Page 33 of Unleashed (Dark Sovereign #11)

ISAIA

“Melanie.”

The name tastes like metal as I spit it into Alexius’ office and watch the temperature of the room drop.

No one sits. The six of us stand in a loose circle—me, Alexius behind his desk, Maximo at my shoulder like a blade, Nicoli prowling by the windows, Caelian propped against the bookcase with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. The office smells like leather and bourbon and fresh threat.

I hold up the phone. “The man in the video is her father.”

Maximo’s eyes twitch. “You sure?”

“I’m sure. He looks older, gaunter, but it’s him.”

Alexius sets the bourbon down in front of me like he’s handing over scripture. The glass catches the lamplight, and for a second, the room looks like it’s burning from within. “This is revenge for his daughter’s murder,” he says, quiet and certain.

“A murder he blames on us. On me.” The words scrape. “It makes sense now why every verse was about vengeance. Punishment owed to the Troublemaker. It’s aimed at me. He wants vengeance because I took something from him.”

“All you did was fuck his daughter.” Caelian finally lights the cigarette. “You didn’t take shit from him. None of us did.”

“Melanie was a target because she was involved with me,” I say, blunt as a blade. “Indirectly, her death is one hundred percent my fucking fault.”

Caelian drops onto the couch, settling back like we don’t have a crisis on our hands. “You and Melanie weren’t a thing, Isaia. You were fuck buddies—called her up when you wanted to get off, and she showed. She wasn’t a Del Rossa wife. She wasn’t supposed to be a target for Micah.”

“Nevertheless,” I say. “She ended up being one, and that’s what this sick bastard wants vengeance for.”

The memory slithers in—Melanie’s dead body dangling from the second-story railing.

Eyes gouged out. Her body covered in blood.

I had a key to her apartment back then, and when she hadn’t returned my calls, I went to check on her.

It’s not like we were in any type of relationship.

It was sex. When I needed my dick sucked by someone not on our payroll, I called her.

When she needed to get railed by a man who could get her off hard and fast, she came over.

But there were no feelings involved, from either of us.

That day, walking into her apartment, white walls and floors covered in red, so much guilt slapped me in the face, I could hardly take a breath.

By the time my brothers came, I was halfway through a bottle of bourbon, sitting on the spiral staircase, thinking I could drink it all away.

It was just another day in the world of the Dark Sovereign that made me realize how much I hated it all.

Nothing got close to me without ending up tainted, or worse, dead.

It’s the reason I fought so hard against my feelings for Everly in the beginning, and when I failed by falling head-over-heels for her, I did everything in my power to protect her, to keep her mine.

Hence, our private island getaway. It’s also why Nicoli so easily persuaded me to stay away from her when we found out she was pregnant.

All I wanted was for my world not to touch my woman. Now, look where we are.

Nicoli moves like a coiled animal by the window, one shoulder brushing the glass. “But why would—” He looks at me as if I’m the missing piece of an ugly puzzle. “What’s this fucker’s name again?”

“Sean Watson.”

“Why would Sean Watson target wives of associates, and then Everly’s friend? Why not come for our women?”

“Because our wives are armored,” Alexius says.

He studies me over the rim of his glass.

“Security detail, gates, household staff, constant eyes. You don’t get to them without drawing immediate, brutal attention.

This shithead can’t come within fifty feet of them without triggering an apocalypse.

So, he hits the people close to us who don’t live under our roof. ”

“Then why Molly?” I ask, voice flat. “The cross said ‘troublemaker.’ That’s Everly. So why take Molly? Why not grab Everly, who was right there in the next room?”

Caelian flicks ash into an empty tray, eyes narrowed. “The guy is clearly a psychopath, just like our dear dead brother. Who the fuck knows what he’s thinking.”

Alexius slopes forward, elbows on his desk, the man who’s good at turning chaos into orders. “He sent you a video, gave you time. He wants confession and attention more than body count.”

“He wants me,” I say, leaning back against the wall.

Maximo looks at me. “You’re his focal point.”

“And you brought Everly here,” Nicoli says, slow and knife-sweet. “Brilliant. There’s a copycat putting verses in corpses, and you drive your pregnant wife to the front door of the Del Rossa mansion. Want to spray-paint a target on her belly while you’re at it?”

“Believe me, I wanted to tie her ass to that fucking plane.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I’m done letting my fears fuck her up.”

Nicoli scoffs. “You’re full of it.”

“What the fuck is your problem, man?”

“My problem is you had an opportunity none of us had to get your wife the fuck away from here, and you didn’t take it.”

I step into him. “I have a sixty-minute countdown and a friend strung up like a butchered lamb, with my wife begging me with tears in her eyes to save her. That is not something I could fly away from on my way to fucking Italy, no matter how badly I wanted to.”

“Fly her now,” Nicoli fires back. “You don’t need to play hero to prove you’re a husband.”

I laugh without humor. “You think I’m playing hero? You think I want to be here? There hasn’t been a single day in my entire goddamn life that I wanted to be in this fucking house.”

“Well, you had the perfect opportunity to bail tonight but blew it.”

I get up in his face, pressing my finger into his chest. “You need to stop fucking projecting, brother.” My finger stays planted against his sternum, not because I’m afraid of him. Because I’m furious he’s taking the hurt he can’t fix and pitching it at me.

His face tightens, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of backing down.

“You’re wracked with guilt over what happened to Mira.

