Chapter Twelve #3
“Then why?”
“You just watched me kill a man.”
Her expression changed.
“Yes.”
“You're in shock.”
“Maybe.”
“You may feel differently when the adrenaline wears off.”
Isolde looked down at his hands. “You were steadier when you shot him.”
Taddeo's jaw tightened. “Adrenaline.”
“That's convenient.”
“It's also true.”
“Both can be true.”
He almost told her she sounded like him.
Instead, his eyes moved over her again.
Isolde caught the inspection. “I'm still not injured.”
“I can see that.”
“Good. We're making progress.”
For a while they rode in silence as the museum district disappeared behind them and Crownport spread around the car in ordinary evening traffic.
Taddeo's mind had already started building the investigation that would follow: the final movement plan, everyone who received it, badge fabrication, compromised service alarms, attacker identities, vehicles, phone records.
But beneath all of it remained the image of Isolde against the brick wall staring at the man Taddeo had killed.
“You killed him because he reached for the gun,” she said eventually.
Taddeo looked at her. “Yes.”
“He would've shot us.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn't make what you do good.”
“No.”
Her gaze held his. “I wasn't saying it did.”
Taddeo looked down when her hand moved between them.
Her fingers touched his.
She did not withdraw.
He turned his hand palm-up.
Isolde slid her fingers into his.
There was nothing overtly sexual about the contact, which somehow made it more intimate than the kiss in the library. Taddeo closed his hand around hers and let himself feel the uncomplicated fact of her warmth while his mind continued assembling suspects.
Several miles passed before he leaned forward.
“Luca.”
“Yes?”
“When Marco clears the museum, her movement status changes.”
Isolde's hand went still inside his.
Luca glanced into the mirror. “How?”
“Anything involving Isolde comes through me. Routes, vehicles, visitors, appointments, external movement. Nobody hands responsibility to another crew because rank says they can.”
“Including capos?”
“Including capos. If Cesare wants it changed, he speaks to me.”
Luca nodded. “Understood.”
Taddeo leaned back.
Isolde pulled her hand away.
He felt the absence immediately.
“You just tightened everything again.”
“Yes.”
“After the storm. After every argument we've had about you turning Northglass into a more efficient prison.”
“I remember.”
“And you're doing it anyway.”
“Yes.”
Her anger came back quickly, complicated now by the fact that moments earlier she had chosen to hold his hand.
Taddeo did not attempt to disguise the decision. “Somebody received restricted information tonight and used it to put armed men outside the exact room you were in. Until I know where the leak came from, I reduce the number of people allowed to make decisions involving you.”
“To one.”
“Yes.”
“You.”
“Yes.”
Isolde turned toward the window. “Your control issues must be thrilled.”
“This isn't about convenience.”
“That is almost always what you say.”
“And sometimes I'm right.”
She gave a quiet, humorless breath.
Taddeo watched her reflection in the dark glass.
He knew what she saw: another restriction, another layer of security, another decision made because he believed danger justified taking choice away from her.
He also knew what he had seen less than an hour earlier: a masked man calling her name through a locked laboratory door, bullets crossing her worktable, her body under his while glass broke around them, another man reaching for a gun when Isolde stood directly in his line of fire.
The contradiction had no clean answer.
Not tonight.
So Taddeo let the silence remain rather than giving her another explanation she had already heard.
After several minutes, Isolde's gaze shifted toward his right hand.
“When we get back, someone is cleaning that.”
Taddeo looked at the cut across his knuckles. “It's minor.”
“You're still doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Deciding whether an injury matters based entirely on whether it interferes with whatever you want to do next.”
His mouth moved faintly. “Is that an order?”
Her eyes met his in the reflection. “Consider it a condition of me not biting you.”
Heat moved through him with humiliating speed.
Isolde saw the change in his face and finally smiled.
The expression was tired, shaken, and entirely her.
Taddeo looked away before the urge to touch her became something he had to refuse again.
Outside, Crownport thinned into darker coastal roads as they headed toward Northglass.
Inside the sedan, the space between them held too many things at once: fear, anger, attraction, the memory of his mouth on hers, the memory of her hand inside his, and the reality that he had just responded to nearly losing her by tightening the walls around her again.
He knew she would fight him over it.
He also knew, with a certainty he was not yet prepared to examine too closely, that the sound of the man outside the laboratory saying her name would follow him long after the blood had been washed from his hands.