Chapter Thirty-Two #3
“Secondary vehicle behind it. If Marco or I tell you to move north and you can physically see one of us saying it, that's the fallback route.”
She looked up immediately. “If I can see you.”
Taddeo's expression became more serious. “The roster is compromised. If communications fail or the power goes out, do not follow somebody merely because he says Bellandi security or tells you I sent him.”
A chill moved across her shoulders.
“Who can I trust?”
“Me. Marco. Orsino. Luca if you see him at the vehicle. Nico if you recognize him from Northglass.” Taddeo waited until she was looking at him before adding, “If anyone else uses my name, that does not make the instruction mine.”
The warning immediately recalled the museum, a stranger calling her by name from the other side of a darkened laboratory door because somebody had known exactly where she would be.
Isolde looked back at the map. “Quay is obviously bad.”
“Worse than it looks. The barriers break in several places, the drop is significant, and the current against that wall is strong.” He moved to the rail side.
“North is better than the water if you become cut off, but visibility is poor around the old equipment. Stay against solid structures rather than crossing open track space.”
“That is enough geography,” Isolde said after studying it for another moment. “Tell me the human problem.”
Taddeo almost smiled. “Official Bellandi security will be at the south vehicle area, east gate, and communications point, but there are additional people watching some of those positions because of the altered roster.
You do not need the hidden placements. If you notice someone behaving in a way that does not fit what I've shown you, tell me or Marco. Do not investigate it yourself.”
“I restore books and harbor charts for a living.”
“You also found a storage drive in a false spine, identified a fake museum badge while someone was bleeding on the floor, and helped dismantle a twenty-five-million-dollar financial conspiracy from copied paper defects. Your job title no longer reassures me.”
“That sounds like a personal problem.”
“It has become several.”
The dryness in his voice warmed something she was trying very hard not to examine.
For several minutes, Taddeo tested her on the simplified layout without turning it into one of Marco's briefings.
Western approach for Corwin. Loading wall for immediate hard cover.
North warehouse for fallback extraction.
Quay as a dead end. Rail side only if the center was cut off and the route north remained clear.
If an unfamiliar voice called her through darkness, she stayed where she had cover until she visually identified someone she trusted.
When she got the final scenario right, Taddeo nodded. “Keep the map until we arrive, then leave it in the vehicle. If you become separated, I don't want anyone finding a marked extraction route on you.”
“That one was an order.”
“Yes.”
Isolde considered it. “Fair.”
He reached toward the map and stopped before taking it. “Do you want anything changed about where you stand during the exchange?”
The question took longer to understand than the tactical instructions had.
“You're asking me where I want to stand.”
“Yes.”
Isolde studied the central portion of the map. “I don't want a guard holding my arm or standing close enough that Corwin thinks I'm being physically handed over. I don't want to stand behind you like I'm a package on your side of the line, either.”
Taddeo's jaw tightened at the description. “No one will hold you, and you don't stand behind me.”
“I want to see Corwin when he arrives.”
“You will.”
“I want him to see me.”
“All right.”
“And if everything actually goes according to plan, I speak to him before anybody announces which car I'm getting into afterward.”
Something moved through Taddeo's face too quickly to interpret.
“All right.”
She waited.
There was no qualification.
No condition about Cesare.
No reminder that Corwin's proposal said she left in his custody.
Isolde folded the map and placed it beside her phone. “Then that's enough.”
Taddeo nodded, but his expression had become carefully neutral in the way that told her something else existed behind it.
“Do you expect me to leave with Corwin?”
“He does.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
Taddeo held her gaze. “I expect you to decide what you want once we're there.”
The wording was too deliberate.
Isolde narrowed her eyes. “What aren't you telling me?”
“I always have something I'm not telling everyone.”
“That was evasive even by your standards.”
“Probably.”
“You still have another plan.”
“Yes.”
“And you're not telling me.”
“Not yet.”
A week ago, that answer would have begun a fight.
Tonight Isolde recognized the difference between information she needed to make her own decision and operational details whose secrecy protected people inside a compromised plan.
