Chapter Thirty-Six #2
“I thought keeping you ignorant about the theft protected you, and then I put the archive in a book I gave you anyway.” Corwin looked down at the concrete between them before continuing.
“I thought arranging an escape protected you, and then I wrote an agreement saying you went into my custody without ever asking whether you wanted to. I kept doing the exact thing I accused Malfatti of doing.”
Isolde’s hands stopped against his coat.
Corwin glanced across the garage toward Taddeo, who waited near the elevator beside Marco, far enough away that he could not hear them without making the effort obvious. “For the record, I still don’t like him.”
“That isn’t relevant to anything I do next.
” Isolde let go of Corwin’s coat and looked at him directly.
“You’re allowed to hate him. You’re allowed to think loving him is the worst decision I’ve ever made, although given your recent history I would recommend approaching that competition cautiously. ”
Corwin exhaled a quiet laugh before his expression sobered again. “I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did.” Isolde’s anger remained, but it no longer needed to erase the relief of seeing him alive. “I love you. I also don’t trust you the way I used to, and I have no idea how long it takes to repair that.”
The hurt in his face was immediate.
She did not soften the truth.
“Fair.” Corwin rubbed his thumb over the seam of his sling and looked away briefly. “I hate that answer.”
“You are allowed to hate it. You are not allowed to decide I must mean something easier because the real answer hurts.”
His tired smile returned. “You have become exhausting.”
“I was always exhausting. You simply thought being three years older gave you editorial control.”
“Three years used to feel more impressive.” He looked over her shoulder again, toward Taddeo this time, then returned his attention to her. “Are you staying with him?”
Isolde followed his gaze.
Taddeo was speaking quietly to Marco and making an almost convincing attempt not to watch her.
“I don’t know.” She let the answer remain exactly as uncertain as it was.
Corwin’s jaw tightened. “You love him.”
“Yes.” Isolde did not see any value in pretending otherwise now, and the admission seemed to age her brother several additional years in the space of a breath.
“That is going to take me some time.” Corwin opened the car door with his good hand, then stopped before getting inside as though remembering the rules of this newer relationship required deliberate concentration. “I am trying very hard not to tell you what I think you should do.”
“I noticed. Your forehead is doing something alarming.”
“That’s restraint.”
“It looks painful.”
“It is.” His expression softened. “If you ever need me, call me. I’ll answer this time.”
“That version I’ll accept.” Isolde stepped forward and hugged him carefully around the uninjured side, and Corwin held her with one arm while both of them pretended the possibility of not seeing each other for months did not make the goodbye harder.
“Don’t get clever again,” she murmured against his coat. “Whatever you think qualifies as clever now, reduce it by approximately eighty percent.”
“That feels restrictive.”
“It is intended to.”
Corwin kissed the top of her head, and when they separated, he looked as though there were another dozen warnings he wanted to give her. He kept all of them to himself, got into the car, and let the door close.
Isolde watched until the vehicle disappeared up the garage ramp.
Taddeo did not approach until she turned away.
“You all right?” he asked from several feet away, and nothing in the distance between them suggested he expected grief to grant him access to her body.
“No.” Isolde wiped beneath one eye with the heel of her hand and resented how familiar the gesture had become. “I think I will be eventually.”
Taddeo nodded.
When Isolde moved closer, he stayed where he was.
She slipped her hand into his.
Only then did his fingers close carefully around hers.
Northglass felt different when they returned that evening, although Isolde knew the estate itself had not changed enough to explain it.
The same gates opened in front of the Bellandi vehicle, the same long drive curved between dark coastal trees, and the same warm lights glowed across the front windows while Elettra presumably maintained the household with terrifying efficiency despite an armed terminal ambush, a dead capo, Corwin’s exile, and Taddeo being stabbed all within the previous two days. What had changed waited upstairs.
Isolde’s suitcase remained packed beside the bed.
Her boxes remained closed.
Nobody had unpacked her clothes, arranged her books, or decided that surviving Terminal Fourteen meant she automatically belonged at Northglass afterward. Even Elettra had left the room exactly as Isolde prepared it before the exchange.
She stood in the doorway staring at the suitcase until Taddeo stopped several feet behind her.
