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I take a step forward. “You lost Clara because you tried to own her.”

“You know nothing about my daughter,” Isabella snaps.

“No,” I agree, keeping my voice level. “I only knew the woman she became after she escaped you.”

Pain ripples across Isabella's face. For an instant, I don’t see a mastermind or a murderer, but a grieving mother. Then it vanishes.

“She belonged with her family,” she cries.

“She had a family.”

“You stole her!”

“You’re wrong.” My voice fills the warehouse. “Clara chose me. She chose Ivy. She chose our life.”

“She died because of you!” Isabella screams.

The accusation tears through the building. I absorb it because I’ve lived with those same words inside my own head for four years.

Fresh tears spill down Isabella's face. “She should have come home,” she whispers.

“She was home,” I tell her.

Roman edges farther into the warehouse, his weapon still trained on Isabella. “Put the gun down, Isabella.”

“No.”

“You have nowhere left to go.”

Isabella smiles through her tears, and the expression chills me. “Neither does he.”

The gun swings toward me. Every muscle in my body locks. Maggie gasps from the doorway behind me.

“Alexei!”

I don’t take my eyes off Isabella. She raises the weapon with both hands, grief, hatred, and madness warring across her face while tears continue sliding down her cheeks.

“You should have died with her,” she whispers.

The shot never comes. Roman fires first.

The crack of the gunshot echoes through the warehouse, deafening in the sudden silence. Isabella screams as the bullet tears through her shoulder. The pistol flies from her hand and skids across the concrete while she crashes to her knees, clutching the wound as blood pours between her fingers.

Roman never misses.

Before Isabella can recover, four of Roman's men are on her. They wrench her arms behind her back and force her face down onto the concrete. She fights viciously, kicking and screaming while they secure her wrists.

“Clara!” she sobs. “Clara!”

Roman approaches slowly, his expression carved from stone. “It’s over,” he says.

I cross the distance until I stand over her. Looking down at the woman who has spent months terrorizing my family, I feel nothing.

Hatred fills Isabella's face.

Roman stops beside me and nods once toward his men. “Take her.”

The men haul Isabella to her feet. She continues screaming Clara's name as they drag her toward the exit, her voice echoing through the cavernous warehouse long after she disappears from view.