Chapter Three
Isolde
By the time the sky beyond the bedroom windows began changing from black to a washed-out gray, Isolde had stopped pretending she was going to sleep.
She had managed perhaps forty minutes altogether, scattered across the night in shallow stretches that ended whenever Northglass supplied a new sound for her exhausted brain to interpret as danger.
The heating system clicked inside the eastern wall sometime after two.
A vehicle passed along the drive near three, headlights sweeping across the ceiling before disappearing toward the front of the property.
Closer to four-thirty, footsteps moved through the hallway outside her room at an unhurried pace, and she lay still beneath the covers until they passed without stopping.
None of those things would have mattered anywhere else.
Here, ordinary sounds acquired different meanings simply because she was sleeping in a stranger's house after that stranger had ordered men to take her from a public street.
By six, the Atlantic had emerged beyond the windows as a broad sheet of iron-colored water, and Isolde pushed aside the duvet and sat on the edge of the bed.
The bedroom door remained unlocked. She knew because she'd checked it more than once during the night, which was irritating in itself.
Taddeo had said he wouldn't lock her in, and apparently he meant that literally.
The distinction changed very little when the open door led into a house she wasn't permitted to leave, but she was beginning to understand that Taddeo Malfatti seemed to care about distinctions even when they didn't make him look better.
Morning made the room easier to examine.
The coastal drawings hanging opposite the bed were probably originals.
The writing desk beneath the window was older than the museum building where she worked, and the rug under her bare feet had the dense softness of something handmade.
Her coat had been placed neatly over a chair.
Her work bag sat beside it with her wallet, museum identification, cash, credit cards, notebooks, and a grocery receipt still inside.
Her phone and keys were gone.
That told her more than the luxury did. She was permitted to keep the objects that proved she remained Isolde Dacre so long as none of them could help her leave.
She showered because routine seemed preferable to standing at the window imagining what might have happened to Corwin, but the bathroom only gave her a new reason to be angry.
Someone had stocked it with the shampoo she normally bought, the inexpensive moisturizer from the pharmacy near the museum, her usual toothpaste, contact solution, cotton pads, a new toothbrush, and a hairbrush with the store label still wrapped around the handle.
None of it was expensive enough to be generic luxury hospitality. It was simply correct.
Isolde stood in a towel with the moisturizer in her hand for several seconds, staring at the familiar label.
Knowing where she worked had been frightening.
Knowing what she put on her face after a shower felt different.
She set the bottle down and went into the dressing room.
The clothing made the invasion impossible to dismiss.
There were no dramatic dresses or ridiculous lingerie selected by someone who assumed kidnapping a woman created an excuse to redesign her.
Whoever had purchased these things had paid attention to what Isolde actually wore: dark jeans, straight-leg trousers, plain sweaters, cotton shirts, practical socks, ankle boots similar to a pair she already owned.
A dark green cardigan hanging near the end of the rail was close enough to one she'd worn twice the previous week that she stared at it longer than she intended.
Taddeo had known before she left work that she wasn't going home.
Someone had been learning her sizes and habits while she sat beneath a task lamp worrying that Corwin had become unusually bad at answering his phone.
She left the new clothes where they were and put yesterday's back on.
The cream sweater had stretched slightly at one shoulder during the struggle, and a dark mark stained the cuff, but wearing it gave her the small satisfaction of refusing something Taddeo had arranged.
Petty, perhaps, but symbols were becoming more valuable in a situation where most meaningful decisions had been taken from her.
She pinned her hair into a loose knot, pulled on yesterday's boots, slid her museum identification into her bag without knowing why she bothered, and opened the bedroom door.
Northglass was quiet.
The upper hall opened toward a central staircase and a two-story entrance hall filled with pale morning light from windows facing the sea.
In daylight, the security became easier to see precisely because it was designed not to be.
The front doors were old wood, but the frame surrounding them was reinforced.
A discreet electronic panel sat beside one jamb.
A camera occupied the corner above the western archway, positioned high enough that most guests would probably forget it existed.