“We should talk,” she said.
“Yes.” His answer held no surprise, and instead of entering the bedroom or telling her where the conversation should happen, he remained in the corridor. “Come downstairs when you’re ready.”
Ten minutes later, Isolde entered the library and stopped.
The long table no longer held evidence.
It held her life.
Her original phone sat beside the active SIM card.
Her driver’s license and passport were stacked beneath it, followed by her apartment keys, museum identification, personal bank cards, unrestricted laptop, and the external drive containing the personal files Bellandi security copied during the weeks she lived here.
Near the far end of the table sat a familiar set of keys with the small brass museum charm she had attached years earlier.
“My car.” Isolde crossed toward the table and picked them up, feeling the familiar worn grooves beneath her fingers.
“Outside.” Taddeo stood near the fireplace instead of beside the things, as though he had intentionally placed himself where nobody could mistake him for the person handing them out conditionally. “It was moved from Crownport this afternoon.”
“The laptop restrictions?”
“Removed.”
“My phone?”
“Every Bellandi profile has been deleted. Marco gave me written confirmation because he believes you may interrogate him personally if anything suspicious appears.”
“That is sensible.” Isolde looked from the unrestricted phone to Taddeo and felt unease beginning beneath the relief. “What are you doing?”
His gaze held hers.
“Ending your captivity.”
The words should have produced something immediate.
Triumph.
Relief.
Anger.
Instead they left her strangely still.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Marco removed the custody instruction this morning, and Northglass security has been told you are not a Bellandi detainee, protected asset, responsibility, or any other phrase we used to avoid saying what was happening.” Taddeo’s expression remained controlled, though Isolde saw the tension in the hand resting loosely against his injured side.
“Your car is outside. The gate opens when you drive toward it. You can go to Mercer Street, the museum, Linnea’s house, a hotel, another city, or anywhere else you decide without asking me first.”
Her throat tightened. “Security?”
“None unless you request it or there is a specific threat we discuss together.”
“And if you believe there is a threat and I disagree?”
Taddeo’s mouth moved faintly. “Then we argue.”
Despite herself, Isolde nearly smiled.
He continued before she could. “If danger is immediate enough that there is literally no time to speak, I may still act. I am not going to pretend I can promise otherwise. But once there is time for choice again, the decision returns to you, and you are free to tell me exactly what you think about whatever I did.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about the last part.”
“No.” His mouth shifted slightly. “I don’t.”
Isolde touched the apartment keys.
“What do you expect from me now?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes lifted immediately.
Taddeo did not look away.
“You don’t expect me to stay.”
“I want you to stay.” His voice lowered slightly, and she saw how carefully he breathed around the wound beneath his shirt. “I don’t expect you to.”
A hollow ache opened beneath her ribs.
Part of her had imagined this moment differently.
Some deeply contradictory part of her wanted Taddeo to cross the room, put his hands around her waist, and tell her leaving was impossible because whatever they had become to each other had survived too much to be abandoned now.
She wanted the brutal certainty that had once infuriated her, but she wanted it only in a way he could no longer safely give.
“Ask me,” she said.
Taddeo became very still.
“Ask me to stay.”
His jaw tightened.
For a moment, Isolde thought he might.
Then he shook his head.
“No.”
Anger came immediately because hurt was faster than reason. “You love giving me what I ask for now until I finally ask for something inconvenient.”
“I love you.” Taddeo said it without moving, and the anger stopped because the confession still possessed the ability to rearrange the room around it. “That is why I’m not asking.”
Isolde swallowed.
“You have never had the chance to decide what you feel for me when you are completely free of me.” His gaze moved toward the keys in her hand and then returned to her face.
“You have lived inside my house, under my security, surrounded by my people, while every attempt to leave carried consequences I controlled. I am not asking you to build a life with me until you know what your life feels like when none of that is true.”
“You think I need to leave.”
“I think you need to be able to.”
The distinction hurt exactly where it should.
Isolde looked away. “And if I go and discover that I don’t come back?”
Taddeo took long enough to answer that she knew he was refusing himself the comfort of lying. “Then I live with it.”
“You won’t come after me?”
“No.”