Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“You don't know,” she repeated quietly, and Taddeo shook his head before explaining that at first he would have kept her until Corwin surfaced or until Isolde no longer had practical value as leverage.
After the museum attack, he would have convinced himself release was too dangerous while someone actively targeted her.
Once they discovered the larger theft, he would have used her connection to the investigation as another reason.
“Every time one justification ended, there was another available,” he said.
His hands tightened once and relaxed again before he looked directly at her.
“And after I wanted you, I don't know how honest I would have been with myself about which reasons were necessary and which ones were convenient.”
Isolde swallowed around the pressure in her throat.
It would have been easier if he told her he had always intended to release her eventually, that loving her had somehow transformed him early enough to guarantee the morally correct ending, or that the danger surrounding Corwin meant captivity had secretly saved her from something worse.
She could have dismantled any of those arguments.
Instead he gave her uncertainty because certainty would have been a lie.
“Thank you for not telling me you would have eventually done the right thing,” she said, and Taddeo's gaze stayed steady as he answered that he could not promise that version had ever been true.
When he added, “I wish it were,” there was no dramatic self-condemnation in the admission.
He still looked like Taddeo—dangerous, controlled, and entirely capable of making ruthless decisions tomorrow if the situation required them—but some of the certainty that had once allowed him to confuse what he could justify with what he was entitled to do was gone.
Then he apologized.
Not quickly and not as if he expected the words to alter what happened next.
“I am sorry I read your messages after you told me not to,” he said.
“I'm sorry I let Cesare's exchange order exist without telling you what it meant for your life, and I'm sorry I treated your brother's crime as permission to use you against him.” His jaw tightened slightly before he continued.
“I am sorry I took you from Mercer Street.”
Isolde stared at him.
Taddeo did not pretend he had become horrified by the kind of man who could have conceived of the kidnapping.
“Corwin had eight point four million that belonged to the Bellandis.
We believed he was responsible for considerably more, and you were the only leverage I could reach.
I still understand why I made the decision.
I'm not going to insult you by pretending that if I became underboss again tomorrow with everything I knew then, the thought would never occur to me.” His voice remained level even as the admission exposed something painfully unguarded.
“But understanding why I did it is not the same as believing I had the right to make you pay for what Corwin did.”
The apology hurt because she believed it.
If it had been designed to obtain forgiveness, she could have rejected it. Instead he offered nothing in exchange.
“I believe you,” Isolde said eventually, then forced herself to keep going before either of them mistook belief for absolution.
“That doesn't fix it. I still don't know whether what happened between us survives somewhere that isn't Northglass, and I don't know whether the next time you're frightened you'll decide my choice is the expendable part again.”
Taddeo's expression tightened. “I know.”
“You could occasionally say something else.”
“I don't have an argument.”
“That is deeply unsettling.”
“I could invent one.”
“No. You're much worse when you think you're clever.”
“I am usually clever.”
“There. See? Already deteriorating.”
A reluctant smile almost escaped her, and Taddeo's mouth shifted in response.
The moment was small enough not to demand anything from either of them, which made it more dangerous than a grand reconciliation might have been.
Isolde could still imagine another night here.
She could still imagine waking in his bed, arguing over breakfast, spreading museum records across the library table while he pretended not to like Fleetwood Mac.
Wanting those things had survived the breach.
Whether trust could survive with them remained unanswered.
She looked toward the clock. “Are you scared about the terminal?”
“Yes.”
The immediate answer tightened something low in her stomach. Taddeo did not romanticize danger when it was real, and the absence of bravado made his fear more meaningful. When she asked how bad, he told her he had rebuilt the security plan twice.
Isolde's attention sharpened. “Why twice?”
Taddeo paused just long enough to tell her the answer mattered. “There were personnel substitutions in the terminal roster that Marco and I did not authorize.”
Her stomach dropped. “Lelio?”
