Isabella placed her hand over his, keeping it there. “We all have a past,” she said. “I’m not here to judge you. I see a man trying to change, fighting his own darkness. That means more to me than any false perfection.”
Max looked at her for a long moment, emotions she’d never seen before filling his eyes. Then he leaned down slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wished. But Isabella didn’t. She lifted her face to meet him.
Their first kiss was gentle and uncertain, like two strangers finding their way in the dark. Then Max pulled her close, holding her as if afraid she might vanish. And the kiss deepened, fierce and desperate.
Isabella wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling his warmth, his heart pounding beneath his shirt. In that moment, the world disappeared. No painful past, no uncertain future, only two people on a rooftop under the New York night sky, clinging to each other as if it were all that mattered.
When they finally parted, Max rested his forehead against hers, his breath warm on her lips. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again,” he vowed. “No matter the cost.”
Isabella smiled, her first true smile in a very long time. “And I won’t run anymore,” she replied, “no matter how dangerous this world is.”
They stood in each other’s arms until dawn began to tint the Manhattan horizon pink, two broken hearts finally finding a place to heal.
The days after the party felt like a dream to Isabella. She and Max didn’t make their relationship public, yet everyone in the mansion noticed the change: the secret glances, the fleeting touches when they passed in the corridors, the long nights talking on the rooftop until dawn. Sophia beamed whenever she saw them together, while Maggie only smiled quietly and pretended not to notice.
Isabella began to believe that perhaps she’d finally found happiness, that life was at last smiling on her. But the past never releases anyone so easily.
That afternoon, while Isabella was helping Maggie check the furnishings in the main sitting room, Tony entered, his face tense.
“Sir?” Tony said to Max. “Someone wants to see you at the gate.”
Isabella was surprised. “Who is it?”
Tony hesitated for a second. “He says he’s your ex-husband, Derek Manning.”
Isabella felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. The blood drained from her face, her legs suddenly weak. Derek. The name was a curse. A ghost from the past she thought she’d buried. How did he find her? How did he know she was here?
“Don’t let him in,” Isabella said, her voice shaking. “I don’t want to see him.”
Tony looked at Max, waiting for the command to eliminate the intruder, but Max’s expression remained unreadable.
“Bring him in, Tony,” Max ordered, his voice laced with a lethal calm. “If he is foolish enough to walk into my lion’s den, I want to see the look on his face when he realizes he can never leave.”
A few moments later, escorted by two armed guards, Derek Manning stepped into the room with a smirk that didn’t reach his cold eyes. Isabella turned and saw Derek standing there, right in the Castellano mansion’s sitting room. He looked just as she remembered—tall with blonde hair and blue eyes, the handsome face that once enchanted her.
Now she saw only the cruelty behind that charming smile, the monster who’d destroyed three years of her life.
“How did you get in here?” Isabella asked, her voice cold despite the panic inside.
Derek shrugged, stepping closer. “I have my ways. I hear you’re working for the Castellanos, or rather, sleeping with your boss.”
Tony stepped forward to block him, but Derek raised his hands and mocked surrender. “Easy,” he said. “I just want to talk to my ex-wife.”
Isabella felt nausea rise. “We have nothing to talk about. Leave.”
Derek shook his head, his smile turning dangerous. “I think we do. Have you told your new lover about our child? About how you killed it?”
Isabella froze, tears filling her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t.”
Derek stepped closer, his voice louder so everyone could hear. “She was pregnant with my child,” he announced. “And she had an abortion because she didn’t want my baby. She’s a murderer.”
“That’s a lie!” Isabella cried, tears streaming. “I miscarried because you beat me. You attacked me when I was pregnant. You killed our child, not me.”
The room fell silent. Tony stood there, fists clenched. Maggie covered her mouth, her face pale with horror. And at that moment, Max entered. Isabella didn’t know how much he’d heard, but one look at his face told her everything. He’d heard it all.
Max’s face was ice cold, but his gray eyes burned with a fury she’d never seen. He walked past Tony, past Isabella, and stopped before Derek.
“What did she say?” Max asked, his voice low and dangerous.
