Chapter Thirty-Five #3
Only then did he allow a medic to wrap compression dressings around his ribs and the knife wound high along his other side. The man wanted him transported immediately, and Taddeo informed him that the request could become an order once he had physically seen Isolde.
The medic muttered something about mafia hierarchy being incompatible with basic trauma care.
Taddeo ignored him.
The walk back through Terminal Fourteen looked nothing like the pursuit out of it.
The emergency lights remained active, but portable Bellandi lamps now cut clean white lanes across the south apron as loyal teams secured weapons, separated surviving men, and checked the perimeter for additional attackers.
Corwin's van burned less fiercely near the western approach while two men worked extinguishers around the front section, and the official Bellandi communications station had been dismantled into evidence because Nico had already found equipment connected to frequencies nobody had authorized.
Orsino stood near the north warehouse supervising three crises simultaneously with dried blood at his temple and obvious irritation that anyone might consider the injury worthy of attention.
The isolated laptop had survived, the first drive remained intact, and the second drive Isolde recovered was now sealed inside a clear evidence pouch without leaving her sight until she personally watched Orsino secure it.
The physical ledger survived too.
So did the money.
Nearly all eight point four million remained accessible under the verified transfer structure, although final recovery would require several hours and enough lawyers, accountants, and technically legitimate financial professionals to make the process look less criminal than the circumstances deserved.
Taddeo noticed all of that.
Then Isolde stepped around Marco.
Everything else became background.
Her coat was dirty along both knees, one sleeve torn near the wrist, and grime streaked one cheek from crawling beneath the verification table.
Marianne's green scarf still showed beneath the collar, absurdly intact against everything else, and her eyes moved over Taddeo's bloodied shirt with immediate anger.
“You're hurt worse than you said.”
Taddeo stopped several feet away from her. “I did not give you a severity estimate.”
“That is not the defense you think it is.”
“I know.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Where is Lelio?”
“Dead.”
Something in her face changed.
Not relief exactly.
Something heavier.
“Did he tell you anything?”
“Yes.” Taddeo looked toward Orsino before returning his attention to her. “He confirmed enough to know he did not construct the entire financial system alone. He talked about outside financiers and people who wanted the old Crownport organizations destabilized.”
Orsino's expression sharpened from several yards away. “Names?”
“No.”
“Anything we can use?”
“Maybe.” Taddeo thought of Lelio's reaction when told he had been used. “He believed whoever helped him was a partner, not a handler. I am not convinced that was true.”
Orsino absorbed that. “Venn Meridian remains open.”
“Yes.”
Isolde heard the name and looked toward the sealed drive. “Then the money trail doesn't end with Lelio.”
“No.”
Corwin sat on the open rear edge of a medical vehicle fifteen feet away with his coat cut off one shoulder and a pressure dressing around his upper arm. He looked pale, furious about it, and entirely alive.
When Taddeo's gaze reached him, Corwin looked back.
Neither man smiled.
Corwin spoke first while the medic beside him checked the dressing. “Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Isolde turned sharply. “I have enough emotionally compromised men in my life without the two of you bonding over murder.”
Corwin gave her a tired look. “I got shot protecting you. I think I earned one uncomplicated opinion.”
“You earned medical treatment.”
“I was hoping for slightly more.”
“You'll live.”
The medic looked toward Isolde. “Assuming he stops moving the arm every time he wants to make a point.”
Corwin looked offended. “I talk with my hands.”
“You bleed with them too.”
Taddeo almost smiled.
The medic examining Taddeo's side chose that moment to pull the temporary dressing tighter, which killed the impulse efficiently.
Isolde saw the reaction and came closer.
She stopped within arm's reach.
For a second Taddeo thought she might touch him.
She did not.
The absence mattered, but it did not feel like rejection.
Too much remained unresolved for either of them to use crisis as permission to pretend otherwise.
“Taddeo.” Her voice had changed, becoming quieter while activity continued around them. “What happened after you found Lelio?”
“He ran out of places to go.”
“That isn't what I mean.”
Taddeo understood.
“He talked.” Taddeo looked past her toward the dark terminal before returning to her face. “Mostly about Cesare. My father. The underboss position. He believed the Family owed him what I have.”
“Did he say you were weak because of me?”
Taddeo paused.
Isolde read the answer anyway.
“Of course he did.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Taddeo's brow tightened. “And what?”
“What did you tell him?”
Taddeo considered the question because the exchange with Lelio had already begun settling into memory, everything unnecessary falling away until only the part that mattered remained. “He said I chose you over catching him.”
Isolde's expression went very still.
“I told him yes.”
Her lips parted slightly.
Taddeo continued before the words could become something larger than the truth. “He thought I should apologize for it.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Cold air moved through the open warehouse bay behind her.
Isolde looked down briefly.
When she raised her eyes again, there was too much emotion inside them for Taddeo to identify one piece cleanly.
“You could have lost him.”
“Yes.”
“You could have lost your position over what you did tonight.”
“Yes.”
“Cesare could still decide you crossed a line.”
“Yes.”
A faint, exhausted irritation entered her face. “I hate when you do that.”
“You ask questions with clear answers.”
“That doesn't mean every answer should contain one syllable.”
Taddeo glanced toward the medic preparing another dressing. “I am currently bleeding. I am conserving language.”
Isolde almost laughed.
The sound failed halfway and became something more fragile.
Taddeo wanted to touch her.
He did not.
Not yet.
Marco approached from the warehouse with his phone in one hand and the fatigue of a man who had spent the past hour discovering exactly how many different problems one terminal could contain.
“Cesare is on his way. Mauro is also apparently trying to come here, and Orsino has threatened to have him shot at the gate if he arrives before we finish sorting prisoners.”
“Reasonable,” Taddeo said.
Marco nodded toward Russo's position. “Russo is talking enough to confirm Lelio paid him separately from normal Bellandi compensation. He hasn't given details about the museum yet, but when I mentioned the ring, he stopped pretending he had never been there.”
Isolde's jaw tightened.
“That will hold,” Taddeo said. “Keep him isolated.”
Marco looked toward Corwin. “The financial team says the money remains recoverable. They need Corwin conscious for final control changes.”
Corwin lifted his good hand from the medical vehicle. “Still conscious, disappointingly.”
“Nobody asked,” Marco replied.
That interaction was apparently enough to convince Taddeo that the immediate Bellandi operation would continue functioning without him for approximately five minutes.
He looked back at Isolde.
She remained in front of him.
The terminal around them had begun moving toward aftermath, but neither of them had.
Isolde glanced toward Corwin, then toward Orsino, the evidence, and the men being secured along the eastern wall. When she looked at Taddeo again, the question in her expression carried everything that had begun on Mercer Street.
Corwin had returned.
The money was coming back.
The conspiracy inside the Bellandis had been exposed.
Lelio was dead.
The original reason for taking her no longer existed.
The later reason for keeping her under protection was collapsing with it.
Even the brother who once promised to rescue her now sat twenty feet away having finally learned that wanting to protect Isolde did not mean deciding where she went afterward.
Isolde folded her arms slowly against the cold. “What happens to me now?”
Taddeo had once been unable to answer that question.
He remembered the first night at Northglass, her asking what happened if Corwin never returned and Taddeo offering nothing because freedom had never entered the equation except as something he could grant once her usefulness ended.
Every answer afterward had become another version of the same mistake: when the danger was over, when the investigation was finished, when Corwin was found, when Cesare agreed, when Taddeo believed the world had become safe enough.
For the first time, none of those conditions mattered.
Taddeo looked at the woman he loved and knew exactly what came next.
“You decide.”