Chapter Two
Taddeo
Isolde Dacre started counting turns before they reached the Crosstown tunnel.
Taddeo realized it somewhere around the second left after Mercer Street, although in retrospect he suspected she had begun the moment the sedan pulled away from her abandoned car and she understood that physical resistance had stopped being useful.
She sat on the far side of the rear seat with her back straight and her hands loosely clasped in her lap, the posture too deliberate to mean anything close to calm.
Every few minutes her gaze shifted toward the tinted glass, not searching for recognizable landmarks so much as measuring movement: a long curve, acceleration onto a wider road, the change in vibration when the pavement roughened beneath the tires.
She had tested the interior door handle once during the first minute, quietly enough that Luca probably hadn't noticed from the front, then left it alone after establishing the lock could not be defeated from her side.
Taddeo had expected more panic.
Not because anything in the background work suggested Isolde was fragile.
Quite the opposite. She had spent most of her adult life doing work that demanded precision, patience, and a willingness to sit with a problem until she understood it, all traits that became useful when the ordinary structure of a person's life disappeared without warning.
Still, civilians tended to become predictable once fear took over.
Some shouted because noise felt like action.
Some bargained. Others invoked police, lawyers, employers, relatives, anything that might restore the boundaries they were accustomed to having respected.
Isolde had done some of that on Mercer Street, but the moment she understood they were leaving, she stopped wasting energy on arguments that could not change the direction of the car.
She watched instead.
The reports had told Taddeo enough to build a reasonable picture before he ever saw her.
Thirty-two. Senior objects conservator at the Crownport Maritime Museum.
Brown, then graduate conservation training in Delaware, a fellowship in Boston before returning to Crownport.
Parents dead. One brother, Corwin, three years older and substantially more careless with other people's concern than Isolde appeared to be.
No current partner. A small circle of people she trusted.
A life organized around work, her apartment, and habits ordinary enough that following them had felt invasive even by the standards of what Taddeo routinely authorized.
He had known when she usually left the museum.
He had known which building belonged to her.
He had known Corwin was the person she contacted most consistently and that Corwin usually answered.
He had not known she would threaten him with a pen.
That had been more useful than most of the file.
Taddeo glanced toward her hands. A faint red mark circled one wrist where Matteo had caught her during the struggle.
It would probably be gone by morning. Her shoulder might bruise where she'd struck the doorframe, and the thought irritated him more than it should have.
No one had hit her. No one had frightened her for amusement.
His instructions had been explicit about that.
Isolde turned her head and caught him looking. “Are you planning to stare at me for the entire drive?”
Her voice was steady, but not relaxed. Taddeo rested one forearm against the door. “Probably not.”
“Good. That's the closest thing to reassurance I've had all night.” She glanced toward the front, where Luca drove and Enzo sat beside him, then back to Taddeo. “Where are we going?”
“You'll see.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It is. It just isn't useful to you yet.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You're developing a theme.”
“You've known me for twenty minutes.”
“It has been a very productive twenty minutes.”
The car slowed as traffic thickened near the tunnel entrance, and yellow light moved in bands across the interior. Isolde looked through the glass, then toward the front again, attention shifting to the partition controls and the locking mechanism set into the door. Even now, she was cataloguing.
After another minute she said, “You stopped the police from finding us.”
It wasn't a question.
Taddeo watched the tunnel wall slide past beyond the window. “They won't find anything useful on Mercer.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“No.”
She turned toward him more fully. “Did you interfere with the call?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“That isn't information you need.”
“It matters to me.”
“I know.”
Isolde went still for half a second. “You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Saying you know something matters to me as if acknowledging it makes ignoring it less of a problem.”
The observation was sharper than he expected. Taddeo looked at her for a moment, then said, “It doesn't.”
That made her pause. She looked away first, toward the passing lights, and he had the impression she would have preferred an excuse because excuses were easier to dismiss.
Traffic opened once they emerged from the tunnel.
Crownport's dense central streets gradually gave way to older industrial districts, then wider roads lined with warehouses, freight yards, and stretches of darkness where the city thinned toward the western coastline.
