Chapter Five #3
When they were children, he made decisions and presented them afterward as if consensus had somehow happened without her.
When she was seventeen, he had convinced their mother to let him pick Isolde up from a party because he didn't like the older boy she was seeing, then spent the drive home insisting he was merely being helpful.
When their father died, Corwin handled half the estate before Isolde realized paperwork had arrived because he thought she had enough to manage.
He loved her.
She had never doubted that.
He also believed love gave him permission to intervene.
“You went somewhere,” Taddeo said.
Isolde looked up.
“What?”
“You stopped listening.”
“I was thinking.”
“About Corwin?”
Her posture stiffened.
Taddeo caught the reaction immediately.
“I'm not interrogating you.”
“You have a strange way of making that sound believable.”
He reached for the bread again. “You looked unhappy.”
“I've been kidnapped. My baseline mood is complicated.”
“That isn't what I meant.”
She considered ignoring him.
Instead, she set her fork down. “Corwin has a habit of deciding things for me.”
Taddeo's hand stopped.
“Big things?”
“Small things. Big things. Whatever he thinks needs handling.” She looked toward the rain-dark windows. “He's been doing it since we were kids. Sometimes it was useful. Sometimes it made me want to kill him.”
“He was older.”
“Three years, not thirty.”
“Old enough to think it mattered.”
“It mattered to him.”
Taddeo took a drink without commenting.
Isolde looked back at him.
“You do that too.”
His eyes settled on hers.
“Do what?”
“Decide what's best and explain later.”
“I don't think this is best for you.”
The answer came so quickly she knew it was true.
She hadn't expected it.
Taddeo set his glass down carefully.
“I think it's useful for my family.”
“That might be worse.”
“Probably.”
She stared at him.
There it was again, the refusal to hide behind kinder words.
Isolde pushed her plate away.
“I want to contact Linnea.”
Taddeo's expression changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“No.”
She leaned back. “You didn't even think about it.”
“I've already thought about it.”
“When?”
“Before you asked.”
“You researched her too.”
“Yes.”
The answer made her fingers curl against the edge of the table.
“She'll know something is wrong.”
“We'll handle it.”
“We?”
“I'll have someone arrange an explanation.”
“Absolutely not.”
Taddeo remained still.
Isolde pushed her chair back enough that the legs scraped softly against the floor. “You're not calling my closest friend and making up some story about where I am.”
“She can't know you're here.”
“She doesn't need to know where I am. She needs to hear from me.”
“Not yet.”
The anger returned with enough force to erase the uneasy normality of the dinner.
“You don't get to cut me off from everyone I know because it's convenient.”
“It's not about convenience.”
“It always sounds more respectable when you say security.”
“This is security.”
“For whom?”
“Everyone involved.”
“I'm involved.”
“I know.”
She stood.
Taddeo didn't.
That made it worse somehow.
He looked up at her from the chair, controlled and infuriatingly calm.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
Not anger.
Restraint.
Isolde realized it and almost hated him for that too.
“I wasn't finished talking.”
“I am.”
She picked up her wineglass, carried it to the sideboard because leaving it at the table felt like admitting she'd fled the room, then set it down carefully.
“Isolde.”
She turned.
Taddeo had risen now.
He didn't move toward her.
“I'll reconsider contact with Linnea when I'm certain it doesn't compromise anything.”
“When you're certain.”
“Yes.”
“So I wait for permission.”
“For now.”
Rain hammered against the windows.
Isolde looked at him across the room and felt something settle inside her.
Not fear.
Decision.
“Good night, Taddeo.”
She left before he answered.
The main hall was darker than it had been earlier, lamps illuminating the edges of the staircase while the windows reflected the interior rather than the grounds outside. Wind pressed at the old glass. Somewhere near the east side of the house, a branch scraped repeatedly against stone.
Isolde climbed the stairs at a normal pace.
She did not hurry.
She did not look toward the cameras.
Only when she reached her room did she move directly to the window.
The storm was growing.
Rain drove nearly sideways across the grounds, blurring the security lights and turning the gardens into shifting bands of darkness.
Trees along the lower property bent hard under the wind.
Through the glass, one camera near the western service path was already half-obscured by water and moving branches.
Isolde pressed her fingertips lightly against the cold window.
The north path would be worse.
The guard with the bad knee would move more slowly on wet ground. Nico would still smoke eventually, storm or not. The shrub partially blocking the service camera would become more effective once the rain intensified.
She could wait.
She should wait.
A smart plan required more information.
But waiting also meant accepting that Taddeo controlled when she spoke to Linnea, whether she reached Corwin, when she left the grounds, and how much of her own life she was permitted to retain.
Isolde watched a security vehicle cross the lower drive and disappear behind the trees.
She counted until it returned.
Then she started again.