Chapter Twenty-Three #2
After Cesare left for another meeting, Orsino stayed behind while Taddeo secured the report.
“You’re distracted,” the older man said.
“I’m thinking about Venn.”
“No.”
Taddeo closed the safe. “You have become tiresome.”
“I have been tiresome for most of your life. You are simply more vulnerable to it lately.”
Taddeo gave him a look.
Orsino took that as encouragement. “If you opened the Northglass gates tonight and told every guard that Isolde could leave, would she stay?”
The question struck harder than it had any right to.
“That has nothing to do with Silas.”
“Correct.”
“Then we’re finished.”
Orsino remained seated. “You have spent several days giving her more privacy, more access, more belongings, more room to move, and I suspect part of you hopes those things answer the question so you never have to ask it.”
Taddeo’s jaw tightened. “Her leaving is dangerous.”
“It may be.”
“She was attacked at the museum.”
“I remember.”
“Corwin is being hunted, and we still have a leak.”
“I also remember that.”
“Then stop speaking as though the gate is closed because I am afraid she’ll leave.”
Orsino’s expression became maddeningly gentle. “I didn’t say that is why the gate is closed. I asked whether danger is the only reason you are relieved that it is.”
Taddeo looked away.
The image came anyway.
Isolde’s books gone from Northglass. Her mother’s green scarf no longer draped over a chair. The library table cleared of her papers. The kitchen empty when he came home late because no one had listened for his car.
He hated the image.
That was answer enough.
Orsino stood. “You know the difference between having her there and her choosing to stay.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He picked up his coat. “Eventually one of those will have to end before you discover whether the other is possible.”
Taddeo returned to Northglass after eight with Silas’s report locked in the car safe and Orsino’s question following him through the front door.
Isolde was in the library, curled sideways in one of the leather chairs with her laptop balanced across her knees and quiet music playing through the speakers.
The green scarf was gone now, leaving the upper buttons of her blouse open enough that Taddeo’s attention moved there before discipline recovered.
She looked up. “You’re late.”
Something inside him responded immediately to the domestic familiarity of the words.
“Bellandi House.”
“Silas?”
Taddeo stopped. “How did you know?”
“Orsino mentioned the meeting before he left.” She closed the laptop halfway. “Apparently your information security is no match for an elderly man who enjoys gossip.”
“Orsino is sixty-one.”
“I said what I said.”
Taddeo came farther into the room. “Silas found more Serevin-linked shipping overlap.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I believe the overlap exists.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
Her mouth curved faintly. “You’re learning from me.”
“Unfortunately.”
He expected more questions about Silas.
Instead, Isolde’s attention dropped toward the laptop.
Again.
“What are you working on?”
“Old dates.”
“Which dates?”
“My life.” She closed the computer completely and set it beside the chair. “Nothing useful yet.”
Taddeo felt the omission between them.
This time it was almost physical.
He let it remain.
Isolde saw him make the choice.
After a moment, she stood and crossed the room, stopping between his knees when he sat on the arm of the opposite chair. Her hands rested lightly on his shoulders. “You have that expression again.”
“Orsino spent the afternoon explaining things I didn’t want explained.”
“That would have been my second guess.”
“What was the first?”
“Cesare.”
Taddeo’s hands settled around her waist.
Her gaze sharpened at the slight tightening in his grip. “What did Cesare say?”
“Not today.”
Isolde watched him for several seconds.
Then, unexpectedly, she nodded. “Fine.”
The concession did not feel good.
Too many things between them had become not today.
Taddeo drew her closer, and Isolde kissed him without teasing, her fingers slipping into his hair while his hands moved slowly along her waist. The familiarity had become dangerous in a different way from desire.
He knew how she leaned into him when she wanted more, knew the small movement of her mouth before she smiled against his, knew the exact second her body stopped being fully present.
He felt it happen now.
Taddeo broke the kiss.
Isolde opened her eyes. “Again.”
“Yes.”
“I hate this.”
“So do I.”
She rested her forehead against his. “I want you.”
“I know.”
“That sounded arrogant.”
“It is also accurate.”
Her mouth almost curved, but the sadness beneath it remained. “I don’t want every time you touch me to turn into me remembering something I’m not telling you.”
The opening appeared between them.
Taddeo walked through it before restraint caught up.
“Then tell me.”
Isolde drew back slightly.