“Possibly. We found an internal authorization path connected to Ardizzi administration, and one of the replacements has a long association with Lelio's side of the organization. We built another security layer outside the compromised roster.”
Isolde stood and crossed toward the window before she realized she was moving. “You just spent half an hour apologizing for deciding danger gives you authority over me, and now you're telling me the exchange might already be compromised while you're still planning to put me in the middle of it.”
“I am planning to go,” Taddeo said. “I have not decided that you are.”
She turned.
The correction was so unexpected that for a second she did not understand it.
“Do I have a choice about going?”
“Yes.”
Nothing in his expression softened the word.
Isolde folded her arms. “Cesare ordered you to bring me.”
“Yes.”
“Corwin made me part of the terms.”
“Yes.”
“And if Lelio is watching the terminal, this might be the best chance you have to force him into the open.”
“Yes.”
“But if I tell you I am not going, you leave me here.”
“I do not put you in the car.”
The silence stretched between them.
She searched his face for the hidden condition and found none.
“What changed?”
Taddeo looked at her for a long moment before answering. “I did.”
A quiet, disbelieving laugh escaped her. “That is an extraordinarily convenient revelation to have two hours before we leave.”
“Yes.”
“You understand why I don't automatically trust it.”
“I understand why you don't trust it.”
The adjustment from his usual I know was so obvious that Isolde almost smiled despite herself.
Then she looked toward the suitcase.
If she refused, Corwin might withdraw. The Bellandis could lose their best opportunity to recover the money and physical evidence.
Lelio might realize they had penetrated enough of his network to become dangerous and disappear before Cesare could act.
More people could die. Taddeo could have laid out every one of those consequences until refusing felt selfish enough to become impossible.
He didn't.
For the first time, he left the consequences attached to the choice without using them to control the answer.
“I want to go.”
Taddeo's shoulders relaxed slightly, but there was no satisfaction in his face. “All right.”
“Not because Cesare ordered it, and not because Corwin wrote my name into the exchange terms.” Isolde moved back toward him, needing the reasons spoken aloud because tomorrow she did not want anyone rewriting why she entered that car.
“I'm going because Lelio sent armed men into my museum, because Corwin is my brother even when I want to strangle him, because those forged records became evidence partly because of my work, and because I am finished being the person everybody hides somewhere safe while the consequences of decisions involving me happen in another room.”
Taddeo listened until she finished. “Then we go.”
Not I take you.
Not you come with me.
We go.
The difference was small enough to sound sentimental if she examined it too closely.
She let it matter anyway.
Taddeo reached for the slim folder he had brought into the room and unfolded a single-page map across the low table.
“If you're choosing to be at Terminal Fourteen, you need enough of the plan to make your own decisions if ours fails.” Isolde came closer, and he turned the diagram toward her instead of standing over it.
“This is not the full tactical layout. I don't want you trying to remember twenty positions in the dark. You need geography, hard cover, fallback routes, and the people you can trust.”
The terminal was simpler on the page than the dense maps Isolde had seen in his office.
A broad loading apron opened beside the harbor, with two warehouse structures to the north and west, an old rail siding crossing beyond the northern building, and service roads approaching from opposite sides.
The southeastern edge terminated at a concrete quay, after which the paper became a blank stretch marked only as water.
Taddeo touched the western road. “Corwin approaches here. You and I will be near the center line with Marco and Orsino when he arrives, but do not walk toward his vehicle even if you see him first. Until we know who is actually inside the terminal, predictable movement matters.”
“That sounded suspiciously like an order.”
“It was a strong recommendation based on people potentially trying to kill us.”
“Acceptable distinction.”
His finger moved to the heavy concrete loading wall on the west side of the apron.
“If anything begins before Corwin reaches us, this is your first choice. It is real concrete, thick enough to stop what anybody is likely to bring. The small scale house here is also solid, but crossing to it leaves you exposed, so use it only if the wall is cut off.”
Isolde followed the map north. “And the warehouse?”