Taddeo had shown her where she would be, the dangers she might face, the routes she could use, and the fact that the exchange itself might already contain a traitor.
Whatever remained hidden did not deprive her of the ability to decide whether she entered the terminal.
She did not entirely like the distinction.
She accepted it.
“Fine. Keep your mysterious mafia plan.”
“That sounds irresponsible.”
“So does everything else about tonight.”
Taddeo glanced toward the clock. “We have about ninety minutes.”
He should have left.
Neither of them moved.
Isolde remained beside the table with her original phone in one hand and the map near the other, while Taddeo stood several feet away in a room that had once contained nothing between them but fear and control.
She could feel the conversation reaching its natural end and did not want it to.
The realization annoyed her because their unresolved problems were still large enough that wanting another ten minutes with him felt emotionally irresponsible.
She had known what she felt for him for days.
Refusing to name it had not changed anything.
The question formed before she decided to ask it.
“Taddeo—”
“I love you.”
Her breath stopped.
There was no speech attached to the admission.
No declaration that captivity had always been destiny, no attempt to turn violence into romance, no promise that loving her made him safe.
Taddeo simply stood in the bedroom where he had once placed her because her brother made her useful and told her the truth in the same quiet voice he used when he believed anything more polished would be dishonest.
Isolde could not answer immediately.
Taddeo watched her face, and she saw the moment he recognized that he had hurt her simply by making the truth available.
“You don't have to say anything,” he said. “I didn't tell you because I expect you to forgive me, stay at Northglass, leave Corwin, or make tomorrow easier.”
She swallowed. “Then why now?”
His gaze moved briefly toward the suitcase.
“Because you may walk out of this house tonight and never come back.” The control in his face remained, but something beneath it was exposed enough that Isolde had to look away for a second. “I did not want the last honest thing I deliberately withheld from you to be that.”
Tears burned behind her eyes.
“That is profoundly unfair.”
“Yes.”
“You said you're not trying to affect my decision.”
“I'm not.”
“It affects it anyway.”
“I know.”
Isolde laughed weakly and wiped beneath one eye. “There. You have finally found an appropriate use for that sentence.”
Taddeo almost smiled.
She wanted to cross the space between them.
The urge was immediate and physical: kiss him, put her face against his chest, feel his arms around her once before walking into a freight terminal where some of the men wearing Bellandi identification might already belong to Lelio.
None of that would mean she had forgiven the privacy breach.
It would not erase Mercer Street or answer whether their relationship could survive once Northglass stopped determining the shape of her days.
She still did not move.
Neither did he.
His refusal to use the confession as permission to close the distance was almost more intimate than touching would have been.
Northglass began waking around them sometime before four.
Doors opened on the lower floor, an engine turned over in the vehicle court and then went quiet again, and Marco's voice carried faintly from somewhere near the stairs as the final security teams checked equipment.
Taddeo looked toward the door, then back at Isolde. “We should get ready.”
“I'll meet you downstairs.”
He crossed toward the threshold and stopped before leaving. “Elettra brought a dark coat for you. It will be cold at the terminal.”
Isolde raised an eyebrow. “Recommendation?”
“Entirely weather-based.”
“I may wear it purely to reward your progress.”
“I appreciate the sacrifice.”
He left before either of them could allow the conversation to become easier than it deserved.
Isolde dressed without giving herself enough time to reconsider anything.
Dark trousers, flat boots, a black sweater, and the coat Taddeo had recommended because whatever else was wrong with the situation, hypothermia did not need to become one more ideological battleground.
She wrapped her mother's green scarf beneath the collar where the silk would stay protected, put the temporary phone in one pocket and her original phone in another, then folded the simplified terminal map until it fit beside them.
The suitcase remained by the bed.
She looked at it once before turning away.
If she left with Corwin afterward, Elettra could send it.
If she returned to Northglass, it would still be here.
If she decided on something neither man had anticipated, the suitcase would eventually follow her wherever that was.
For the first time, she did not need to solve the entire future before walking downstairs.
Elettra waited near the bottom of the staircase.