He knew immediately that he had made the wrong choice.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No.”
“I want to know.”
“I know.”
Taddeo let his hands fall away from her waist. “I’m trying not to make wanting it the same thing as having a right to it.”
Her expression softened without becoming easier. “You’re doing better than either of us expected.”
“That sounds insulting.”
“It was meant kindly.”
She touched his mouth once with her fingertips and stepped away.
Taddeo almost asked the question Orsino had put into his head.
Would you stay if I opened the gate?
He could not make himself do it.
“Good night,” he said instead.
Isolde picked up her laptop. “Good night.”
At nine-forty-three, Marco called.
Taddeo answered before the second vibration finished. “What?”
“I need you downstairs.”
Something in Marco’s voice made Taddeo stand immediately. “Isolde?”
“She’s fine. This is technical.”
“Corwin?”
“Possibly.”
By the time Taddeo reached security, restraint had already begun losing ground.
Marco waited beside the main console with a highlighted network event expanded across the monitor. He dismissed the second operator before Taddeo approached, then pointed toward the timestamp.
“Her laptop triggered a blocked communications event about fifteen minutes ago. The museum collections platform is approved because she needs the professional database, but its private-message function was disabled.”
Taddeo looked at the screen. “She tried to use it.”
“She did more than try. She used an archived authentication token stored in her browser profile and accessed an old synchronization endpoint the filter classified as collections traffic. Whoever configured the original profile knew the system well enough to find a route around the block.”
“Accident?”
Marco gave him a look. “Not realistically.”
The room seemed to contract around the monitor.
Old dates.
The closed laptop.
The way Isolde had gone distant in his arms because there was something she was keeping from him.
“Did a message send?”
“I can’t tell under the current privacy configuration.”
“Can you find out?”
Marco hesitated.
Taddeo looked at him.
“Yes,” Marco said. “But not cleanly. I’d have to open the local communications cache or recover the authentication history. If there’s message content attached, I’ll see it.”
There it was.
The unlocked door.
For days Taddeo had known he could violate Isolde’s privacy if he chose. Until now, the argument had remained theoretical because nothing showed her deliberately stepping outside the agreed communications structure.
This did.
The temptation became immediately easier to justify.
Corwin was hunted.
The museum operation had been compromised.
The recovered archive was incomplete.
Isolde had used a channel she knew security had prohibited and concealed the attempt afterward.
The information might identify a threat.
It might tell Taddeo where Corwin was.
It might tell him whether Isolde planned to leave.
That final possibility should have disqualified every argument preceding it.
Instead, Taddeo heard himself ask, “How long to recover it?”
Marco did not answer immediately. “Before I do anything, you should ask her.”
The fact that Marco said it at all told Taddeo how far the decision had shifted from ordinary security.
Taddeo looked at the timestamp.
“Yes.”
He went upstairs.
Isolde was in his bedroom.
She sat against the headboard wearing one of his black shirts over sleep shorts, a book open across her knees and her laptop closed beside her.
The intimacy of the image struck him immediately because some version of this had begun becoming normal: her things mixed with his, her body inside his clothes, her choosing his room often enough that no one had ever needed to discuss when the change happened.
Taddeo stopped near the door.
Isolde lowered the book. “You have Marco’s face again.”
“Which one?”
“The one he claims means someone has done something you dislike and you’re deciding how much of Crownport deserves to suffer.”
Under other circumstances, he might have smiled.
Tonight, he closed the door behind him and remained near it.
“You accessed the private-message function on the museum platform.”
Isolde’s expression changed.
Not dramatically.
Enough.
“I used my laptop.”
“I know.” Taddeo kept several feet between them. “Did you send a message through that account?”
She set the book aside and stood. “You already know enough to ask, so I assume your system caught something.”
“It caught a communications event. The content was not recorded.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Because you promised it wouldn’t be.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re asking me.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, something hopeful appeared in her face.
Then she folded her arms. “I don’t want to tell you.”
Taddeo had known the answer was possible.
Hearing it still felt like a door closing.
“Isolde.”
“You asked. I answered.”
“You bypassed a restriction on a Northglass network.”
“I used my museum account.”
“Through a communications endpoint that was explicitly disabled.”
“Because I needed access to something I couldn’t get through the phone.”
His attention sharpened immediately. “What?”
She stopped.
The refusal this time happened visibly.
“It doesn’t matter yet.”