You live inside that guilt like it’s a fucking house you can’t leave.

It poisons everything. Your sleep, your patience, your sense of what’s right.

You wanted me to ship Everly off on a plane because you couldn’t save your wife.

Now you stand here demanding I remake my life to fit your regrets. ”

He opens his mouth, something like a rebuttal dies there, and I keep going.

“It fucking scares you. It fucks with your head, the fact that your wife, the one who got raped and beaten, wakes up every morning and chooses this family while you’re the one who would leave it all behind in a fucking heartbeat.

She’s stronger than you, the one who’s supposed to protect her, and you dunno how to live with that.

But you better figure it out and stop making it my problem, forcing what you think is right down my goddamn throat. ”

The room hums with the electricity of it—brothers, blood, and lines drawn in sand.

“No one is forcing anything, Isaia,” Nicoli says, his tone calm now. “But mark my words, if anything happens to Everly or that baby, it will destroy you. You’ll never be able to find your way back from that.” He leans in close, eyes focused. “Believe me…I know.”

It’s all there in the way he looks at me—the regret, the guilt, the warning. What happened to Mira is something he’ll never get over, something he’ll never be able to forgive himself for. He’ll always carry that burden, and that same weight is what he fears for me.

“You’re my brother, Nicoli. I love you. But you have got to let me do what I think’s best for my family.”

“If you hug him,” Caelian quips, “I swear to God, I'll light this place up with you all in it. I can't take another damn daytime soap opera scene.”

“Enough.” Alexius stands. “We don’t have time for this shit. Isaia, you said you know where he has Molly?”

I straighten the collar of my leather jacket. “The video, I recognized Melanie’s old apartment. That’s where they are.”

“We go hard and quiet. No sirens. No neighbors. We ghost in and ghost out.”

“This fucker doesn’t get out of this alive,” I bite out. “And I get the kill-shot.”

“Fuck that.” Caelian snorts. “First-come, first-served. Winner’s bullet and a cold body on a silver platter.”

Alexius’s gaze returns to me. “You stay with Everly.”

“No.”

“It’s not a request.”

“I said no. I need to do this for her.”

Alexius watches me long enough to make my teeth grind. “You’ll be distracted.”

“Not if she’s under our roof. Anthony’s here. With his men and ours guarding this house, no one will get close. Let Nicoli stay behind.” I flick him a glance, a dare.

Alexius exhales through his nose. “Fine. Nicoli, you’re house captain.”

“You’re all fuckers, you know that?”

Caelian smirks at Nicoli, a cocky grin that’s begging for our brother’s fist.

“You,” Alexius pins me with a pointed stare, “get your head clean. Tell her what you’re doing and be done. We move in five.”

I nod once and turn for the door.

“Isaia,” Nicoli says behind me.

I stop but don’t face him.

“Don’t miss.”

“Now who’s the fucker?” I walk out of the office and down the hall.

I could walk these corridors blindfolded.

Every inch of marble and molding is written into my bones.

But tonight they feel different. Tonight the air hums with static, pressing against my skin, a storm gathering just out of sight.

Every step I take carries a charge, a fuse burning low and fast, coiling tighter with each echo of my boots on the polished floor.

The walls seem narrower, the shadows longer. My pulse thrums in my ears, loud enough to drown out the stomp of my brothers’ boots behind me.

Between these walls, fear and adrenaline have become as familiar as family portraits—just another inheritance I never asked for. There was never a time in my life that I felt like I belonged here, but tonight it’s different because she’s here. Waiting. Breathing. Counting on me.

She’s my home. The place I belong. My familiar landscape. It’s all her, and will always be her. No walls, no gardens or archways, not even the grandest of rooms will ever change that. She’s everything, my beginning and end. And tonight I’m righting every wrong by being the man she deserves.

Every heartbeat is a countdown. Every step feels like I’m walking a wire over fire. By the time I see the glow spilling from the living room, I’m not sure if I’m about to touch her or detonate.

Leandra sits at the edge of the couch, Mira beside her with a blanket over her knees, Giana cross-legged on the rug petting Luna, who’s sprawled like she owns the Persian.

Everly is between Leandra and Mira, hands curled around a mug she isn’t drinking, face turned toward something Giana is saying that I don’t hear because my pulse is in my ears.

She looks up, her eyes red, and the world narrows.

I don’t ask permission. I don’t have any left in me. I close the distance, catch her wrist, pull her up, and crush my mouth to hers.

Her mug hits the table with a thunk that vibrates through wood.

Her breath catches, then breaks, then melts into me.

I taste salt and fear and the vow I’m about to make and the vow I already broke, and I kiss her until the room falls away.

I pour my heart and soul and everything between right into this one kiss.

If words didn’t exist, this is how I’d tell her how much I love her, that she’s my life, my air, the blood in my veins.

Pulling back only when I fear I no longer remember how to breathe, I keep my arm around her. I frame her face with my palms, thumbs under her eyes, then press my forehead to hers. “I’ll save her,” I say, voice gone rough as gravel.

More tears roll from her eyes, and I wipe them away with my thumbs. “I love you, Everly Del Rossa.”

“I love you, too.”

I kiss her once more, fast and hard, a seal burned into wax. “Lock the world out,” I murmur against her mouth, placing a hand on her stomach. “Until I get back, this is all you focus on, okay? Our baby.”

Her hand fists in my shirt like she’ll rip it if I don’t come back. “Bring her home.”

“I swear.”