Chapter Twenty-Six #3
“And you think he knew about the Pilot?”
“I don't know.”
“But you think he knew you gave me something.”
A pause came before Corwin answered. “I think he knew I was using you as a dead drop without telling you.”
The honesty hurt.
At least he no longer tried to make the decision sound protective enough to become acceptable.
Isolde lowered herself into the nearest chair. “The men at the museum called me by name.”
Corwin did not answer immediately.
When he did, his voice was quieter. “I think Lelio ordered the attack.”
Isolde's fingers tightened around the phone. “Based on what?”
“Timing. His access. The fact that he knew about you before Malfatti ever used you as leverage.” Corwin drew a breath.
“After I disappeared, one of the men I was tracking moved money through an entity connected to Ardizzi's crew.
I can't prove Lelio gave the order, Izzy, but if he realized the archive was with you and then learned you were returning to the museum, he had every reason to get there first.”
The library seemed colder.
Isolde saw Lelio again across Cesare’s dinner table, asking gentle questions about Corwin while everyone ate pasta and children moved in and out of the room.
She remembered the false staff badge at the museum, accurate enough to pass from a distance but wrong in the details only an employee would recognize.
She remembered men moving through service corridors with knowledge good enough to defeat a carefully planned Bellandi operation.
For days she had thought of the museum attack as a consequence of Corwin's crime.
Now it had the beginning of a face.
“Taddeo needs to know.”
The words left her before she had consciously finished deciding.
Corwin's answer came immediately. “No.”
Isolde closed her eyes. “We have just spent several conversations discussing why you don't get to answer questions for me.”
“Lelio is Bellandi.”
“So is Taddeo.”
“Exactly.”
“No, not exactly.” She stood again, anger sharpening the fear into something useful. “You just told me the strongest evidence you have points toward one specific man. Taddeo has already been suspicious of Lelio.”
“And if Lelio has people inside his security?”
“Then Taddeo needs to know that too.”
“Isolde, I am asking you not to trust Bellandi channels until we know how far Ardizzi's reach goes.”
She looked toward the doorway.
Taddeo was somewhere inside Northglass. One of his vehicles had returned nearly an hour earlier, and some humiliatingly attentive part of her had registered the sound automatically despite the fact that she still had not forgiven him.
Corwin continued. “Get away from anyone who reports through Bellandi channels. We can figure out the rest once you're somewhere else.”
“No.”
The silence from the phone was immediate.
Isolde almost laughed at the symmetry.
“Did you just tell me no?” Corwin asked.
“Yes.”
“Izzy.”
“You said you were learning.”
“I am.”
“Then learn this part.” Isolde tightened her grip around the phone. “I decide who gets the information you give me.”
“That could get you killed.”
“So could keeping it from the person whose job is currently finding the man who may have ordered an attack on me.”
Corwin exhaled hard. “Malfatti is not neutral.”
“I know.”
“He kidnapped you.”
“I remember being there.”
“He read your messages after you told him not to.”
Her stomach dropped. “How do you know that?”
“Because you stopped answering through the channel we agreed on and then told me not to ask why.”
“That is not proof.”
“No, but apparently I know you too.”
Isolde sat with the anger for a moment before deciding the argument was irrelevant.
“Taddeo broke my trust,” she said. “That doesn't make every decision he makes wrong.”
Corwin became quiet.
“I haven't forgiven him,” she continued. “I don't know whether I trust him again. I may not for a while.”
“Then why tell him?”
Because trust was not a single account.
Elettra's words returned with irritating clarity.
Because Isolde could distrust Taddeo with one thing and still trust his judgment with another.
Because she had spent days demanding the right to decide which information she gave him rather than having that decision made through surveillance.
Because if she withheld Lelio's name now simply to punish him, then her silence would stop being a boundary and become retaliation.
Most of all, because this choice was hers.
“Because I think he needs to know.”
Corwin was silent for several seconds.
Then he asked, “Is that what you want?”
The question surprised her.
“Yes.”
He inhaled slowly. “Okay.”
The word was reluctant.
It was still acceptance.
Some of the pressure in Isolde's chest eased.
“Thank you.”
“I don't like it.”
“You're allowed.”
“I think it's dangerous.”
“You're allowed that too.”
“I think Malfatti—”
“Careful.”
Corwin actually laughed, quiet and exhausted. “This is going to take some adjustment.”
“For everyone.”
“Apparently.”
For several seconds neither spoke.
Isolde's anger with him remained, but hearing his voice had made something shift.
Corwin was no longer the brother she remembered waiting somewhere beyond this nightmare to restore the version of her life that existed before Mercer Street.
He was a real man again, clever and frightened and deeply flawed, capable of loving her enough to put her in danger because he had convinced himself his intentions made the decision acceptable.
The resemblance to Taddeo was deeply inconvenient.
“I have to go,” she said.
Corwin's voice sharpened automatically. “Where?”
Isolde almost smiled. “To make a decision you don't get to make for me.”
There was a pause.
Then, with visible effort in his voice, “All right.”
That mattered more than it should have.
“I'll contact you when I can.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“Izzy.”
She waited.
His voice softened. “I'm glad you're alive.”
Emotion pressed unexpectedly into her throat.
“I'm glad you're alive too.”
Isolde ended the call and remained seated for several seconds with the phone between both hands.
The house was quiet around her.
Somewhere inside it, Taddeo was working against a forty-eight-hour deadline he had voluntarily told her about even though the information gave her another reason to contact Corwin.
He had not entered her room. He had not read another message.
None of that erased the breach, and Isolde refused to reward basic respect as though it were extraordinary simply because Taddeo had once failed to offer it.
But she could recognize change without pretending repair was complete.
Elettra had been right.
Affection was one account.
Trust was another.
Perhaps neither had to be all or nothing.
Isolde stood and looked at the temporary phone in her hand.
She did not trust Taddeo enough to sleep in his bed tonight.
She did not trust him enough to hand over unrestricted access to Corwin's messages or pretend one good day repaired the violation between them.
She trusted him with Lelio Ardizzi.
For now, that was enough.
Taddeo's office was on the other side of Northglass.
Isolde left the library and started toward it before she could overthink what the movement meant.
She had not forgiven him.
She did not trust him yet.
She might love him anyway.
None of those truths changed the decision in front of her.
Lelio Ardizzi might have ordered men into her museum, and Isolde was choosing—entirely, deliberately, inconveniently choosing—to tell Taddeo.