Chapter Nineteen #2
Taddeo gave her nothing else because he still did not know how to say it without turning feeling into a claim.
He could not tell her that imagining Corwin arranging for her to leave created a reaction so disproportionate to security that he no longer knew how to disguise it from himself.
He could not say that Northglass had begun feeling altered by her presence, or that the thought of the library table without her papers on it bothered him in a way rooms were not supposed to bother people.
Most of all, he could not tell her that some possessive part of him wanted to say mine while knowing that wanting the word was precisely why he had no right to use it.
Isolde searched his face. “I'm not your property.”
“No.” The answer came without hesitation, and Taddeo held her gaze while he added, “Whatever else I haven't figured out, that part isn't complicated.”
Her eyes narrowed faintly. “Your expression says the rest of it is.”
“It probably is.”
“That may be the most emotionally honest thing you've said all week.”
“Don't get used to it.”
The corner of her mouth moved despite the remnants of tears.
Taddeo let the easing exist for a moment before asking the question he still needed answered. “Did you tell Corwin yes?”
Her expression tightened again.
“I am asking,” he said. “Not ordering you to answer.”
“And if I tell you I did?”
The question forced him to confront the response before instinct supplied it.
Every part of Taddeo wanted to tell Marco to identify the extraction route, add men to the gates, and make sure nobody Corwin sent came within a mile of the estate.
The thought of Isolde voluntarily getting into another car should not have felt remotely similar to the night he took her from Mercer Street.
It did.
“If you tell me unidentified people are coming here, I deal with them,” he said. “I'm not allowing strangers to penetrate Northglass because Corwin tells you they're trustworthy.”
“Your property, your security, your decision.”
“For anyone entering the estate, yes.”
“And for me?”
The question remained between them.
Taddeo knew what the right answer should be.
He was less certain whether he had become the man capable of giving it.
“For you,” he said slowly, “I'm trying to learn the difference.”
Isolde watched him long enough that he knew she understood exactly what the admission cost.
Then she looked down at the clean phone. “I didn't tell him yes.”
Relief went through Taddeo with such force that for one ugly second it almost felt like victory.
He refused to let it become one.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn't know.”
The relief changed shape but remained.
Taddeo nodded once. “All right.”
Isolde looked almost offended by the restraint. “That's all?”
“What would you prefer?”
“I don't know. You've spent the last fifteen minutes looking like you'd personally strangle the concept of escape if you could find its address.”
“That seems inefficient.”
A tired laugh escaped her, and Taddeo felt something inside himself loosen with it.
He looked toward the handset. “Keep the phone.”
Her amusement vanished. “What?”
“Keep it until Corwin contacts you again.”
“Marco is going to hate that.”
“Marco has survived worse.”
“And the same privacy rules?”
Taddeo disliked the answer before giving it. That was probably evidence it mattered.
“Yes. Same rules. Metadata only, no stored content, no screen capture. Links and attachments stay blocked, and if the relay detects malware or an active attempt to locate the device, the connection ends.”
Isolde stared as if waiting for another condition.
“There is one,” Taddeo said. “If Corwin tells you somebody is coming to Northglass, you tell me. Anyone entering the estate becomes a security matter whether either of us likes that or not.”
She considered it before nodding. “If someone is coming here, I'll tell you.”
It was not the access Taddeo wanted.
It was information she had chosen to give him.
The distinction remained irritatingly important.
By eleven, Taddeo was in the rear of a sedan headed toward Bellandi House while Marco drove through late-morning Crownport traffic.
Mauro's private books had arrived before sunrise and contained considerably more theft than the capo had admitted, though nothing yet connected him cleanly to the twenty-four-point-eight-million-dollar diversion.
Felix Ordo had disappeared from his apartment overnight, and Silas Venn was tracing car services, financial activity, and private-air terminals after Ordo's vehicle turned up in long-term airport parking without any record of the man boarding a commercial flight.
Corwin Dacre being alive should have been the most useful development of the morning.
Instead, Taddeo kept thinking about four words.
I didn't tell him yes.
Marco drove another block before saying, “Do you want me to keep running the Corwin metadata?”
“Yes.”
“Same limits?”
