Page 67 of Marriage of Revenge

CHAPTER 34—ISABELLA

"Get behind me, now!"Antonio's roar cuts through gunfire and screams, a command that sends me stumbling backward. My heart's doing a frenzied dance - this is pure terror pounding through my veins. So much for those years of perfect pirouettes and controlled movements. Now I'm just another body trying not to catch a bullet.

I can't pull in enough air. This wedding dress that felt like a costume before is now a straightjacket, the corset crushing my ribs, the layers of tulle tangling around my legs like they're trying to trap me. God, I want to tear it to shreds, rip away this facade of bridal beauty that's turned into a death trap.

Bullets spray through stained glass windows that have survived centuries of prayers and promises. The irony isn't lost on me - it took our cursed wedding to finally shatter them. More guns appear like magic, passed through broken windows, their metal gleaming dull and deadly in filtered light.

The sickly-sweet scent of wedding flowers mingles with gunpowder and fear, hitting me with a wave of nausea that's too familiar. It's like being back in that chemo chair, trying to be the "good patient" while poison dripped into my veins and my thoughts spun in endless circles. Only now instead of nurses and IV poles, I'm surrounded by men with guns and vendettas. And this time, there's no medicine to make it stop.

The chaos here isn't like the controlled hell of chemo, where nurses would squeeze my hand through the worst of it, remind me I was still me beneath all the tubes and terror. No gentle voices now - just screams ripping through sacred air and the metallic taste of panic on my tongue.

Our priest - Antonio's man playing at holiness - cowers behind his pulpit like it's bulletproof, his prayers a desperate whisper that catches in the gunsmoke. His eyes find mine, begging for salvation, like I'm not just another trapped animal in this gilded cage turned slaughterhouse.

"Don't!" The word tears from my throat as I watch Naomi's father, his gun steady despite everything. Antonio's body becomes my shield, all coiled muscle and lethal grace between me and the flood of armed men pouring through the church doors.

"Naomi!" My scream echoes off stone walls. "Move, please move!"

But instead of moving away, Naomi does what she's always done - what she did through every treatment, every midnight fever - she moves to protect me. She throws herself between us, arms spread wide like she can stop bullets with love alone. Her dress catches light like angel wings, and my heart stops.

Her father's finger trembles on the trigger, and I see the moment his resolve shatters. The other men won't pause, won't think twice about cutting down anyone in their path. But him? With his daughter's body between him and his targets, lovewages war with whatever drove him to turn that gun on us. It's written in every line of his face, that battle between duty and devotion.

My chest constricts until breathing becomes a fight, the world tilting like those first days after treatment. All I can do is watch Naomi, frozen like a statue in her pretty dress, caught between her father's love and his loaded gun. My own father would never show such weakness - he'd pull the trigger and call it strategy, another sacrifice on his altar of power.

"Stay back," Antonio commands, and his voice isn't just protective - it's primal, lethal. The Beast they whisper about in dark corners isn't just some fairy tale villain. He's real, and he's mine now. Those scars that map his face? They're just the surface of what makes him dangerous.

His men move like extensions of his will, a deadly dance so different from my father's hired guns. They're not just following orders - they're fighting for something bigger. For family. For belonging. For who they are.

Naomi's "No" hits me like a wrong note in a familiar melody, fragile and final. The sound carries all her shattered hopes, and my heart cracks with hers because we both know what comes next.

Antonio reaches for his gun, but my father's faster. The shot cracks through holy air like thunder, and suddenly I'm watching Naomi's father crumple like a discarded costume after final bow. Numbness floods me, spreading cold and heavy through my limbs while my breath freezes in my lungs.

His body hits marble with a thud that will echo in my nightmares. Naomi's screams - "Dad, Daddy, no" - they're not just sounds, they're pure anguish set to music. My feet carry me forward before I can think, muscle memory from all those times I held her through my worst chemo days. Now it's my turn to catch her before she falls.

The memory crashes over me - lying in that hospital bed, dreaming of pirouettes while poison dripped into my veins. My father didn't visit, but his words from before haunt me now: "Remember, Isabella, in our world, only the strong survive." His voice had been winter-cold, empty as my practice room after cancer stole my grace. Now I understand - he wasn't warning me. He was prophesying this moment, this blood-soaked altar where strength means watching people you love die.