Isolde did not forget it.
She also didn't immediately start testing doors.
A bad escape attempt would teach Taddeo more about her than it taught her about Northglass, and she had no interest in giving him evidence that anger had made her reckless.
Instead, she approached the house the same way she approached an unfamiliar object arriving in conservation: establish condition before intervention, identify what had been altered, determine where the weaknesses might be, and resist the urge to act simply because action felt better than waiting.
She took the eastern corridor first and found a narrow service staircase descending near the kitchen.
Another interior door required electronic access.
From the lower hall, she could see two men outside near a black SUV, drinking coffee with the relaxed posture of people who did not expect the woman upstairs to become their morning problem.
Beyond them, the drive curved through dense trees toward the gate she'd watched close behind her the night before.
Isolde stood near the front windows only long enough to understand that walking straight down the drive would be useless.
“If you're trying not to look like you're inspecting the security,” a woman said behind her, “you might want to spend slightly less time inspecting the security.”
Isolde turned.
Elettra crossed the hall carrying a coffee mug in one hand and a small stack of mail beneath the other arm. Her silver-streaked hair was clipped neatly at her nape, and she looked irritatingly rested.
“I wasn't aware I needed to pretend.”
“You don't.” Elettra set the mail on a console table and looked pointedly at Isolde's sweater. “Did the clothes upstairs not fit?”
“I wouldn't know.”
Something close to understanding passed through Elettra's expression, but she didn't push. “Coffee?”
The smell drifting from farther down the hall made refusing on principle feel stupid. “Yes.”
The kitchen was warmer and more ordinary than the rest of the house, with dark cabinets, copper pans beside the stove, and a heavy wooden worktable scratched enough to prove it was actually used.
A half-completed crossword sat near the windows.
Someone had left a bowl of lemons close enough to the edge of the counter that one had rolled free, and Elettra caught it with two fingers as she passed.
“Black?” she asked, taking down another mug.
Isolde looked at her. “Did Taddeo tell you that?”
“He did.”
“I sometimes use milk.”
Elettra paused.
Isolde took the mug when she offered it. “Sorry. That was unfairly satisfying.”
“I'll recover.”
The coffee was excellent. Isolde hated that too.
Elettra opened the refrigerator and removed eggs, butter, and cut fruit as if breakfast after kidnapping were an ordinary household problem. Watching her move around the kitchen made it easier to ask questions without turning them into an interrogation.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Almost sixteen years.”
“For Taddeo?”
“For the house, technically. He's lived here most of that time.”
“I thought it was his.”
“The Bellandis own it through several companies.”
That answer fit too easily beside everything Taddeo had said in the car. Bellandi. Family. Mafia. Isolde took another drink.
“Does Cesare Bellandi live here?”
Elettra glanced over one shoulder. “You intend to make breakfast educational.”
“I'm stuck here. I may as well learn something.”
“Cesare has his own house.”
“So he comes here.”
“Sometimes.”
“How often?”
Elettra cracked an egg into a bowl. “Not often enough that you need to start mapping his movements before you've eaten.”
Isolde lowered the mug. “You know I'm doing that.”
“I knew when I saw you using the reflection in a painting to look at the camera rather than turning your head toward it.”
Isolde's mouth tightened.
Elettra poured the eggs into the skillet. “You're observant.”
“That sounded almost complimentary.”
“It was followed by the part where you're not subtle yet.”
“Yet?”
“You've had a difficult night. I'll allow room for improvement.”
Despite herself, Isolde laughed.
The sound felt strange enough that she stopped almost immediately.
Elettra didn't comment. She divided the eggs between two plates, added toast to Isolde's without asking, and sat at the smaller table near the windows. Hunger won before suspicion could make a convincing argument, and Isolde sat opposite her.
After several bites, she asked, “Are you afraid of him?”
Elettra looked up. “Taddeo?”
“Unless there's another kidnapper in the house.”
“Not that I'm aware of.” She considered the question rather than dismissing it. “No. I'm not afraid of him.”
“Should I be?”
This answer took longer.