Isabella
The golden rays of the rising sun illuminate the fortified safehouse in a halo-like effect when we pull up to it, making it look almost holy.
The sky behind the estate is still bruised purple at the edges of the horizon, night still clinging stubbornly to the tree line while dawn splits gold across the stone walls.
The light catches on the upper windows first, turning the glass into sheets of fire, then rolls slowly down over the ivy-choked exterior, the iron balconies, the arched front doors, and the armed men patrolling the grounds with rifles resting against their chests.
Unlike the Conti safehouse, this one is much grander and looks more like a second home than a place to stay hidden while conducting business.
It does not have the sterile brutality of reinforced walls or the cold, functional layout of a house designed to contain threats. This place is older and prettier. And for that reason, it is much more dangerous.
I pull the car up to the front car port. Armed men move around the perimeter of the drive, spreading out with practiced ease as we approach.
One man lifts a hand toward his earpiece, talking into it for a brief moment while the others scan the road behind us.
Matteo lifts his head slightly to look out the window, his eyes slightly wide and afraid. “Are we there?”
“Yes,” I say and shift the car into park.
His gaze moves past me to the men outside. His body sinks further into the seat. “Do we have to get out?”
The question nearly breaks me. No child should sound so scared.
I can’t imagine what all of this looks like to a boy who, less than two weeks ago, believed the worst that could happen to him was bringing home a bad grade or breaking a bone.
I brush his hair away from his forehead. “Yes, baby. But you stay with me.”
One of the guards branches off to meet us, his hand nowhere near his weapon but his body tense all the same.
He is tall with dark hair that is trimmed tight to his head and a beard to match.
His eyes roam over both of us through the windshield, giving us a firm nod before stopping right next to the driver’s side door.
“Ms. Russo,” he says when I shut the car off and push the door open.
I nod at him and then turn to Matteo. “Ready?”
His eyes dart out the windshield, moving from the stone walls to the armed guards to the open front doors. He eyes the men warily before looking back at me.
He gives me a small nod, but his body remains sunk deep into the seat.
My chest aches.
He is trying so hard to be brave.
I reach over and unbuckle him before hooking my arms under his and sliding him across the center console.
He comes easily, his limbs wrapping around my body the same way they had earlier, arms locking around my neck, legs curling against my hip.
He is too big for me to carry like this for long, especially with my body screaming from the run and fall, but at this point, I don’t care.
The guard shuts the door behind me once we’re out, then escorts us up the front steps. The graveled drive shifts slightly under my shoes, each crunch too loud in the waiting silence. Armed men watch us from a distance.
Their gazes do not linger on us for long, which I appreciate. Or maybe Davide ordered them not to stare.
The steps are wide, old stone worn smooth in the center from years of polished shoes passing over them.
Warm light spills from the open doorway, golden and almost inviting.
There is danger in a place that knows how to appear welcoming. The Contis always favored brutality in its most natural form. It seems Bianchi violence comes wrapped in Old-World hospitality.
Inside, the foyer gleams. Dark wood floors and vaulted ceilings of the same color open up in front of me.
An iron chandelier hangs in the entryway, lit low enough to soften every shadow but not banish them.
Oil paintings line the walls farther down the closest hallway, portraits of old architecture and flower-covered fields.
A sweeping staircase curves upward along one wall, its banister carved and polished from the same wood as the floor.
Matteo lifts his head slightly. His eyes go wide at the foyer with wonder, his head craning around to look at everything while the guard leads us down a long hallway. At the end of it, two men stand outside a pair of large double doors. They open them as we approach.
The room beyond is a study.
Of course it is.
Men like Davide always prefer rooms like this one. They like desks, leather chairs, decanters, bookshelves filled with titles they may have never read but keep on hand, anyway. They like rooms where power can sit down and appear civilized while deciding which enemies need to be buried before dawn.
Davide Bianchi stands near the window with a phone in one hand. He turns as I enter, speaking into it softly before ending the call and lowering his arm back down to his side. In a strange way, he looks exactly as he did on my doorstep and also completely different.
Here, in his own stronghold, surrounded by his men and his walls and the quiet machinery of his power, he looks every inch the boss I remember from childhood.
His eyes.
His suit is as immaculate as it was the last time I’d seen him, this one a charcoal gray with no tie and the shirt open at the collar.
There is a wedding ring on his finger that catches the morning light when he lifts his hand in greeting, though I vaguely remember his wife dying over a decade ago.
“Isabella,” he says, a slight smile curling his lips. “It’s so nice to see you. Though, I am sorry for the circumstances.”
My arms tighten around Matteo. “Me too.”
Davide’s eyes lower briefly to Matteo, careful enough not to linger. That restraint is the first kindness anyone has offered me since this mess began. Firelight burns low in the hearth despite the morning sun beginning to creep through the windows.
The walls are lined with bookshelves, the dark wood gleaming beneath the soft glow. Everything smells faintly of coffee and cedar polish.
It should feel comforting after the Conti safehouse, but it doesn’t. It’s simply a prettier cage than the last one I found myself inside.
I settle down on the couch near the window and shift Matteo in my arms. My body protests the movement, pain blooming through my hip and shoulder, both throbbing in time with my pulse. Matteo leans back from me to look around again, his eyes growing more curious than scared.
Davide turns his head toward the guard who escorted us in. “Thank you. Please let the kitchen know food and water are to be brought over immediately. And have housekeeping make up beds and bring a fresh change of clothes for them both.”
The guard gives a firm nod before leaving, pulling the door softly shut behind him.
He joins us a moment later, taking the opposite couch across the way. “Once you’re both fed, I’ll have my guards escort you to your room. I’m sure you’re both exhausted.”
