"What are you doing here?"
The question came out like the crack of a whip, cutting through the fragrant steam escaping the bathroom. I expected him to stammer, to look guilty for being caught in my sanctuary. Instead, Dante Volkov met my gaze with a glacial calm that threw me off balance.
His dark eyes, for one torturous second, drifted down my body, tracing the path of a single drop of water on my collarbone before returning coldly to my face. The look was so intimate and yet so impersonal that I felt completely exposed, rage burning in my cheeks.
"Checking the windows," he said, his voice a low, even baritone. "The entry points. My job is to make sure what happened to you in the alley doesn't happen while you sleep."
The excuse was perfect. Logical. Professional. And hatred boiled inside me that he had the audacity to use my trauma against me. Filled with fury and a sense of violation, I marched toward him, the towel feeling like very fragile armor.
"I don't care about your excuse," I hissed, stopping inches from him. "This is my room. My space. Get out. Now."
Instead of backing away, he stared down at me, a challenging, dangerous glint in his eyes. Then, he did the unthinkable. He took a slow, deliberate step toward me, closing the last bit of personal space. I was forced to tilt my head back to look up at him, the scent of his cologne surrounding me. His gaze dropped, slow and insulting, down my body, from my damp throat to the edge of the towel and back up. He bit his lower lip for an instant, a gesture of pure, predatory desire."Your father arrives for lunch in twenty minutes," he said, his voice now a little rougher.
He lowered his face until his lips were almost touching mine, then moved until he was right beside my ear and whispered, "Get dressed." Without another word, he turned and left, closing the door softly behind him.
I stood frozen in the middle of the room, my heart hammering with a mix of fury, fear, and an electric current of excitement that I hated with every fiber of my being.
Twenty minutes later, I went down for lunch. My hands trembled as I chose a severe, high-collared navy dress, anything to make me feel armored. My father's unexpected arrival added another layer of tension. Dante stood in the hall, impeccable in a dark suit, and the look we exchanged was heavy with the silent memory of what had just happened.
The dining room felt like a stage. My father, Alessandro Moretti, was at the head of the table, his sharp gaze surveying everything. To my shock, he gestured for Dante. "Sit down, Volkov. I want to see the man who guards my daughter's life eat. I want to see if he has weaknesses."
Dante took a seat across from me.
"So," my father began, pinning Dante with a sharp gaze. "My sources tell me you were military. Special Forces."
"That's correct," Dante said, his voice even.
"Why leave?"
"I prefer the private sector. The objectives are clearer."
"Loyalty can be bought in the private sector," my father countered.
"And it can be broken in any sector," Dante replied without missing a beat.
"I am loyal to the contract. And my contract is to protect your daughter."
I watched them, a verbal tennis match between two alphas.
My mind in a whirlwind. How could the predator who devoured me with his eyes in my room be the same cold, controlled soldier sitting at this table? His duality was fascinating and terrifying.
In the middle of a question about convoy tactics, my father's personal cell, the emergency one, vibrated on the table. The conversation stopped. He glanced at the screen, his expression hardening.
"Speak," he said into the phone. He listened for a moment, his knuckles turning white. "How many?" Another pause. "Understood. Clean up the mess. I want a full report in an hour." He hung up, his eyes dark as thunderclouds. "We had a problem at the port. One of our containers was set on fire. A total loss."
"An accident?" I asked, my voice small.
"There are no accidents in our business, Isabella," he said grimly.
A shiver ran down my spine. Our business hadn't been hit like this in years. The tension in the room was already high when Luca, my father's top man, rushed in. He looked haunted.
"Mr. Moretti," he said, his voice low and urgent. "While everyone was focused on the port... a messenger left this at the front gate."
He held a large, elegant envelope, sealed with red wax. My name, "Isabella," was written on it in a flawless, mocking script. My father snatched the envelope from Luca's hand. He ripped the seal with his thumb and pulled out the contents.
Sitting beside him, I saw it instantly.
It was a photo. An old photo of me, about ten years old, smiling, hugging my mother in the garden of this very house. My mother, who had been murdered years ago in a gang war. The photo had been desecrated. A thick, red 'X', as if drawn in dried blood, was slashed across her smiling face. My father tried to flip the photo, to hide the back, but it was too late. I'd already seen the back. Cut-out letters.
"EMPIRES BURN. PRINCESSES DO, TOO."
The air left my lungs in an audible gasp. "Oh god."
The attack at the port wasn't a separate event.
It was the warning.
This photo... this was the sentence. The enemy was saying: *We can burn your money, and we can burn your daughter.*
"Luca!" my father roared, jumping to his feet. "Get every man we have. I want them found!"
"Yes, sir!" Luca scrambled out of the room.
My father began pacing, a caged lion. "They dare... they dare to use her memory against me. Against *you*."
Then, my eyes, searching for some anchor in this chaos, found Dante's across the table. Amid my father's fury and my own terror, he was the only point of calm.
He was looking at the photo in my father's hand, his expression unreadable, a wall of granite. But a horrible thought, cold and sharp as a shard of glass, cut through my panic.
That calm... it wasn't a protector's shock. It was a predator's patience, waiting for the right moment.
For a split second, I *thought* I saw something in his eyes. Not shock. Not anger. But a dark, satisfied glint, and then, it was gone. So fast that I wondered if I'd imagined it, just another trick of my terrified mind.
I sat there, my heart pounding wildly, with a new, terrifying doubt forming in the pit of my soul: what if the real monster wasn't the one who sent the threat, but the man hired to stop him?