Page 201 of The Devil's Thorn
She wears the past on her wrist and doesn’t even know it.
The daughter of the wolf walks among you.
Will you see her before she finds out?”
He looked up, eyes meeting mine. “Came from one of Viktor’s ghost emails.”
The air thickened. My jaw clenched, heart slowing, calculating. Daughter of the wolf. The bracelet.
I remembered the gold chain around her wrist. Said it was her mother’s. She never took it off.
My voice came low. “You think it’s about her?”
Nikolai answered. “He wouldn’t waste this cryptic bullshit on anyone else.”
“She could’ve been planted,” Yuri added. “Or worse—she doesn’t know.”
I stared at the fire flickering across the room, my fingers drumming against my thigh.
Isabella Silvani?
It didn’t sound real. But everything about her had always felt like a setup I hadn’t figured out yet.
I stood up, pacing slowly toward the window. Rain smeared the glass like smoke. “If she knows and she’s playing me…” I didn’t finish the thought. But they knew.
Nikolai crossed his arms. “What if she doesn’t? What if Viktor’s using this to make you paranoid?”
“He’s already succeeded.”
I turned back to them. “No one tells her. Not until I put her in the same room as Lorenzo and see their faces.”
Yuri nodded. “You think he’ll recognize her?”
“If she’s his daughter… he’ll know.”
The silence held for a beat before Nikolai muttered, “This is either your biggest mistake…”
“Or the only way to end it,” I finished.
The flames in the fireplace cracked louder than the silence between us. I stared at the message again on Yuri’s phone. Those few cryptic lines were enough to plant a poison seed in my head that I couldn’t rip out. I didn’t even know if it had roots yet, but itfeltreal. It felt dangerous. Like everything in me had already started preparing for it to be true.
Yuri dropped into the chair across from me, his legs stretched, casual like always. But his jaw was tighter than usual.
Nikolai stayed standing, arms folded, the flickering firelight dancing across his sharp profile. “What do you want to do?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yuri, pull everything you have on Lorenzo Silvani. Now. I want history, movement, bloodlines—anything.”
Yuri gave me a look. “Already on it.” He pulled his laptop out of his bag, the screen lighting up in the low room. Fingers tapping keys, fast and familiar.
I started pacing again, dragging my hand down my face. Every time I tried to imagine Isabella knowingly hiding something this big, it didn’t fit. Italmostdid—but it slipped away just as quickly. Like she wasn’t a liar… but still holding too much.
Yuri muttered under his breath as he searched. “You better hope you wrapped it before you tapped it, Raf…”
I stopped in my tracks and turned my head toward him.
He didn’t even look up. “I mean, if she turns out to be Lorenzo’s daughter, and you’re already inside her—what, are we going to call himnonno?”
I clenched my jaw. “I didn’t.”
