The marble underfoot flashed like ice as they crossed the estate's great hall. Lamps threw shards of gold over silk and steel; the music rolled but didn't reach the edges of Isabella's ears. Her hand rested in Damian's, not because she wanted to be led .. but because that was the only tether she had left.
This was not a private escort through a garden; this was a parade. Antonio stood near the center of the hall, his posture composed, the carefully practiced look of a father presenting his daughter to the world. Around him were men who measured power by the breadth of their shoulders and the quiet of their threats. He had brought Isabella here. Not by chance. Not by accident. This was the altar of alliances, and she was the coin.
Damian's grip tightened at her waist the way a vow might tighten slowly, irreversibly. His jaw was a hard line against silk. He hadn't smiled once since they'd left the mansion. In his eyes, she had already been catalogued, appraised, signed into ownership.
"Stay with me," he murmured, breathing an ember in her ear. The word was an order, and the heat behind it was something else not affection, not yet, but a claim laid like iron.
They moved through the crowd. Whispers rose and unfurled: Romano's daughter… the dowry must have been obscene… the wolf's prize. People watched the procession as if keeping score. Isabella lifted her chin because she'd been trained to do so; it is easier to be admired than be pitied.
Antonio didn't move to take her from Damian; the point had already been made earlier, the contract signed, the vow of alliance exchanged. Tonight was the public seal. He met their eyes with the calm of a man who'd decided to trade his daughter for a ledger of benefits and call it prudence.
A low laugh beside them made Isabella look up. Luca DeSantis stood like a sculpture of control near the bar Damian's shadow. He gave a half nod, the kind that said: I'll watch the room. He did not flash a smile at her. He never smiled for anyone unless it was to show teeth. His presence steadied her because he was the instrument of Damian's will, the man who would act before words could poison a moment.
Antonio lifted his glass. Conversations quieted. Men straightened; the wolves shifted in place. He cleared his throat and spoke in a voice the rich used when announcing auction items.
"Friends," he said. "Alliances have been forged in this city for longer than any of us have lived. Tonight, we honor one such alliance." He turned, the motion deliberately slow, and looked at Isabella as if she were an artifact rather than a daughter. "Isabella Romano, my heir. From this night on, she joins the Moretti family."
A hush. Someone clapped reflexively; someone else spat a low curse.
Damian kissed the back of Isabella's hand in public, a performance so intimate it left a chill. It was a show of possession, the kind that translated for the room into one clear language: she claimed.
Isabella's stomach dropped. The truth sat in her like a stone: she'd never been asked. She'd been given.
"Accept her, son," Antonio said to Damian. His tone was light, but there was steel in it. He did not look as if he regretted his duty; he looked as if it had been the only sensible choice.
Damian inclined his head, slow and deliberate, as if to a ritual. "I accept," he said. His words were simple. They felt like a sentence.
A man with a silver streak in his hair slid forward at that, a smile bright as a blade. He stepped close to Isabella, too close; the smell of his expensive cologne invaded her. "A pretty thing," he said, voice coiled with hunger. "A fair face for a fair bargain."
Damian's fingers tightened at her waist like a clamp. Luca moved in a fraction of a second, a measured block that kept the man from reaching further. "Hands to yourself," Luca said. The warning in his tone was the sound of steel being drawn.
The man laughed, but his move had been noticed. Stories spread in eyes: where there is prize, there is danger. Where there is danger, men get reckless.
Isabella tried to answer her father, to find the filial words that would make all of this feel like protection instead of thievery. But the room pressed in. Her throat dried; the practiced civility of her childhood felt like paper in that heat.
Across the hall, Damian's father Don Moretti watched with an expression carved from the same stone that kept the world running. He applauded once, polite, a metronome marking the moment. The Don's nod was a public sign of approval; it closed the circle. This was not private; it was law.
Someone near the balcony murmured a name and the sound spread like a flame. "Marco."
At once Damian's posture shifted. The word Marco carried the teeth of a rival whose reach had been long and whose patience had been thinner than most. Isabella felt Damian's body move around her, a shield gone alive.
The music … previously a backdrop to silk and small talk changed its cadence. Men left their drinks incomplete. A hawk-like tension took the air.
Damian didn't smile at Antonio. He met his father's eyes instead, the two men calculating in the language of heirs and crowns. Then Damian's gaze slid back to Isabella, softening for a blink. It was enough to make her breath catch a tiny island of something human in the wolf's ocean.
"Remember your place," he said, almost gently, but the meaning was iron-wrought. "At my side, vested and visible."
Isabella wanted to explain she had never wanted any of this; she wanted to tell him she'd begged to study abroad, to paint, to breathe. She had no words that would change a contract. She had only the dress, the presentable face, and the skill to obey.
The lights seemed brighter on the upper balconies. A voice distant, confident cut the hum like a blade.
The chandeliers flickered.
Isabella felt a prickle along her spine. In a room that measures power by the calm that men display, a malfunction was more than an accident.
Darkness swallowed the chandeliers in one breath. Gasps replaced polite laughter. A ripple of panic moved through the guests.
Silence heavy and raw fell for half a beat. And then like a flint against glass a single gunshot cracked through the dark.