It's custom Vera Wang!"

"It's a dress, Isabella. He's five."

She yanked her arm away, rubbing her wrist dramatically.

"You're hurting me," she hissed.

I looked at her.

Truly looked at her.

I saw the cruelty etched in the set of her mouth. The vacuous vanity in her eyes.

She wasn't the girl who had sat by my bed in the safe house.

That girl had been patient. Gentle.

That girl had read to me for hours when darkness was my only companion.

That girl had smelled like vanilla and rain.

Isabella smelled like Chanel No. 5 and cold ambition.

I felt a cold knot tighten in my stomach.

Something was fundamentally wrong.

I turned to Marco.

He was loitering by a pillar, looking bored.

"Where is the box?" I asked.

"What box?"

"The one Seraphina left at the gate."

Marco hesitated, shifting his weight.

"Isabella told me to burn it. She said it was just trash."

"Did you burn it?"

"No, Boss. I put it in your office. Just in case."

"Get it," I said.

"Now? But the speeches are starting."

"Now, Marco."

He saw the darkness in my eyes.

He nodded and disappeared into the crowd.

I looked back at Isabella.

She was viciously berating the boy's mother now.

A sudden, overwhelming urge to be anywhere but here clawed at my throat.

"I need a drink," I told her, though I had no intention of stopping at the bar.

I walked away before she could answer.

I walked straight out of the ballroom and into the blessed silence of the hallway.

I was going to open that box.

And I had a sickening feeling that whatever was inside was going to ruin me.