Chapter Thirty #2
When Cesare Bellandi's authority stood on the opposite side of her choice, Taddeo had still chosen the authority.
“I thought Chapter Twenty-Six was the test,” Isolde said, more quietly now.
“I thought the messages were the point where you finally saw what you were doing, and maybe they were for a while.
You stopped reading things that weren't yours. You let me decide what I told you about Corwin. You apologized without explaining yourself into innocence.”
Taddeo watched her closely.
“But apparently that was still the easy version.” She pressed her lips together briefly before continuing.
“You could give me privacy without betraying Cesare. You could let me sleep in another room without betraying Cesare. You could let me decide when you touched me without betraying Cesare, and you could even let me tell you things on my own terms because none of those choices asked you to choose me over the person who made you who you are.”
Taddeo's voice lowered. “And now you think this does.”
“I think this is the first time it actually has.”
The truth sat between them with enough weight that neither moved for several seconds.
Taddeo looked toward the floor and then back at her. “You know what Cesare means to me.”
“Yes.”
“You know this is not simple obedience.”
“Yes.”
“You know what refusing him here could mean.”
“I don't know everything it could mean, but I know enough.”
His expression tightened further. “And that doesn't matter?”
Isolde felt the first real flare of anger beneath the exhaustion. “Of course it matters. Why do you keep needing my understanding to erase my side of the equation?”
“I am not asking it to.”
“It sounds like you are.” She stepped away from the table and moved toward the doorway. “You want me to understand why you can't choose differently so that maybe being the person not chosen will hurt less.”
“That isn't fair.”
“No, it probably isn't.” Isolde stopped with one hand resting against the doorframe. “I'm not particularly interested in being fair tonight.”
Taddeo accepted that without argument.
She looked at him once more before leaving the library. “When is the exchange?”
“Tomorrow night, assuming Corwin accepts the final terminal.”
“What time?”
“Likely after midnight.”
“I'll be ready.”
The words were practical.
That was the beginning of the distance.
Isolde went upstairs to pack.
She had never actually unpacked her life into Northglass in an ordinary way.
Clothing had arrived in stages because Taddeo's people brought it.
Her books appeared because Taddeo authorized them.
Her mother's scarf came out of a box Elettra arranged, and her toiletries occupied drawers somebody else selected before she even saw the room.
Even after she began sleeping in Taddeo's bedroom, she never formally moved there; things simply migrated across the hallway until the relationship became domestic through accumulation rather than decision.
Now she took everything back with her own hands.
The first suitcase came from the wardrobe shelf.
It was hers, brought from the apartment with the second round of belongings, a dark hard-shell case with a scratch near one wheel from a conference trip to Philadelphia three years earlier.
Isolde laid it open across the bed and began folding clothes with the methodical attention she usually gave conservation materials, separating heavier items from things that would crease, rolling sweaters loosely, tucking socks into corners.
She heard Taddeo enter the hallway before he appeared at her open door.
He knocked against the frame.
Isolde did not turn around. “You can come in.”
Taddeo entered but remained near the door.
She continued packing.
The quiet stretched between them while Isolde folded two pairs of jeans, placed them along the bottom of the case, and added the dark blouse she had worn to Cesare's dinner.
She remembered Taddeo standing too close to her that night without consciously realizing he was doing it, his attention sharpening every time Lelio asked about Corwin, and the memory now seemed to belong to another version of their relationship despite having occurred only weeks earlier.
“Do you need help?” Taddeo asked.
“No, thank you.”
The politeness made his face tighten.
Isolde opened another drawer.
Her black dress lay beneath two sweaters, still wrapped in tissue because she had never worn it at Northglass. She lifted it out, folded the tissue around it again, and placed it into the suitcase.
“You don't have to take everything tomorrow,” Taddeo said.
Her hands paused.
She looked toward him. “Why wouldn't I?”
Taddeo did not answer immediately.
Something painfully vulnerable crossed his face before he controlled it. “Corwin's route may require limited luggage.”
“If I leave things here, Elettra can box them afterward.”
“That wasn't what I meant.”
“I know.”
Taddeo walked several steps into the room before stopping beside the chair where her mother's green scarf rested. “You are packing like you're never coming back.”
Isolde picked up another sweater and folded it once across her forearm. “Am I supposed to assume I will?”
“No.”
“Then this seems sensible.”
His eyes followed her hands.
The reversal was brutal enough that even Isolde could feel it.
When she first arrived at Northglass, she had stood in this same room furious because clothing appeared without her permission, tangible proof that Taddeo had planned how long she might remain before she ever crossed his threshold.
Now he stood watching while she removed every one of those pieces because the arrangement that brought her here was finally approaching its conclusion.
Freedom should have felt better.
Maybe it would once it belonged to her.
She opened the small wooden box on the dresser and began removing the few personal pieces of jewelry Elettra had brought from her apartment.
Taddeo's reflection appeared behind hers in the mirror, dark shirt, tired face, hands empty at his sides because he seemed to have finally learned that helping without being asked could become another way of taking over a task.
Isolde caught his gaze through the glass. “Did you ever imagine this part?”
“No.”
“When you took me?”
Taddeo's mouth tightened. “I imagined Corwin returning.”
“And then what?”
“I don't know.”
“You must have had some plan.”
“I had an operational plan.” He looked toward the suitcase rather than at her reflection. “Corwin returned the money, we verified what happened, and you were released once you were no longer useful as leverage.”
Isolde turned slowly. “Released.”
“Yes.”
“To him?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But now that's the agreement.”
“Yes.”
She studied him for several seconds. “It's strange.”
“What?”
“That I am technically getting what I wanted from you from the beginning.”
Taddeo's expression changed.
“The debt ends. I leave Northglass. Nobody stops me at the gate.” Isolde reached for the scarf and ran the silk once through her fingers before folding it carefully. “If you had told me this was going to happen during the first week, I would have counted the hours.”
“I know.”
“And now I feel like I'm being moved again.”
Taddeo looked at her. “I am sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“No, I mean about this too.”
She swallowed. “I know.”
He moved closer, slowly enough that she could have stepped away.
She did not.