Taddeo looked through the windshield at the western harbor in the distance. “Same limits.”
Marco nodded and changed lanes. His silence afterward was almost pointed enough to become commentary.
“You have an opinion,” Taddeo said.
“I always have opinions.”
“Usually you hide them better.”
Marco's hands remained steady on the wheel. “If you wanted the message content badly enough, you could have ordered me to retain it before the privacy settings went live.”
“Yes.”
“You didn't.”
“No.”
Marco waited for something else.
Taddeo looked toward him. “That was your entire observation?”
“Mostly.”
“Good. Keep driving.”
Bellandi House was busy when they arrived, less like the headquarters of a criminal organization than an old family residence that had gradually accumulated too many offices, too much security, and too many men arriving with problems they expected Cesare Bellandi to solve.
A food distributor unloaded boxes near the kitchen entrance.
Two soldiers crossed the rear courtyard carrying paperwork instead of guns.
Somewhere deeper inside, a woman laughed loudly enough that Taddeo recognized one of Cesare's cousins before he ever saw her.
Cesare was in the ground-floor office with Orsino when Taddeo entered.
Mauro's records occupied one side of the desk. Preliminary information on Felix Ordo covered another.
“Close the door,” Cesare said.
Taddeo did.
Orsino pushed his glasses higher. “We found Ordo's car at the airport.”
“No commercial departure?”
“Nothing under his name,” Cesare said. “Silas is checking private terminals.”
Taddeo disliked involving Silas more deeply while they still had an internal leak, but he set the objection aside for the moment. “Mauro?”
Cesare's expression soured. “A thief.”
“That part wasn't in dispute.”
“Nine hundred thousand was.”
“Closer to one point two once you include the Providence property account.”
Cesare muttered something in Italian about raising ungrateful children despite Mauro being neither related to him nor remotely young enough to qualify. Orsino hid his amusement behind a coffee cup.
“Do you think Mauro built the larger theft?” Cesare asked.
“Not yet.”
“Lelio does.”
“That makes me less comfortable, not more.”
Cesare's eyes sharpened. “Why?”
“Because Lelio continues arriving with exactly the information required to make Mauro and the Serevins look responsible.”
Orsino nodded. “Useful enough to be irritating.”
“Both of you distrust helpful people because you're unpleasant,” Cesare said. “Sometimes a man simply hates Mauro.”
“That can also be true.”
Cesare flipped a page in the Ordo file before looking back at Taddeo. “Anything else?”
Taddeo had known the question was coming.
“Corwin contacted Isolde this morning.”
Cesare's hand stopped.
Orsino looked up immediately.
“When?” Cesare asked.
“Shortly after seven.”
“How?”
“Electronic message to her original number. Security flagged it and moved the conversation onto an isolated handset.”
Cesare leaned back. “What did he say?”
Taddeo had decided the limit before entering the house. “He proved he's alive. He confirmed he took the eight point four and says he believes Bellandi leadership is compromised.”
“Names?”
“None she gave me.”
Cesare's gaze narrowed. “None she gave you?”
“The conversation was private.”
Silence settled across the office.
Orsino looked down at his coffee with the concentration of someone who had no intention of helping.
Cesare stared at Taddeo. “Private.”
“Yes.”
“With the man who stole eight million dollars from us.”
“With her brother.”
The answer changed Cesare's expression.
Not because Taddeo was wrong.
Because he had revealed which fact he considered more important.
Cesare stood and crossed toward the sideboard. “What exactly are you not telling me?”
“Nothing operationally confirmed.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
“It is what I can answer.”
Cesare poured a small espresso and turned back.
“You've delayed giving me pieces of the Corwin archive, argued against pressure on Isolde, personally taken her into an investigation that should never have required her physical presence beyond the museum, and now you're protecting the privacy of her communication with the man we have been trying to locate.”
“She was necessary at the museum.”
“I know.”
“She identified the fraudulent records.”
“I know that too.”
“Then don't reduce this to—”
“The girl was leverage.”
The words cut cleanly across him.
Taddeo went still.
Cesare set down the espresso without drinking it. “You took her because Corwin valued her. That was the purpose. You were not confused about it when you gave the order.”
“I haven't forgotten.”