Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“Taddeo has spent most of his life in situations where being wrong about danger gets people killed.” Elettra wiped a little soil from the side of her hand. “I am not surprised his worst habits become worst when he is frightened.”
“That sounds dangerously close to excusing him.”
“It isn’t.” Elettra looked directly at her. “Understanding why someone fails is useful if you are trying to decide whether he can change. It is useless if you use the explanation to pretend he did not fail.”
Isolde turned one of the rosemary stems between her fingers.
“He understands consent perfectly when sex is involved,” she said. “Annoyingly perfectly. He practically interrogates me until every answer is unmistakable, and if I tell him to stop touching me, he stops before I finish the word.”
“That is good.”
“It is.” Isolde dropped the stem into the basket. “Apparently his understanding was also completely compartmentalized.”
Elettra's mouth curved faintly. “People often learn a lesson first in the place where somebody forces them to see it.”
“He saw it outside the bedroom too.”
“Yes.”
“And still broke his word.”
“Yes.”
The blunt agreement prevented Isolde from arguing against a defense Elettra had not offered.
“I don't know whether I trust him now.”
“You probably shouldn’t.”
Isolde stared at her.
Elettra smiled slightly. “Were you expecting me to tell you Taddeo is secretly a good man and that love heals everything?”
“I was hoping for something slightly less horrifying than that sentence.”
“Good. I would have to surrender my dignity before saying it.” Elettra set down the scissors and leaned against the opposite side of the table. “Taddeo has earned your affection more quickly than he has earned your trust. Those are different accounts.”
Isolde became very still.
The wording was so simple that it cut through several days of thoughts she had been trying to make unnecessarily complicated.
“You can care about someone and still not trust him with every decision,” Elettra continued. “You can even love someone without believing he has earned every part of you. People do it constantly, although usually with less gunfire and fewer armored vehicles.”
“I didn’t say I love him.”
“No.”
“You just implied it.”
“I said you can.”
“That was manipulative.”
“I work for the Bellandis.”
A reluctant laugh escaped Isolde.
Elettra smiled and picked up her scissors again.
For a while they worked without talking.
Isolde's actual contribution remained limited to handing Elettra things and refusing to examine the word love closely enough for it to acquire permanence.
The greenhouse smelled of damp soil, rosemary, and citrus leaves, and through the glass she could see the western grounds stretching toward the distant trees.
Somewhere beyond them stood the outer gate.
Eventually she asked, “If you were me, would you leave?”
Elettra's scissors paused.
“I am not you.”
“I know.”
“I do not have your brother, your profession, your history with Taddeo, or your exact tolerance for arrogant men.” She placed the cut rosemary into the basket before continuing.
“If you leave because you want your own life back, then leave. If you stay because you want to see whether Taddeo can become someone you trust, then stay.”
Isolde swallowed.
Elettra's gaze remained steady. “But don't leave only because leaving proves you are free. And don't stay only because loving him makes what he did acceptable.”
“That is annoyingly balanced.”
“I am older than you. Occasionally it produces something useful.”
Isolde looked through the glass toward the estate perimeter. “How am I supposed to know whether staying is a choice while the gate is still closed?”
Elettra followed her gaze.
“You can’t know completely.”
The answer hurt because it was obvious.
Elettra picked up the basket of herbs. “Eventually he should have to open the gate.”
Isolde looked at her.
The simplicity of the sentence lodged somewhere deep.
Not offer a larger garden.
Not return more of her clothes.
Not trust her with another room, another phone call, another section of the estate.
Open the gate.
Only then would either of them discover whether Isolde remained because Taddeo had learned how to keep her or because she had finally been allowed to choose him.
The thought stayed with her for the rest of the afternoon.
At four-seventeen, the temporary phone rang.
Isolde was in the library pretending to review preservation contracts when the unfamiliar ringtone cut through the room.
She went still before looking toward the handset, because nobody used that number casually and the call had bypassed the message pattern Corwin had used since first contacting her.
The screen showed an unknown number.
She knew who it was anyway.
Isolde answered. “Corwin?”
There was a fraction of a pause, followed by a breath that sounded more exhausted than relieved. “Hi, Izzy.”
Hearing his voice instead of reading his words affected her more than she expected. Messages allowed pauses, deletions, and distance. Corwin’s voice carried years of familiarity through two syllables, along with enough strain that her anger briefly gave way to worry.
“You sound terrible.”
“Good to hear you too.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Tired.”