"All this for a throne in a kingdom of shadows," the words slip out, bitter as hospital coffee on my tongue. Antonio's eyes catch mine across the chaos, and for a heartbeat, I see it - he understands this twisted dance we're trapped in, where every victory costs another piece of your soul. But there's something else there too, an anger that burns hotter than chemo ever did, consuming him from the inside out. His need for revenge mirrors my father's hunger for power - twin infernos destroying everything in their path.

Something dark and urgent churns in my gut, like those moments before bad test results when you know everything's about to change. It's not just anger - it's desperation clawing its way up my throat. "This has to end," I call out over gunshots and screams, my voice stronger than my trembling legs. I reach for Naomi with the kind of grace I thought cancer had stolen, muscle memory from a thousand performances guiding my movements. My body makes a promise my words can't - I won't let her become another casualty in this war of wounded men.

Antonio's eyes flash like stage lights before final blackout, beautiful and deadly. He's transformed into the Beast from every whispered warning, every dark story that echoed through mansion halls. But my father - god, my father's just rewritten the script with a single bullet. He's cast himself as the reluctant savior, hiding the puppet master's strings behind his triggerfinger. Like he didn't orchestrate every move in this bloody ballet.

Then Antonio's focus snaps to something behind me, and the snarl that rips from his throat is pure animal rage. Franco - his right hand, his brother in everything but blood - lies crumpled on sacred ground, crimson blooming through his shirt like some grotesque flower. Doc's already there, hands moving with the same brutal efficiency I remember from trauma nurses during my worst days.

My father sees his opening like a predator spots weakness. His voice slices through gunsmoke and screams, arctic as hospital halls at midnight. "This isn't between us," he tells Antonio, but his eyes say something else entirely. "Don't escalate this into a battle you can't win." His men's guns swing toward us, and I see it in their dead eyes - they don't care if their boss's daughter catches a bullet. To them, I'm just collateral damage in a war of wounded pride.

"You'd kill her. Your own flesh and blood." Antonio's voice carries no surprise, just bitter understanding. Like he's finally seeing the full depth of my father's capacity for cruelty. But me? The realization that my father would sacrifice me without hesitation hits harder than any chemo ever did.

"I need her alive," my father's correction comes smooth as morphine before it burns. "She's more useful that way. Don’t forget the contract." But I hear what he's really saying - I'm not his daughter anymore. I'm another piece on his board, another weapon in his arsenal. And useful things? They only stay valuable as long as they serve their purpose.

"He acted alone." My father's voice carries the kind of calculated certainty that used to comfort me before I learned how many lies it could hold. "This wasn't our plan. I had no part in this." Each word drops like stones into still water, creating ripples we can't take back. "Kill me, and you're declaring war.I have more men outside. More men inside." His threat wraps around us like a noose, tightening with every breath. "Right now, you'd betray all the rules of our world... I am as much of a victim here as you are. My right hand man betrayed me to save his daughter. Almost killed mine in the process."

When Antonio's eyes find mine, they're winter-cold, the kind of cold that burns. "He taught you everything he knows, didn't he?" The accusation cuts deeper than I expected. "Didn't he?"

For one heartbeat, the Beast's mask slips. I see him - really see him, the man buried under years of grief and rage. Something flickers in those dark eyes, a pain rawer than hatred, deeper than vengeance. It's gone in a flash, but that glimpse shows me the ghost of who he might have been if we hadn't burned everything to ash.

I want to scream that I'm not my father's mirror, not his perfectly crafted weapon. But the words stick in my throat. Because he's not wrong - not entirely. Maybe I could have saved his mother. Maybe I could have changed the steps of this deadly dance we're trapped in. That shadow of guilt has followed me through every dark night, and now it looms over me, heavier than ever.

Sure, Antonio may want me. Claim me for himself. But underneath that want, I sense something darker - a self-loathing that twists through him every time he looks at me with desire instead of hatred. Standing here in my wedding dress, now stained with other people's blood, I feel hollow as a stage after final bow. Everything that could have been beautiful about this day has shattered like those ancient church windows.

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