Isabelle POV
The spotlight was a physical weight, pinning me to the polished floor like an insect under a magnifying glass. The heat of it burned against my skin, but it was nothing compared to the glacial cold radiating from the man striding toward me.
Kade.
He moved with the lethal grace of a predator that had finally cornered its prey. The crowd parted for him, a sea of black tuxedos and glittering gowns retreating like the tide before a storm. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trying to break free from a cage of bone.
Beside me, Devon Walter stiffened. "Isabelle?" he whispered, confusion coloring his tone. "Is that...?"
"Run," I wanted to scream. Run before he destroys you just for standing next to me. But my voice was trapped in a throat constricted by terror.
Kade didn't even look at Devon. To him, the Underboss of the Cameron family, Devon was less than a ghost—he was an obstacle to be bulldozed. Kade stopped directly in front of us, his towering frame blocking out the rest of the room. His eyes, usually the color of stormy oceans, were now pitch black, devoid of anything human.
"Mine," he didn't say the word, but the vibration of it slammed into me as he reached out.
He didn't ask for my hand. He took it.
With a rough jerk that nearly pulled my shoulder from its socket, he ripped me away from Devon's protective orbit and slammed me against his chest. The impact knocked the breath out of me. His arm banded around my waist like a steel shackle, crushing the red silk of my dress against my skin.
"Kade, please," I gasped, the plea automatic, pathetic.
"Dance," he commanded, his voice a low growl that vibrated through my sternum.
He forced me into motion as the orchestra, sensing the shift in power, began a heavy, mournful waltz. This wasn't a dance; it was a public execution disguised as a rhythm. His fingers dug into my hip, bruising the flesh, branding me.
The cruelty of his touch dragged my mind back, violently, to a memory I had tried to bury under layers of silence.
Three years ago. The Cameron Estate.
I was twenty, naive, and stupidly hopeful. I had worn a pale blue dress, thinking it made me look like a wife he could be proud of. The banquet hall had been filled with laughter, music, and the clinking of crystal. I had walked up to him, my hands trembling, my heart full of a foolish wish to bridge the icy chasm between us.
"May I have this dance, Kade?" I had asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He had looked down at me, swirling the scotch in his glass. He didn't see a wife. He saw a debt paid in flesh. His lip had curled in a sneer that cut deeper than any knife.
"I have no interest in watching you make a fool of yourself, Isabelle," he had said, loud enough for his mother and sister to hear. "Let alone being dragged down with you. Go sit in the corner where you belong."
I had stood there, frozen, as the laughter around us sharpened into blades. I hadn't danced since that night. Not once.
The memory dissolved, replaced by the harsh reality of the St. Regis ballroom. The irony tasted like ash in my mouth. The man who had once refused to touch me now held me captive, parading me around the floor not out of affection, but out of spite.
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. To the onlookers, it must have looked intimate. A lover's whisper.
"Three years," he hissed, his breath hot and laced with venom. "I didn't know my wife could dance. You certainly never offered it to me."
I tried to pull back, to put an inch of space between us, but his grip tightened painfully.
"Stop fighting me," he warned, spinning us sharply. "You seemed happy enough in Walter's arms. Smiling. Laughing." His voice dropped an octave, turning into a weapon. "My child's blood hasn't even dried yet, and here you are, wearing this slut's red dress, shaking your ass for another man. Are you putting on a show, Isabelle? Trying to make me jealous?"
The accusation hit me like a physical blow. My child. The baby he had never wanted, the baby I had mourned in a lonely hospital room while he was 'busy' with business. He didn't know. He didn't know about the cancer eating my lungs, or the miscarriage that had hollowed me out before the disease could finish the job.
Pain, sharp and blinding, flared in my chest, but I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Not again.
"You don't know anything," I whispered, my voice trembling not with fear, but with a sudden, cold rage.
He stopped abruptly in the center of the floor, forcing me to look up at him. His eyes blazed with a terrifying mix of possessiveness and hatred.
"I know enough," he said, his voice flat, final. "Don't forget what you are, Isabelle. You aren't a woman. You aren't a wife. You are a piece of Collateral. My property. And I have every right to break what is mine."
The words hung in the air between us, stripping away the last shreds of my delusion. He would never see me. He would never love me. To him, I was just a thing to be owned, used, and discarded.
But things don't bleed. Things don't die.
And I was doing both.
A strange calm settled over me, freezing the tears before they could fall. If I was just property, then I had no obligation to be loyal. If I was already broken, he couldn't hurt me anymore.
I looked into the eyes of the monster I had married, and for the first time in three years, I didn't see my husband. I saw a stranger.
And strangers didn't get to decide how I died.