“Where are you?”
“You know I can't answer that.”
“Then don't complain when I ask.” Isolde sat back in the library chair and glanced toward the door, though nobody stood there. “Someone almost found you.”
“Yes.”
“You should have told me that before asking me to meet at a freight yard.”
“I didn't know they were that close when I sent it.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“I know.”
The familiar phrase almost made her laugh for entirely the wrong reason.
“Everyone in my life needs new vocabulary.”
Corwin was quiet for a moment. “Is this about Malfatti?”
“Not everything is about Taddeo.”
“You said his first name.”
Isolde closed her eyes. “Do not start.”
“I wasn't.”
“You absolutely were.”
A faint breath that might have been amusement came through the phone, but it disappeared quickly. “I called because I remembered something from before I ran.”
Her irritation vanished. “What?”
“I think I know who was watching the investigation.”
Isolde sat straighter. “Who?”
“Lelio Ardizzi.”
The name changed the room.
She looked toward the closed library door as though Lelio might somehow appear simply because Corwin had said it.
“How sure are you?”
“Not sure enough to say he built the entire scheme.” Corwin's voice became more deliberate. “I suspected him strongly enough that I stopped asking questions anywhere his people might hear me.”
“What made you suspect him?”
“Access logs. Approvals that kept touching his side of Bellandi operations. Two shell companies had business through a contractor controlled by one of his cousins.” Corwin paused. “Then an intermediary I pressured gave me Ardizzi's name without me suggesting it first.”
“Could that intermediary have been framing him?”
“Yes.”
“Could Mauro?”
“Yes.”
“Serevins?”
“Maybe.”
Isolde rubbed a hand over her forehead. “So you still don't know.”
“No. I said suspected, not proved.”
That distinction mattered.
She was glad he was making it.
“Did you ever speak to Lelio directly?”
“Once.”
Her hand stopped. “About the missing money?”
“Not directly. He came into a waterfront redevelopment meeting after I'd already begun following the historical parcel chains.” Corwin shifted somewhere on the other end, and Isolde heard the low rumble of what might have been a truck passing nearby. “He acted as if he barely knew who I was.”
“But?”
“He knew which historical files I'd accessed.”
Cold moved through her.
“Those requests weren't public,” Corwin continued. “They were internal archive pulls. I hadn't told the redevelopment group I was looking at historical chains yet.”
Isolde remembered Cesare’s dinner with startling clarity.
Lelio leaning toward her with the comfortable warmth of a man making harmless family conversation.
Had Corwin given her old maps?
Books?
Anything strange?
Her mouth went dry.
“He asked me about that.”
Corwin went silent. “What?”
“At Cesare's dinner. Lelio asked whether you had given me old books or maps.”
The silence at the other end changed.
“Isolde.”
She hated the sudden edge in his voice. “What?”
“Did you tell him about the Harbor Pilot?”
“No.”
“Did anyone?”
“Not at dinner.”
Corwin swore.
“Corwin.”
“When was the museum attack?”
“You know about the attack.”
“I know men came after you. I don't know every detail.”
Isolde looked toward the tall library windows and remembered darkness in the conservation lab, glass striking the floor, Taddeo’s body covering hers, and a stranger calling her name from the other side of a locked door.
“They knew exactly where I was,” she said. “Not just the museum. The lab.”
“Who knew you were going?”
“Taddeo. Marco. The security team. Cesare knew enough. Orsino.” She frowned. “I never knew the entire distribution chain.”
“Lelio?”
“Taddeo thought information could have moved through leadership.”
Corwin breathed out hard. “Izzy, listen to me.”
“I am listening.”
“Lelio knew about you before I disappeared.”
Isolde went completely still. “What do you mean, knew about me?”
“He knew you existed. He knew where you worked and what you did.” Corwin’s voice had gone flat in the way it did when fear made him concentrate harder.
“After I started digging, somebody opened the family-contact section of my Bellandi personnel file. Your name was accessed, then public information about the museum.”
Her skin turned cold.
“That could have been routine,” Corwin said, though his tone made clear he did not believe it. “Except the access ran through a permissions group attached to Ardizzi's administrative people.”
“You never told me.”
“I thought I erased enough of the trail.”
“You thought.”
“Yes.”
Isolde stood and walked away from the windows because the open grounds suddenly felt exposed despite the security surrounding them.
“Corwin, are you telling me Lelio knew I worked at Crownport Maritime before Taddeo took me?”
“Yes.”