Chapter Twenty-Three #3
“If you needed to bypass security to reach it, it matters.”
“To you.”
“To anyone responsible for protecting this property and the people inside it.”
A humorless breath left her. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The word you use whenever you want your control to sound morally neutral. Responsibility.”
“This isn’t a philosophical argument.”
“It always becomes one when you decide danger changes what I’m allowed to keep private.”
Taddeo took one step toward her and stopped. “Corwin is being hunted. Someone inside Bellandi channels compromised the museum. We have Serevin-linked freight touching the same financial structure, and you are deliberately withholding information in the middle of that.”
“How do you know Corwin is being hunted?”
The question caught him.
He understood why a second too late.
Isolde’s expression changed as she watched him realize it.
“I told you somebody almost found him?”
“No.”
“So the metadata gave you enough to infer it.”
“Yes.”
She looked away, and when she spoke again her voice was quieter. “You really can make surveillance out of almost anything.”
“I used the information available.”
“That is exactly what you always say.”
“Tell me whether what you’re hiding affects your safety or the investigation, and I will leave the rest alone.”
The compromise sounded reasonable.
Taddeo heard that himself.
Isolde nearly gave in. He saw the hesitation, the moment she considered whether offering him only the category would preserve enough of the boundary for both of them.
Then something hardened.
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“I’m not letting you decide which pieces count as operational after I hand them to you,” she continued. “You asked me to trust that my conversations belonged to me. Either they do or they don’t.”
“This conversation took place through a channel you deliberately hid from security.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not telling you.”
Taddeo felt fear become anger because anger was easier to carry.
“Did Corwin give you another location?”
Isolde said nothing.
“Did he give you instructions for leaving Northglass?”
Her silence continued.
It was not proof.
Taddeo hated how much that distinction mattered.
“You could walk into a trap because your brother convinced you he knows who is safe.”
“I haven’t decided to go anywhere.”
His attention sharpened. “So there is somewhere to go.”
Frustration crossed her face. “That is not what I said.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“And there it is. You take the piece that gives you the answer you want and call the rest judgment.”
Taddeo looked toward the temporary phone on the nightstand.
Isolde followed his gaze and reached it before he moved.
She held it against her chest.
Taddeo stopped.
“Give me the phone.”
“No.”
“I can recover the local cache without taking it from you.”
“Then go downstairs and decide what kind of man you want to be before you do.”
“The kind who keeps you alive.”
Her face changed.
Not fear.
Pain.
“You do not get to keep using that sentence like it ends every argument.”
Taddeo lowered his voice. “If Corwin gave you coordinates and someone is already close enough to find him, I need them.”
“You want them.”
“I need them.”
“Because there’s no difference between those words when you’re frightened.”
The accusation reached him.
For one second, he saw the entire choice clearly.
Isolde standing in front of him wearing his shirt and holding a phone he had promised not to read. The map downstairs. The private cache Marco could open. The exact lesson Isolde had forced him to understand in bed: control mattered because she could revoke it.
She had revoked it now.
She had said no.
This was the test she warned him about.
Taddeo knew that.
Fear won anyway.
He turned toward the door.
Relief flickered across Isolde’s face before she understood where he was going.
“Marco.”
Footsteps approached from farther down the hall.
Isolde went cold.
Marco stopped outside the room and looked between them.
Taddeo did not allow himself time to reconsider. “Can you recover the clean handset’s local message cache without physically taking the device?”
Marco hesitated. “Yes.”
“Don’t,” Isolde said.
Marco’s attention moved to Taddeo.
Taddeo heard his own voice become unnaturally calm. “Do it.”
The silence afterward was worse than shouting would have been.
Marco remained still. “The privacy configuration was intentionally designed to prevent server-side content capture. To recover the cache, I have to override that setting.”
“I know.”
“That will expose message content.”
“I know.”
Isolde stared at him.
“You really are going to do this.”
Taddeo met her eyes. “Yes.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Then don’t tell yourself tomorrow that you misunderstood what you were doing.”
The words landed cleanly.
Taddeo understood perfectly.
That was what made the decision indefensible even while every security argument remained true.
Marco activated the management synchronization remotely. Isolde set the handset on the dresser herself, refusing to clutch it like an object Taddeo intended to physically wrestle from her, and rested both hands against the wood while the device illuminated.
“Go ahead,” she said quietly. “Let’s see how much all that understanding was worth.”
The synchronization took less than a minute.
Taddeo watched Isolde instead of the progress bar.
Something had already changed in her face.
Not anger.
Distance.
When Marco’s phone vibrated, he looked at the recovered content and then toward Taddeo. “It’s done.”
Taddeo held out his hand.
Marco hesitated one last time. “You still have the option not to read it.”
The sentence entered the room like a final warning.
Taddeo took the phone.
Isolde said his name once.
He looked at her.
She did not ask again.
She had already said no enough times.
Taddeo lowered his eyes to the screen.
Corwin had nearly been discovered.
The Harbor Pilot archive was incomplete.
Another drive and physical evidence existed.
0617.
Then he reached the earlier message containing coordinates for a private freight yard west of Crownport and Corwin’s offer to get Isolde out whenever she was ready.
Taddeo felt something inside him turn cold.
Not because the coordinates proved she intended to leave.
They did not.
Not because Corwin had offered.
Taddeo already knew that.
Because Isolde had been carrying the possibility while lying in Taddeo’s bed, working beside him, kissing him, and asking him to understand why choice mattered.
He looked up.
Isolde no longer looked angry enough to fight.
That frightened him more.
Taddeo understood suddenly that reading the messages had not restored control over anything that actually mattered. He now possessed the information he had spent the entire day wanting, and the knowledge felt worthless compared with what had vanished while he obtained it.
The coordinates were on the screen.
Isolde stood six feet away.
For the first time since she came to Northglass, the distance between them had nothing to do with a locked gate.