Taddeo let several minutes pass before he spoke again.
“Eight point four million dollars.”
Isolde turned.
“That is what Corwin took.”
For the first time since Mercer Street, her control slipped cleanly enough for him to see the shock before she covered it. “From you?”
“From my family.”
“You keep using that word.”
“Family?”
“Yes.”
He could have given her the legitimate version. Holding company. Investment structure. Private enterprise. The kinds of words Corwin had almost certainly heard while working inside Bellandi accounts and understood well enough not to take literally.
There was little point in preserving euphemism after kidnapping someone.
“The Bellandi Family.”
Recognition came slowly, then settled into something harder. “Bellandi,” she repeated. “As in the Bellandis who own half the waterfront restaurants?”
“Not half.”
“That wasn't really the part I was asking.”
“No.”
She studied him differently after that. The cars, the men, the absence of masks, the confidence with which he'd stopped a police call and removed her from a public street—all of it rearranged itself behind her eyes.
“You're mafia.”
Taddeo shifted one shoulder against the seat. “That's a simplified description.”
“I'm comfortable with simplified.”
“I assumed you would be.”
“And my brother stole eight point four million dollars from you.”
“From accounts he had authorized access to during a restructuring project.”
Her brows drew together. “So you hired him.”
“We hired the firm he worked through. Corwin was assigned to the account.”
“And you're certain it was him?”
“Yes.”
“How certain?”
“His credentials were used. His hardware authentication was used. The device signature matched his assigned system, and the transfers happened during a window only a small number of people knew existed. Corwin disappeared the same night.”
Isolde looked down at her hands.
Taddeo expected denial.
Instead she asked, “That's evidence. Is it proof?”
“No.”
Her gaze lifted quickly.
The distinction seemed to disturb her more than certainty would have.
“Where did the money go?”
“We're tracing it.”
“And Corwin?”
“We don't know.”
“So you thought I did.”
“I thought it was possible.”
“I don't.”
“I believe you.”
For the first time, Isolde looked genuinely angry enough to forget fear. She leaned slightly toward him. “You believe me.”
“Yes.”
“And you're still taking me wherever the hell this is.”
“Yes.”
A short, disbelieving breath escaped her. “Then what exactly is wrong with you?”
Luca's eyes moved briefly toward the rearview mirror.
Taddeo ignored him.
“Corwin has something that belongs to us.”
“I don't.”
“No.”
“So this is punishment.”
“It isn't.”
“Then explain it.” Her voice had gone quieter, which Taddeo was already learning usually meant she was angrier rather than calmer. “Because right now you've got a very expensive kidnapping and no obvious reason for it.”
There was no gentler version that remained true.
“Leverage.”
Isolde's face changed.
Not dramatically. If anything, it became more still.
Taddeo continued because stopping now would only force her to imagine worse.
Corwin had disappeared with Bellandi money.
Isolde was his closest remaining family, the person he contacted most consistently, the person named in emergency records and threaded through every meaningful piece of his private life.
If Corwin learned the Bellandis had her, he would have a reason to make contact.
The logic was simple.
That did not make it decent.
“My brother cares about me,” she said after a moment, looking past Taddeo toward the darkened glass, “so you decided that makes me useful.”
“Yes.”
Her jaw flexed once.
She didn't argue.
That concerned him more than if she had.
The road began climbing toward the western coast. Through occasional breaks in the trees, the Atlantic appeared as a black absence beyond the land, broken only by scattered lights and the pale line of surf farther below.
Isolde shifted slightly toward the window when she caught the first clear glimpse of water.
She would know they were west of Crownport now.
Taddeo didn't consider that a problem. Northglass wasn't secret. The Bellandis had owned the property through legitimate entities for decades, and anyone with enough patience could eventually locate it.
Secrecy wasn't what kept people inside.
The outer gate appeared beyond a curve in the road, recessed between stone walls and wind-bent pines. The sedan slowed, and Isolde leaned subtly toward the window. Taddeo watched her notice the first camera, then the guardhouse, then the reinforced gate sliding open before the vehicle reached it.
She said nothing while they passed through.