Chapter Twenty-Two
Isolde
By nine the next morning, Isolde had discovered that there were few experiences more disorienting than sitting across a breakfast table from a man who had spent part of the previous night telling her she was his in a voice capable of rearranging her nervous system while the same man's security system remained programmed to stop her if she walked too far down the drive.
Taddeo had already been downstairs when she entered, dressed in dark trousers and a charcoal shirt with his jacket hanging over the back of his chair, one hand wrapped around coffee while he read something on his tablet.
Nothing in his appearance acknowledged what had happened several hours earlier.
He looked controlled, rested enough to be irritating, and entirely capable of discussing organized crime over eggs without once remembering the expression on Isolde's face when she'd deliberately surrendered that control to him.
Then he looked up.
His gaze moved over her slowly enough that memory arrived all at once.
Isolde stopped beside the coffee service. “Don't.”
Taddeo set the tablet down. “I haven't said anything.”
“You're about to.”
“I was looking at you.”
“I know exactly how you were looking at me.”
“That sounds like a problem with your interpretation.”
She poured coffee and gave him a flat look over the rim of the cup. “Last night's rules had a specific jurisdiction.”
“I remember.”
“Good. Because if you start issuing bedroom commands over scrambled eggs, I'm leaving.”
His mouth shifted faintly. “The room?”
“The country, if necessary.”
“That may require more paperwork.”
Isolde nearly smiled, then caught herself because encouraging him before caffeine would be irresponsible.
She carried her plate to the opposite side of the table instead of taking the chair beside him, an act of tactical retreat Taddeo noticed immediately and wisely chose not to comment on.
For several minutes they ate in relative peace, though even that had changed.
Their knees touched once when both shifted beneath the table, and Taddeo's hand settled briefly at her waist when she leaned too far across him for the coffee carafe.
The contact was practical enough to defend and intimate enough that neither of them believed the defense.
His thumb moved once against her side before he released her.
Isolde sat back with the carafe. “You're enjoying yourself.”
“A little.”
“At least you're honest.”
“I've been told that's one of my more annoying qualities.”
“Among many.”
The ease between them felt good.
That was precisely why the black security vehicle moving slowly along the lower drive beyond Taddeo's shoulder affected her as strongly as it did.
Isolde's attention caught on it through the tall windows.
The warmth left her almost immediately as the vehicle followed the curve toward the northern property line, moving at the unhurried pace of men who had repeated the route often enough for vigilance to become routine.
Beyond it stood the trees concealing the second gate and, farther still, the outer perimeter she could not cross.
Last night, if Isolde had told Taddeo to stop, he would have stopped.
This morning, if she walked to the main gate and told security to open it, they would call him.
Taddeo followed her gaze.
He did not ask what had changed.
That somehow made it worse.
Isolde set down the coffee. “Do you ever forget they're there?”
“The patrols?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Of course not.”
Taddeo leaned back slightly. “You do.”
“Sometimes.” She looked toward the vehicle until trees obscured it. “That's becoming its own problem.”
His expression changed. “Why?”
“Because I can sit here with you and almost forget what happens if I decide I'm finished with breakfast and keep walking.”
Taddeo was quiet.
Isolde met his eyes again. “Last night worked because I could take back what I gave you.”
“Yes.”
“Out there, I can't.”
The words were not an accusation so much as an observation, and that seemed to make them harder for him to answer.
Taddeo looked toward the windows. “I know.”
She waited.
He did not use the words as an ending this time. He looked genuinely uncomfortable with them.
Isolde folded one hand around her coffee cup. “You were thinking about it last night.”
His attention returned quickly enough to confirm the guess.
“How do you know?”
“I know you. Unfortunately.” She studied him. “Did you look at the security map after I fell asleep?”
The smallest tightening at his mouth answered for him.
“You did.”
“I couldn't sleep.”
“So naturally you reviewed the computerized boundaries of my captivity.”
“That is a deliberately hostile description.”
“Is it inaccurate?”
“No.”
The admission took some of the satisfaction out of her.
Taddeo looked down at the tablet beside his plate and switched off the screen. “I understand the contradiction.”
“That doesn't fix it.”
“No.”
“Are you going to?”
His gaze lifted.