I cannot help sinking back into the couch. After the cot and being trapped in that cold room, the couch feels like a luxury. Fatigue hits me in heavy waves, pulling at my muscles and blurring the edges of the room.
After convincing the front desk at the motel to lend me their phone, I called the number I’d memorized from Davide’s card immediately.
As strange as it had been to hear Davide answer on the other end, relief had washed over me so deeply, it nearly buckled my knees.
I’d only half explained the situation Matteo and I had gotten caught up in before he cut me off.
“Where are you?” he’d asked.
The moment I told him, he’d given me the address to this safehouse. Now sitting across from him, everything that happened at the Conti safehouse feels surreal.
“Thank you,” I say to him.
Davide inclines his head. “I’m just glad you both made it out alive.”
The window beside us overlooks the front drive where morning has fully broken over the grounds. Sunlight gleams on the gravel and black cars parked on the drive. Beyond the stone wall, trees sway gently in the wind.
The beautiful day feels almost obscene.
The door opens a few minutes later and a woman enters with a tray. She is older with silver-streaked hair pulled neatly back and kind eyes she does not let linger on my face too long when she smiles at me.
She places the food and water on the table in front of us. The plates are filled with eggs, toast, fruit, and small pastries dusted with sugar.
She leaves as quietly as she entered.
I pick up a piece of toast and hand it to Matteo. “Eat.”
He takes it slowly and nibbles the crust obediently. I put a small plate in his lap and keep one hand near his knee as he eats. Only then do I take a sip of coffee. The warmth hits my tongue and nearly makes me cry.
Davide waits until Matteo has eaten half the toast before speaking again.
“I need to know exactly what happened.”
My hand tightens around the coffee cup. “We were taken in the middle of the day about two weeks ago. Since then, we’ve been trapped inside one of the Contis’ safehouses that is about half an hour from here.
From what I’ve gathered, they’ve had surveillance on you for a while.
When you stopped by my house, they took that as an opportunity to take us for interrogation. ”
His voice lowers. “I am sorry, Isabella. I should have been more proactive in making sure you remained safe after my visit.” He hesitates before adding, “It was never my intention to put either of you in any danger.”
Logically, I know that. Davide was not the one to drag us out of our house and separate me from my son. He did not keep Matteo under guard and away from me as a way to pressure me into spilling whatever secrets he believed I held for the enemy.
Unfortunately, logic has never been good at soothing harsh truths. Over the past few weeks, I have begun growing tired of feeling empathy toward those around me causing my son and me pain, even if inadvertently.
Matteo looks up at me, sensing the shift in my tone. I immediately soften my hand on his back, moving in slow circles between his shoulder blades.
Davide’s eyes follow the gesture, then he returns his gaze to mine. “Whatever you need, name it. It will be done.”
There was a time in my life when that kind of promise would have sounded like salvation. A man with power and enough influence that with a snap of his fingers could offer sanctuary and a way out would have been a lifeline.
The problem is I am no longer naive enough to mistake a velvet-lined offer for kindness like that just because it does not come with a knife pressed openly to my throat.
In this world, generosity is rarely ever given for free.
I laugh, but it comes out brittle sounding. “With a price, right?”
He studies me for a long moment.
I let him take in the exhaustion beneath my eyes, the tension in my shoulders, the way my hand rests against Matteo while the other keeps a tight hold of my coffee, and see what remains of Isabella Russo after years of pretending to be Marina Hayes.
At last, he sighs. “I won’t lie to you. When you called, that was a part of the reason I wanted to help you.
Not the full reason, of course. I would never want to leave an old friend’s daughter stranded with nowhere left to go.
” His gaze flicks briefly toward Matteo, then back to me.
“But I would be lying if I said the thought of your helping me with the Contis didn’t cross my mind. ”
The honesty is refreshing in a strange way.
“It isn’t exactly what I want to hear. But at the very least, you’re being honest,” I say.
Davide’s expression softens slightly. “I respect you too much to pretend otherwise.”
I smile faintly, but there is no warmth in it.
I wonder what my father would think if he could see me now sitting across from one of his old friends with my son beside me, bargaining over the wreckage of the life I built from the ashes of his.
I wonder if he would be proud that I survived that kind of tragedy or furious that it has led me right back to the same table he spent years teaching me to understand.
A part of me already knows where this is headed. Maybe I have known from the moment I saw Elio Conti again.
Even if I take Davide’s offer tomorrow, even if he gives me passports, cash, a route out of the country, another name to wear like ill-fitting clothing, there is no guarantee it will be enough.
In fact, there might never be enough distance to put between my son and me and this world now.
Davide found me after years of silence, years of no contact and erasing every piece of Isabella Russo I could live without. If he found me, then Elio could find me.
If Elio found me, so could the others in his family, and any enemy who still remembers what my father’s bloodline is worth.
There is no disappearing back into life in the blue house no matter how badly my heart aches at the thought.
There is no returning to the woman who packed lunches for her son every morning, paid bills, kissed scraped knees, and pretended she had no history in the world of crime.
Marina Hayes is compromised.
There is no other truth to it.
My father would have said the same thing if he were sitting in Davide’s spot across from me instead.
He would have looked at me with those dark, knowing eyes and told me that the only way forward is through, no matter how much it hurts to put one foot in front of the other.
That is the part no one tells you about motherhood. They talk about the warmth of tiny hands reaching for you in the morning and the sweetness of first words.
The ache of watching them grow and finally letting them go once they are ready. They do not tell you there will be days when protecting your child means stepping straight back into the darkness you spent years escaping.
I look back at Davide. “If you can offer me protection for both my son and me, I will help you.”
For the first time since arriving, he smiles.
“Consider it done.”