"How did you know?" I breathed, surprised by how steady my voice sounded.
Alexandre leaned back in his chair, unhurried, the corner of his mouth lifting as if this were all mildly amusing to him. He folded his hands together, elbows resting easily on the armrests. He chose not to answer me.
Instead, he turned his full attention to Dario.
"You really thought you could take my wife away from me?" he asked calmly, his head tilting just slightly, curiosity laced with something far more dangerous. "Especially now that she had regained some of her memories back?"
Dario straightened. "She was never your wife," he said firmly. "That marriage was a sham."
Alexandre's smile didn't falter, but something colder surfaced behind those green eyes.
"Was it?" he murmured.
The room seemed to contract around us, the silence stretching thin and taut, like a wire pulled too tight. Just one wrong breath away from snapping.
Alexandre reached underneath the table with deliberate slowness. My pulse spiked, irrational and sharp until he withdrew not a weapon, but a thick manila folder. He set it on the table between us and slid it forward with two fingers, the scrape of paper against wood sounding far too loud.
"This is the only way you'll get out of this room," he said coolly. "Alive."
I hesitated before opening the folder. The paper inside was crisp, heavy beneath my fingers. It was already official. Stamped and notarized.
My breath caught when I immediately recognized the document.
It was the one thing we've been trying to get all morning, except this one was already complete.
My name caught my attention first, black ink on white paper.
Isolda Antonia Ricci.
Then, my stomach dropped.
Beneath it, unmistakable and damning, was his.
Alexandre Barinov.
"This is a joke," I said, pushing the folder back as if it burned. "I'm not going to sign this."
"You've signed it before," Alexandre replied, utterly unbothered. "This is merely another version of the same truth." His gaze flicked to me, brief but deliberate. "And it is the only way either of you leaves this room."
Dario surged to his feet. "What makes you think our men wouldn't storm this place once they realize we've been gone too long?"
Alexandre smiled then, slow and indulgent.
"What makes you think that they're still alive?" he retorted, leaning forward just enough for the badge at his chest to catch the light.
The room seemed to contract around us.
Dario froze. Not fear, but calculation. The kind that came a second too late.
Alexandre's gaze shifted to me at last, pinning me in my seat. "You really should stop believing you're ever going to be one step ahead of me, Princess," he murmured. "You never were."
The implication hung between us, heavier than the gun still untouched at his side.
"Sign," he said softly.
"I'd rather die," I said. My voice betrayed me, trembling despite every effort to steady it.
Alexandre regarded me for a moment, almost contemplative. "You nearly did," he said evenly. "You've made your point. Now sign."
"Enough." Dario pushed back his chair, the scrape slicing through the silence. "This is ridiculous."
Alexandre's attention shifted and the air changed. Not abruptly, but decisively.
"Ridiculous?" he echoed, a slow, dangerous smile curving his mouth. "Ridiculous is you deciding to take what was already mine."
The words slid over my skin like a blade.
Dario moved.
I saw it in the subtle shift of his shoulder, the way his hand drifted toward the waistband of his trousers, where his gun would be.
"No—" I breathed, panic clawing up my throat.
But it was too late.
I moved on instinct.
My fingers closing around Dario's wrist just as his hand brushed the grip. I twisted hard, sharp and desperate, forcing a hiss from between his teeth when the gun came loose in my grasp. The weight of it familiar in my hands. Heavy and unforgiving, terrifyingly real.
I stood in one motion and turned.
The barrel found Alex's chest.
The room seemed to narrow to the space between us.
For a heartbeat, neither of us breathed.
Dario froze behind me. "Sol—"
"Don't," I said, my voice steady only because I refused to let it break.
Alex didn't even move. He didn't even bother to reach for his own weapon. Instead, his gaze lifted slowly from the gun to my face, dark green eyes burning with something far more dangerous than anger. Possession.
Something unspoken stretched between us. Thick, intimate and alive. As if even now, with a gun aimed at his heart, he knew exactly where he stood with me.
His lips curved, just slightly.
"There you are," he murmured, almost tender. "I've missed you."
There was just something about those words, out of his mouth, that I couldn't help feeling something tugging at my chest. Slowly, deliberately, I could feel my fingers loosening from the trigger as I lowered the gun, down toward the table between us.
I released the magazine, the clip slipping free into my palm, heavy with promise and threat.
Alex's eyes flicked to the movement. Sharp. Assessing.
I tipped my hand, and the bullet spilled out. One by one, clattering against the polished surface of the table. The sound echoing far louder than it should have in the small room.
Then I set the empty gun down last. Carefully. Where they both could see it.
Silence swallowing us whole.
"Enough of this," I said. "Don't delude yourself into thinking that stopping us this one time means you've won."
His gaze lifted to mine, slow and deliberate. Something dark shifted beneath the surface. Volatile, restrained only by will.
I straightened, forcing steel into my spine even as my pulse betrayed me. "Dario and I are getting married," I continued, each word carved out of my resolve. "And if you kill him, I will simply marry another. Anyone. Everyone, before I ever choose you again."
The air changed.
Alex's jaw tightened. The softness was gone now, burned away and replaced by something far colder. Far more dangerous. Possession without tenderness. Rage sharpened into intent.
"Now, if you'll excuse me," I said, gathering every fractured piece of courage back into my spine, "we're fucking leaving."
I reached for Dario's arm and pulled, forcing my legs to move despite the way Alex was looking at me, like he was stripping me down to the bone. Calculating, predatory, intimate in the most dangerous way.
We almost made it, too.
The door was looming just ahead of us, locked but close enough to taste freedom when I heard the scrape of his chair against the floor.
"If I can't have you," Alex said quietly, the soft click slicing through the air, "then no one can."
The gunshot shattered the room.
I didn't have a chance to react, to take cover. And nor did Dario.
His grip slipped from mine, his hand flying to the back of his head as if he didn't yet understand what had happened. His eyes were wide, stunned, when his knees buckled. His lips parted like he wanted to speak my name.
But he never did.
His body hit the floor beside me with a sound that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Dead.