Derek faltered slightly before the Mafia boss but forced calm. “She’s lying. She chose the abortion, and now blames me.”
Max said nothing. He stared at Derek, then turned to Tony.
“Tony,” he said in a terrifyingly even voice. “Take Isabella outside. I need to speak privately with Mr. Manning.”
Isabella wanted to stay, to stop Max from doing something reckless, but Tony gently took her arm and led her out. The door closed behind them, and she stood in the hallway, trembling and crying.
About fifteen minutes later, the door opened, and Max emerged. There was no blood on his hands, but Isabella saw bruises on his knuckles. Behind him, Derek was being dragged away by two men, his face beaten and bloody, but alive.
“He’ll never appear before you again,” Max said, his voice still cold, but his eyes gentle on Isabella. “I gave him two choices: leave this country forever, or disappear another way. He chose the first.”
Isabella looked at him through tears. “You didn’t kill him.”
Max shook his head, wiping her tears. “You asked me not to that night in the cellar,” he reminded her. “I kept my word. But if he dares return, I won’t show mercy again.”
Isabella threw her arms around him, sobbing into his chest. Max held her tight, his lips on the crown of her head. The ghost of her past had finally been driven away, and for the first time in years, Isabella felt truly free.
One week after the incident with Derek, Isabella’s life slowly returned to normal, or at least normal by Castellano Mansion standards. She stayed on, no longer as a temporary housekeeper but as Max’s guest, though she still insisted on helping Maggie with household tasks because she wasn’t used to sitting idle.
Rosa had fully recovered and returned to work, but Max reduced her heavy duties and significantly increased her salary. Everything seemed to be falling into place, until that afternoon when Tony entered the sitting room with a grave expression.
“Sir?” Tony said to Max. “There’s a man at the gate asking to see Mrs. Rosa and Miss Isabella. He says his name is Ricardo Reyes.”
Isabella, who’d been reading beside Max, froze. She heard a glass fall to the floor and realized it was Rosa, standing at the doorway with a tea tray, her face pale as paper.
“Ricardo,” Rosa whispered, her voice trembling. “He’s alive. He’s come back.”
Max rose and placed a steadying hand on Isabella’s shoulder. “Do you want to see him?” he asked gently.
Isabella didn’t know how to answer. Her father—the man who’d abandoned the family twenty-two years earlier, who’d left her mother to shoulder an enormous debt, the man she’d hated all her life—was now standing at the gate asking to be seen.
She looked at her mother and saw something unexpected in Rosa’s eyes. Not hatred, but hope.
“Let him in,” Isabella finally said hoarsely. “But if he hurts my mother again, I’ll drive him out myself.”
Tony nodded and left. Minutes later, a man entered the sitting room. Ricardo Reyes looked far older than in the photos Isabella kept. His black hair had turned white, his face lined and spotted with age, his body thin and bent as if life’s weight had crushed him. Yet his dark brown eyes were unchanged—the eyes Isabella had inherited—now gazing at his wife and daughter with indescribable pain.
“Rosa,” he said, his voice trembling. “My daughter.”
Rosa stood silently as tears slid down her cheeks. Isabella held her hand, feeling her mother’s trembling.
“Why are you here?” Isabella asked coldly. “After twenty-two years, you think you have the right to appear before us?”
Ricardo bowed his head, shoulders shaking. “I know I don’t deserve it,” he said. “I abandoned my family and left you to suffer my mistakes. I was a coward and a failure.”
He looked up, tears streaming. “Not a day has passed that I didn’t think of you. Not a night I didn’t dream of Isabella as a child. I wanted to return, but I was afraid. Afraid of rejection. Afraid to face what I’d done. For the past month, I have spent my nights standing in the shadows across from your apartment in Brooklyn, watching the lights in your window and crying in silence. Too ashamed to step into the light until I knew I could truly seek your forgiveness. Then I heard Miguel had died. I wasn’t there when my son needed me most. I knew I couldn’t keep running.”
Isabella felt her anger battling something else she didn’t want to admit. She saw not a heartless traitor but a broken man crushed by his own sins.