Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Her brother had been arrogant enough to believe he could bait an organized-crime conspiracy and paranoid enough to build redundancies before doing it.
What else is there?
Original ledgers. Some physical records. Another drive. Things I couldn't safely digitize or didn't want copied through Bellandi systems.
Her heart began beating harder.
Where?
A pause followed.
Then four numbers appeared on the screen.
0617
Isolde frowned.
What is that?
Corwin's answer came quickly.
You don't remember?
She stared at the number.
Six seventeen.
June seventeenth.
Six-seventeen in the morning.
A locker.
A date.
A room.
Nothing attached itself.
No.
The typing indicator appeared.
You will. You were the one who gave me the number in the first place.
A chill moved across her skin.
Isolde leaned back and stared at the digits.
If she had given Corwin the number, it belonged to something shared between them rather than his work. That narrowed the possibilities without making any one of them clearer.
She typed, When?
Years ago.
That is extremely unhelpful.
I'm aware.
Despite herself, she almost smiled.
Then Corwin sent the next message.
Don't tell Malfatti about 0617 yet. Please.
The amusement vanished.
Isolde read the request twice.
Why?
I need one thing he doesn't control. If you remember what it means, tell me before you tell him.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
Something about the request felt wrong in a way the private conversation itself never had.
Taddeo was not entitled to every word Corwin sent her.
Isolde believed that as strongly as she had when she forced him to leave his own bedroom so she could speak to her brother without Bellandi security looking over her shoulder.
Private feelings, memories, arguments, apologies—those belonged to her.
This was different.
0617 might identify the location of physical evidence tied to a conspiracy that had already caused people to die. Corwin had just told her another drive existed. Original records. A ledger. Information somebody had apparently come close to finding the previous night.
That was no longer merely private.
That was operational.
It was exactly the kind of information Taddeo would argue he needed to protect her.
And exactly the category in which his newly discovered respect for her choices had not yet been truly tested.
Isolde typed slowly.
You don't get to tell me what I can tell him.
Corwin took longer to respond this time.
When he did, the defensiveness had disappeared.
You're right. I'm asking, not telling.
She waited.
Another message followed.
If he knows what 0617 means before I can move the evidence, Bellandi people may get there first. I still don't know which Bellandi people are compromised.
Isolde looked toward the library door.
Empty.
You don't know Taddeo is compromised.
No.
Say it clearly.
A longer pause.
I do not know that Taddeo is compromised.
Some tension eased.
Not enough.
Then why specifically keep it from him?
Because information moves from him into Bellandi structure eventually. Cesare. Security. Orsino. People below them. He can try to control distribution, but he can't personally be every person in the chain.
That argument had the irritating quality of sounding reasonable.
Taddeo himself believed the same thing.
He had spent days narrowing information access, tracing how the museum plan leaked, and distrusting apparently useful conclusions because too many pieces lined up too conveniently.
He had told Marco to reduce the number of people who could make decisions involving Isolde because someone had used restricted information to put men outside the conservation laboratory.
Corwin's paranoia was not irrational.
That did not make trusting it comfortable.
Another message appeared.
Please, Izzy. Just until you remember. Then decide for yourself.
Isolde read that line longer than the others.
Then decide.
Not then tell me.
Not don't trust him.
Corwin was trying, awkwardly and late, to apply the same lesson he had only just begun learning: wanting to protect her did not mean he got to dictate the answer.
Isolde set the phone facedown.
The laptop screen had dimmed enough to show her reflection faintly over the conservation documents arranged across the table.
Behind that reflection sat evidence she had spent days proving was designed to manipulate conclusions without relying entirely on lies.
Mauro looked guilty because Mauro was guilty of stealing.
Corwin had looked guilty because Corwin had actually taken the $8.
4 million. A good false story did not need to invent everything.
It only needed to arrange true things so the person looking at them stopped asking what existed outside the frame.
Now Corwin was asking Isolde to deliberately keep part of the frame from Taddeo.
She thought about the night before, Taddeo demanding clarity before accepting ownership language from her because he believed control mattered only while she retained the right to revoke it.
She thought about that morning's security vehicle and the boundaries on his map that she could not revoke at all.
She thought about Cesare.
About the meeting Taddeo still would not explain.
About Taddeo's loyalty to a man he loved enough that he had already admitted there were things he had done for Cesare rather than merely things he might someday do.
The phone remained facedown.
Isolde picked up the forged preservation contract again and tried to read.
She made it through the same paragraph three times without retaining it.
Twenty minutes later, someone knocked against the library doorframe.
Isolde looked up too quickly.
Taddeo stood there holding two cups of coffee.
His eyes went first to her face, then briefly to the temporary phone beside her laptop.
He did not ask to see it.
“Can I come in?”
It took her a second to answer.
“Yes.”
Taddeo crossed to the table and set her coffee beside the laptop at the safe distance he'd apparently learned through repeated correction.
His own remained in his hand. The casual competence of the gesture—remembering the milk she used, remembering not to put liquid close to documents, remembering he had agreed that Corwin's messages remained private—made what she was withholding feel heavier.
“Orsino will be here in fifteen minutes,” he said, taking the chair beside her. “Mauro's books gave us two new subcontractors. One touches East Vey.”
Isolde nodded.
Taddeo opened the folder she'd been pretending to read.
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then, without looking directly at her, he asked, “Everything all right?”
The wording was broad.
Deliberately broad.
He could have asked whether Corwin contacted her.
He could have asked what he'd said.
Instead he left enough room for Isolde to decide which part of the question she wanted to answer.
She looked at him.
Someone had nearly found Corwin.
Corwin believed returning openly could get him killed.
The Harbor Pilot archive was incomplete.
Another drive and original records existed somewhere.
0617 meant something Isolde herself had once known.
Taddeo needed every one of those facts if the only measure were operational usefulness.
They sat behind her teeth anyway.
“Yes,” she said eventually. “For now.”
Taddeo turned his head.
His gaze held hers for a moment.
Isolde waited for the follow-up.
None came.
He nodded once and opened the Mauro file.
That should have made keeping the secret easier.
It didn't.
For the first time since Taddeo Malfatti took her from Mercer Street, Isolde was not merely protecting a private memory, refusing to share feelings she had no obligation to explain, or keeping parts of a conversation because they belonged to her rather than the Bellandi investigation.
She had information that could affect what happened next.
She knew Taddeo would consider it dangerous.
She knew withholding it might put Corwin, the evidence, or all of them at risk.
And she had chosen not to tell him.
Beside her, Taddeo began explaining the new subcontractor connection while Isolde lifted her coffee with hands she kept deliberately steady.
The secret had existed for less than half an hour.
Already, she could feel it settling into the space between them.