Page 21 of Marriage of Revenge

I don’t divert my eyes from the entrance. "Oh, she's here," I reply, my muscles tensing.

Rahul from Mumbai hasn't taken his eyes off the stage where the video of Isabella dancing keeps playing in the background. "Such grace," he murmurs. "Such control. Imagine breaking that control." His perfectly tailored suit can't hide the predator beneath.

Carlos Rivera joins our table, Colombian blood money evident in every perfect seam. "Beautiful performance. Makes you wonder if she still dances like that." His eyes cut to me. "Behind those mansion walls."

My grip tightens around the glass, and for a split second, I imagine smashing it into Carlos’s smug face. My fingers ache with the need for violence, my jaw grinding as I force myself to stay calm. I take another slow sip of whiskey, every swallow a reminder to keep my composure. Let them speculate. Let them talk. They think they know Isabella, but they don’t. They never will.

Connor's eyes meet mine across the rim of his glass. There's calculation there, cold business. Because that's what this is—business. Even if it feels like war. "May the best man win," he says, and we both know he means it.

And then, she steps in. Isabella.

The world doesn't just pause—it fucking stops breathing. Different but hauntingly familiar, like a song you know by heart played in a minor key. She has a fuller, more mature grace to her frame, curves the tulle dress can't quite hide. Her once-long hair is now rebelliously short and curly, barely brushing her shoulders—something happened there, something that makes my gut clench.

Especially because I thought earlier had been a mirage. I had been dreaming her. When I was outside, looking up the balcony.

When I saw her in the corridor, her hair seemed longer.

The dress is a masterpiece of control and rebellion. Light blue tulle flowing like water, but that corset... It cinches her waist, pushes up her breasts until they threaten to spill over.

She has more curves than before.

She looks like she stepped out of a Renaissance painting, all ethereal beauty and hidden steel. Every step she takes makes the fabric shimmer, begging to either be worshipped or torn apart. Right now, I want to do both.

Connor whistles low. "She might be restricted in that corset, but look at her eyes. There's no taming that fire."

He's right. Under all that makeup—more than I've ever seen on her—there's a wildness she can't hide.

Paola outdid herself. And yet, I want to rub all trace of that mask off her and truly see her.

Those red lips might be painted to entice, but the way she holds herself... She's ready for war. Good. Because that's exactly what she's going to get.

Our eyes meet across the room, and everything else blurs like a badly focused photograph. The crystal glasses stop tinkling, the murmur of voices fades to white noise, even the air feels different—charged, like the moment before lightning strikes. My pulse pounds in my throat, every muscle coiling tight with the need to cross the room, to grab her, to—

I detect the challenge in her gaze, that raw defiance that made me want her even before. The way her chest rises and falls rapidly, the slight tremor in her fingers as they smooth down that goddamn dress—she feels it too, this electric current between us. But there's something else there now, something vulnerable she can't quite mask.

Years ago, that might have made me gentle.

Not anymore.

CHAPTER 10—ISABELLA

My palms are clammierthan on Giselle’s opening night and my father’s eyes are lasers drilling into me with a simple message. “Don’t fuck this up. Don’t disappoint me. Don’t disappoint your family. And what the fuck did you do with your hair?”

I shrug and slow my pace, pretending I have to readjust my stilettos. A tiny rebellion that won’t change anything, but as my fingers touch the leather, I force myself to inhale deeply, the overpowering scent of flowers grounding me and making me want to gag.

After seeing Antonio with Paola (if that’s really her name) in the bathroom, thrusting into her like she’s the air he needed to breathe, there’s an undercurrent of pure anger and despair rushing through me.

Because deep within, I wanted to believe in some sort of messed-up fairytale, where Antonio would be my Beast, the oneto save me. He would win the auction and the tournament and on our wedding night?

I could picture it—him, powerful muscles tensed, covered in tattoos that tell a thousand stories, that deep and sinfully smooth voice of his confessing how much he’s been missing me, wanting me, craving me.

That he’s forgiven me.

Even though he doesn’t know everything. The things that keep me up at night.

Maybe he’ll tell me he found his mother. Well, and alive. My father looked for her, told me she died, but maybe he was wrong.

It’s stupid, but even before I knew about this auction, those fantasies of him made chemo-induced nightmares more bearable.

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