Chapter Twenty-Eight #4
“Which is a very elegant phrase for exactly what I said.”
His mouth tightened. “Probably.”
Isolde moved toward the windows before changing her mind halfway there and turning back. Distance would not make the question less important.
“Corwin has made the offer now.” She looked directly at him. “Are you going to trade me?”
Taddeo’s expression changed.
She saw his answer struggling against everything Cesare represented before he ever spoke.
“I will not promise you an outcome before I know what Cesare intends to do with the meeting.”
The sentence hurt because it was careful.
Because it was honest.
Because it still was not the answer she wanted.
“You could tell me that whatever Cesare says, you will never again treat me as something the Bellandis can exchange.”
“Yes.”
“But you aren’t telling me that.”
“No.”
Isolde swallowed.
Taddeo stepped closer but stopped well outside touching distance. “I am not saying I want to hand you to Corwin.”
“That is not what I’m asking.”
“I know.”
“Then answer the question I am actually asking.”
Something in his face tightened with pain. “I cannot promise you yet that I will choose against Cesare if he makes it a direct order.”
There it was.
The real problem beneath all the others.
Isolde knew too much about him now for the answer to be easy to hate.
She knew about Lucia and Marcello, about losing them young, about Cesare becoming the man who stood between a twenty-one-year-old Taddeo and everyone waiting to exploit the vacuum his father’s death created.
She understood why Cesare was not simply Taddeo’s boss and why refusing him would feel like tearing against a loyalty built from grief, survival, gratitude, and the person Taddeo had become afterward.
Understanding did not make being negotiable hurt less.
“The worst part is that I know why this is hard for you,” she said quietly. “I understand what Cesare gave you, and I understand why choosing against him probably feels like choosing against half the structure that kept you standing after your parents died.”
Taddeo’s expression changed.
Isolde folded her arms more tightly. “But knowing why you cannot promise to choose me does not make it easier to be the thing everybody is discussing as though my destination belongs in the terms.”
“You are not a thing.”
“Then somebody needs to start acting like the decision belongs to me.”
Taddeo had no answer.
For several seconds, the library held only the quiet sound of the heating system and the muted Atlantic beyond the glass.
Then Orsino’s phone rang.
He checked the screen and looked immediately toward Taddeo. “Cesare.”
The older man answered and listened, his expression becoming increasingly neutral in the way Isolde had learned meant the conversation was getting worse rather than better.
“Yes,” Orsino said. “We received the proposal, and no one has responded to the terms.”
He listened again.
“No. Lelio does not know what we have.”
Another pause followed before Orsino’s eyes moved briefly toward Isolde.
“All right. I’ll tell them.”
He ended the call.
Taddeo’s expression sharpened. “What did Cesare do?”
“Corwin included a separate contact method for arranging a meeting.” Orsino placed the phone carefully on the table. “Cesare used it.”
Isolde’s stomach tightened. “He accepted the trade?”
“No. He accepted a meeting.” Orsino looked between her and Taddeo. “He wants both of you at Bellandi House now.”
The distinction should have reassured her.
It did not.
Isolde looked toward the evidence spread across the table.
Hours earlier, they had finally understood what Lelio had been doing because the crimes stopped looking like independent events and became one deliberate sequence.
He had used Corwin’s arrogance because Corwin could be trusted to push too far.
He had used Mauro’s greed because Mauro’s real corruption made false guilt easy to believe.
He had used Bellandi suspicion because he understood how quickly a criminal hierarchy would turn toward the man whose credentials already appeared in the wrong places.
Real weaknesses had become leverage because Lelio knew what people would predictably do when pressure was applied.
Now Cesare Bellandi was preparing to sit across from Corwin and negotiate a proposal built around another set of predictable loyalties.
A brother who believed loving Isolde made him responsible for deciding where she should go.
A mafia boss who believed recovering Family money justified defining her as a term.
And Taddeo, standing only a few feet away, still unable to promise that when Cesare finally forced him to choose between loyalty and Isolde’s autonomy, he would refuse to make the decision for her.
Isolde picked up Corwin’s phone.
Taddeo reached for his jacket.
Neither of them touched the other.
They had spent the morning learning exactly how dangerous a person could become once someone understood which part of him would behave predictably under pressure.
Now Isolde was about to find out whether Taddeo could recognize the trap when the weakness being used was his own.