For a moment she thought he might answer.
Instead, his phone vibrated against the table.
The change in his expression was small but immediate when he saw the screen.
Isolde noticed. “Cesare?”
“Yes.”
The name brought back the conversation in the kitchen several nights earlier, Taddeo explaining how Cesare had protected him after his father died and given a twenty-one-year-old boy somewhere to stand when everything else disappeared.
It also brought back the way Taddeo had returned from Bellandi House afterward carrying a tension he refused to explain.
“Is this about Corwin?”
“Possibly.”
“That means yes.”
“It means possibly.”
“You've become less creative.”
Taddeo stood and reached for his jacket. “I need to take this.”
Isolde watched him pull it on. “Did Cesare tell you something about me that you haven't told me?”
His hands paused briefly at the front of the jacket.
There.
Not proof.
Enough.
“Taddeo.”
“Cesare and I discussed the investigation.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
“No.”
Her mouth tightened.
He looked as though he wanted to say something else and then apparently decided he either could not or would not.
“I'll be in my office.”
“That is also not an answer.”
“I know.”
This time the phrase irritated her precisely because he had returned to using it as the conversational dead end she'd accused him of before.
He left.
Isolde finished breakfast without tasting much of it.
By ten-thirty she was in the library with her laptop, three suspicious preservation contracts, and enough resentment to become extremely productive.
The latest comparison files strengthened the theory that the forged historical documents had been assembled by more than one person.
Whoever manipulated the images understood digital editing well enough to insert signatures and change property information cleanly, but whoever supplied the historical content continued making errors a competent archivist or conservator would have caught.
Wrong terminology. Reused damage. Inappropriate seals. Chronological mismatches.
Different skills.
Possibly different people.
The idea mattered because the Bellandis had begun concentrating heavily on Mauro Corsi's companies, and Isolde no longer trusted evidence merely because it pointed somewhere plausible.
Mauro genuinely stole from Cesare. That made him an excellent target for a larger crime he might not have committed.
Corwin genuinely stole $8.4 million. That had made the Bellandis' original conclusion about him feel complete long before the larger diversion surfaced.
Truth could be used as camouflage more effectively than lies.
At eleven-seventeen, the temporary phone vibrated beside her laptop.
Isolde looked at it.
Corwin.
She had not answered his coordinates from the previous night.
The new message was shorter.
Are you alone?
Isolde glanced toward the open library door.
Taddeo had gone downstairs nearly half an hour earlier with Marco and had not returned. Orsino was expected sometime before lunch, but the corridor remained empty.
She typed, For the moment.
Corwin responded almost immediately.
I need to tell you something without Malfatti seeing it.
Her shoulders tightened.
He isn't reading our messages.
You believe that?
Irritation came quickly.
Yes.
There was a pause before Corwin replied.
Okay.
The lack of argument almost made her more suspicious.
Another message appeared.
Someone got close to me last night. I had to move.
Isolde straightened.
Who?
I don't know.
That's not good enough.
It's all I have. Could've been Bellandi. Could've been whoever is inside Bellandi. I didn't stay long enough to ask.
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
Were you followed?
No.
Are you hurt?
No.
Relief came first.
Anger followed immediately.
Then tell Taddeo where you are and let him protect you while we figure out who is compromised.
The typing indicator appeared, vanished, and returned.
Absolutely not.
Isolde closed her eyes.
This again.
Izzy, somebody knew where I was. That location existed outside the Pilot archive. Very few people should have been able to get near it.
That doesn't mean Taddeo was involved.
I didn't say he was.
You implied it.
I'm saying I don't trust the Bellandi chain. Neither does he, if half of what you've told me is true.
That was harder to argue with.
Taddeo had restricted who saw Corwin's archive.
He had withheld information from Cesare when he believed the museum-route leak might reach farther into Bellandi leadership.
Even now, he continued keeping parts of the Mauro investigation inside a small group because someone had proved capable of turning Bellandi information into bullets inside Isolde's workplace.
Corwin sent another message.
The drive from the Pilot isn't everything.
Isolde stopped breathing for a second.
What do you mean?
It's a working archive. Copies of records, account maps, notes. I never kept all the original evidence in one place.
She stared at the screen.
Of course he hadn't.