Chapter Nine #3
“Not that I know.”
“At his apartment?”
“I don't search my brother's apartment.”
Lelio smiled. “Fair enough.”
“Did he ever ask you to hold anything for him?”
Taddeo felt something cold settle beneath his ribs.
Isolde's expression remained calm.
“No.”
The answer came smoothly enough that most people at the table would have accepted it.
Taddeo didn't.
The Harbor Pilot sat between them without being named.
Lelio reached for his wine. “Nothing old? Books, maps, documents?”
“No.”
Taddeo watched him.
Lelio drank.
Cesare interrupted from farther down the table, asking Mauro about a shipping problem that had nothing to do with Corwin, and the conversation moved away.
Taddeo did not.
He remained aware of Lelio across the table and Isolde beside him, of the questions that had been too precise without being indefensible, and of the fact that Isolde had just lied to a Bellandi capo without blinking.
That should have irritated him.
Instead, some dangerous part of him admired it.
When dessert arrived, Isolde declined cake until Cesare's sister insisted nobody left her table without trying it.
Isolde eventually surrendered to a narrow slice and spent ten minutes discussing museum conservation with an elderly Bellandi aunt who owned three paintings she had apparently cleaned herself with furniture polish in the 1980s.
Isolde looked physically pained.
“You did what?” she asked.
The woman waved her fork. “They were dirty.”
“Paintings are allowed to look old.”
“They looked filthy.”
“That isn't the same thing.”
Taddeo watched from beside her as Isolde launched into a restrained explanation of varnish, surface grime, and the destructive potential of household cleaning products.
The woman argued back. Isolde argued harder.
By the time coffee arrived, three other people had joined the conversation and Cesare was openly amused.
Taddeo realized he had shifted his chair closer to Isolde sometime during dessert.
Her knee touched his beneath the table.
Neither moved immediately.
The contact lasted perhaps two seconds.
Then Isolde adjusted her position.
Not abruptly.
Just enough.
Taddeo reached for his coffee because he needed his hand occupied.
Across from him, Mauro looked at the space between their chairs, then at Taddeo.
Taddeo gave him a warning look.
Mauro smiled into his espresso.
They left shortly after ten.
Cesare walked them to the entrance hall while the rest of the house continued behind them in overlapping conversation. Isolde accepted her coat from a younger Bellandi woman, thanked her, then turned when Cesare addressed her.
“You survived.”
“Barely. Your aunt may have permanently damaged those paintings.”
Cesare smiled. “She's been threatening to leave them to me.”
“Refuse.”
“I'll keep that in mind.”
Isolde slipped her arms into the coat. “Thank you for dinner.”
“You're welcome back.”
Taddeo looked at him.
Cesare ignored the look.
Isolde seemed to notice the exchange but let it go.
Luca had the car waiting near the front steps.
Taddeo opened Isolde's door before moving around to the opposite side, and by the time he settled beside her, the warmth and noise of Cesare's home already felt strangely distant.
They drove several blocks before she spoke.
“That was unsettling.”
Taddeo looked toward her. “The cake?”
“The entire thing.”
“You'll need to be more specific.”
Isolde watched the houses pass beyond the dark window. “They were normal.”
He understood.
“They are.”
“No, I mean genuinely normal. Your boss argues about football. Mauro fixes children's jewelry. Orsino gets bullied by old women about his weight.”
Taddeo leaned back against the seat. “You expected everyone to sit in a dark room discussing murder.”
“I wasn't expecting somebody's aunt to threaten me with a second piece of cake.”
“She likes you.”
“She doesn't know me.”
“That has never stopped her.”
Isolde gave a faint breath of laughter, then grew quiet again.
Taddeo let the city move around them without filling the space. Crownport at night slid across the tinted glass in alternating bands of streetlight and darkness, the harbor appearing intermittently between buildings as they traveled west.
After several minutes, Isolde turned toward him.
“How many people at that table have you killed for?”
The question was quiet, not accusatory. That made it harder. Taddeo looked at her, she wasn't asking whether he'd killed.
She had already accepted that he had.
She wanted to understand the relationship between the man who had poured her wine at dinner and the people laughing around Cesare's table.
Taddeo could have redirected.
Could have told her Bellandi business wasn't hers to know.
Could have said the number didn't matter.
Instead, he looked back toward the road ahead.
“More than one.”
Isolde was quiet beside him.
Taddeo didn't turn to see her reaction immediately.
When he finally did, she was watching him with none of the disbelief civilians usually brought to that kind of answer.
She believed him.
That disturbed him more than if she had looked afraid.