Epilogue
Taddeo
Four months after Isolde drove back through the Northglass gates of her own free will, Taddeo discovered a nineteenth-century brass compass disassembled across the library table where he normally reviewed Bellandi financial reports.
Its wooden case sat open on a padded conservation mat beside several tools that looked too delicate to accomplish anything useful, two museum journals, a small row of labeled containers, and the freight summary Marco expected him to read before morning, while one of Isolde’s sweaters hung over the back of Taddeo’s usual chair as though she had lived here long enough to forget that the room had once belonged almost entirely to him.
Months earlier, he could tell when somebody moved something on his desk by less than an inch; now her books appeared between his reports, coffee mugs migrated through the house in ways Elettra blamed entirely on Isolde despite considerable evidence against Taddeo himself, and the workroom beside the western terrace had accumulated enough conservation equipment that Elettra had begun referring to it as the laboratory with the grave disapproval of someone who believed dangerous chemicals were acceptable only when used for cleaning.
Taddeo stood in the library doorway studying the compass until Elettra appeared behind him carrying folded linens and followed his attention toward the table.
“If you’re about to complain, don’t. She spent half of dinner yesterday explaining why whoever planned to turn that thing into a lamp deserved criminal prosecution, and I do not have the energy to hear both sides.
” Taddeo told her he had not been planning to complain as he rescued the freight report from beneath one of Isolde’s museum journals, then asked where Isolde was.
Elettra’s expression immediately became knowing enough to irritate him.
“Upstairs changing for Cesare’s dinner, and yes, she drove herself home from the museum.
I thought I would save you the effort of pretending that wasn’t the next question. ”
“I was going to ask whether she’d eaten.
” Taddeo looked down at the report rather than give Elettra the satisfaction of seeing that she had been right, but the older woman merely shifted the linens in her arms and told him Isolde had eaten at the museum with Linnea before leaving.
When Taddeo remarked that this answered a question he had not yet asked either, Elettra smiled with the serene confidence of someone who had survived too many years in Northglass to fear an underboss’s irritation and walked away before he could improve the argument.
Northglass had changed in ways considerably larger than scattered books.
Isolde still kept the bedroom that had first been assigned to her as a captive, although she slept in Taddeo’s room most nights, and her apartment in Crownport remained hers despite the fact that she used it only when late museum work, plans with Linnea, or simple preference made staying in the city more convenient.
Taddeo had questioned the expense exactly once and learned, through an argument involving three Bellandi holding companies, Northglass’s ownership structure, and the moral absurdity of a man with multiple properties criticizing a woman for retaining one apartment, that he possessed no persuasive authority on unnecessary real estate.
Her keys remained on her own ring, her original phone remained connected only to the accounts she chose, her car lived wherever she happened to leave it, and nobody at the Northglass gate required permission from Taddeo before allowing her to drive away.
Her career had returned fully too. Crownport Maritime took her back with considerably less drama than the Bellandis had created around removing her from it, and after several arguments about waterfront security, Taddeo and Isolde eventually reached a compromise that neither of them considered ideal enough to qualify as surrender: when a specific threat justified protection, one discreet plainclothes guard could remain nearby, a vehicle could be made available without becoming mandatory, and Taddeo could not announce new restrictions without first showing her the information that caused his concern.
He still disliked negotiated security because negotiation required accepting that somebody could look at the same danger he saw and choose differently.
He also trusted Isolde’s agreement more than he had ever trusted obedience he could force.
At six-thirty, she entered his office wearing a dark green dress beneath a black coat, her mother’s scarf folded loosely around her throat, and Taddeo caught himself looking first at the dress before noticing the car keys in one hand and her phone in the other.
Isolde saw the direction of his attention anyway and crossed toward him with the faint smile that usually meant she had found something irritating enough to enjoy.
“If this is about the dress, you may continue staring. If it’s about the fact that I drove myself home from the museum, we have already had that argument and I won.
” Taddeo slid one hand around her waist after she reached him and told her it was the dress, then reminded her that she had left a disassembled compass across his library table.
“Our library,” Isolde corrected while straightening his tie and smoothing his collar with the absent familiarity that still affected him more than he admitted.
“Also, the compass belongs to me, not the museum, so you can stop imagining I’ve begun transporting accessioned artifacts into organized-crime residences.
” Taddeo told her he had not been imagining anything of the sort, which earned him the look she reserved for lies too transparent to deserve serious argument.
She kissed him once before stepping back, then announced that Cesare had told her Mauro promised to behave through dinner and she wanted to witness the inevitable failure personally.
The private Bellandi dinner occupied the same dining room where Isolde had once sat beside Taddeo as collateral and watched powerful people make ordinary conversation around the possibility that her brother might die.
Tonight she arrived in her own car, handed her coat to Cesare’s staff because she wanted to be there, and took her seat with the ease of a woman nobody in the room mistook for leverage anymore.
Cesare greeted her with a kiss against one cheek before glancing toward Taddeo and observing that her continued voluntary return suggested his underboss had not yet become completely intolerable.
Isolde told him Taddeo remained a work in progress, while Mauro raised his wine across the table and announced that everyone preferred her to Taddeo anyway.
“Preference is easy when the alternative personally audited more than a million dollars you stole from Cesare.” Taddeo pulled out Isolde’s chair before taking his own, and Mauro immediately objected that he had been cleared of the important theft and that the other money should be considered a separate issue.
Isolde unfolded her napkin and asked whether he rehearsed that sentence before every family dinner, while Orsino reached for the wine with a sigh and observed that rehearsal implied shame, a quality Mauro continued to resist developing despite repeated opportunities.
Dinner moved with the peculiar ease Isolde had learned to recognize in Bellandi spaces, where family conversation and criminal administration shared a table without anyone acknowledging the transition.
Cesare asked after a grandson at university, one capo complained about a construction inspector becoming expensive, somebody discussed a christening scheduled for the following month, and Mauro received two separate warnings not to reopen the subject of his audit before dessert.
Taddeo listened to a city-council discussion affecting waterfront redevelopment while Isolde argued with Orsino over whether a nineteenth-century restoration could still be considered historical if the restoration itself had now become more than a century old.
She never pretended the environment had become morally ordinary simply because she had learned how to exist inside it.
She knew what Taddeo was, knew what Cesare was, and understood perfectly well what the men around the table did when money, influence, loyalty, and violence intersected.
She had stayed without demanding that Taddeo become innocent enough to make loving him easier, and the choice meant more to him than absolution ever could have.
Dessert had just arrived when Isolde’s phone vibrated beside her plate.
Corwin’s name appeared across the screen, and Taddeo felt his mood deteriorate automatically enough that Isolde noticed before she even opened the message.
“You haven’t said anything yet, but your face is already objecting.
Try restraint; apparently it is a skill people can learn.
” Taddeo asked what Corwin wanted while Orsino hid visible amusement behind his coffee cup, and Isolde read long enough for her own expression to shift from teasing toward concentration.
Corwin remained outside Crownport under the terms of his exile, alive, professionally inconvenienced, and apparently determined to become irritating from several states away.
He and Isolde spoke once or twice a week now, rebuilding a relationship that no longer depended upon her treating his intentions as evidence that his decisions were automatically acceptable.
Taddeo disliked him with admirable consistency, although even he had to admit Corwin had become marginally better at asking before advising and had so far resisted the temptation to design another private financial operation involving stolen mafia money.