Chapter 20 #2
I cross the room. I don’t reach for her. Instead I do the thing my body has never done in this office, in any room, in any year of my life. I sit down. On the floor. Back against the desk. Beside her chair, not in front of it.
She looks down at me. Red-eyed. Hollowed out. Confused.
I don’t explain. I don’t have the words for what I’m doing. I just stay. Not fixing it. Not pulling her toward me. Just here. Below her. Where she can look down at me for once.
She stares at me for three seconds. Then she drops down and sits beside me on the floor. Her shoulder against mine. Her back against the desk.
She fights it. One second. Her body rigid against my side. Fists pressed against her own thighs. The resistance of a woman who has held herself together alone and doesn’t know how to let go.
Then she stops. Her face presses into my shoulder. Then my chest. Her fists uncurl against my shirt.
She’s not crying. She’s trembling. A force that rattles through my own ribs. Her fingers grip my shirt. The trembling sharpens. Not grief. Recalculation.
I hold her. My chin above her head. My hand on the back of her skull. My other arm tight around her back.
“I’m going to handle it.” Low. Into her hair. Not asking permission.
She pulls back. Looks up at me. Destroyed. Red. Wet at the edges. But her eyes are clear. Hard. The hacker and the woman and the sister all occupy the same gaze.
“Find Sofia first.” A beat. Her jaw sets. “Then handle him.”
A command. From her. To me. Not a request. Not a negotiation. A directive forged from blood money and a sister she hasn’t stopped searching for since the day she disappeared.
I nod. Once.
She holds my gaze for three more seconds. Measuring. Making sure I heard it the way she meant it.
Then she turns. Crosses the room. Sits down. Opens the laptop I closed.
She’s shaking. But the keystrokes are precise.
The same fingers that gripped my shirt are tearing through databases at a speed I can’t track.
Running Paolo’s name through every system she has access to.
Building the full picture she missed. Financial records.
Phone logs. Travel history. Every digital footprint a man with a gambling problem leaves when he thinks nobody is watching.
Ghost is online. Sharpening the data. Turning the fury into queries and the blind spot into a search pattern that will leave no corner of Paolo Ferraro’s life unexamined.
I watch her for a beat. The tremor in her fingers that doesn’t slow the typing.
The set of her jaw. The absence of humor sitting in the room like a held breath.
No sarcasm. No running commentary. No jokes about the absurdity of her life or the irony of the situation or the man standing behind her chair.
When Isabella doesn’t joke, the silence has teeth.
I pull my phone from my pocket. Open a text to Dante.
Find Paolo Ferraro.
I send it. Put the phone away.
Behind me, her typing doesn’t stop.
She works for three hours. The rage fuels her first, then a colder precision takes over. Systematic. Every keystroke a scalpel. Paolo’s financial records. Phone logs. Travel patterns. Years of digital footprints she’d never traced, laid out across the screen in rows and rows of damning data.
I sit across from her. Read the files she sends to my side of the desk. Wait.
Around midnight, her fingers slow. The keystrokes spacing out. Her head dipping forward, catching, dipping again. The crash arriving the way it always does after adrenaline burns through. Her forehead hits the laptop. She jerks up. Blinks at the screen.
“I’m fine.” To nobody. To the air. Her eyes closing again.
I stand. Cross to her side. She doesn’t resist when I close the laptop. Doesn’t resist when I pull the chair back.
“Come on.”
She’s half-conscious. The grief and the fury and the hours of databases have wrung her dry. She stands and her legs fold and I catch her before she falls.
I carry her. Down the hallway. Past her door. To mine. Not a decision. Just the only place that makes sense now.
I set her down and she curls into the pillow and her hand finds my wrist.
“Stay.”
One word. Half asleep.
I stay. Her head finds my lap. Her hand settles over my chest. Over my heart. Holding me in place the way a person holds something they’re afraid will disappear.
I watch her sleep. The tear tracks dried on her cheeks. The tension eased from her jaw. The purple tips of her hair against the dark sheets. Younger in sleep. Unguarded. The woman under the code and the sarcasm and the guilt.
“Ti amo.” I love you. Barely a whisper. She doesn’t hear it. She’s already gone, breathing slow and deep against my chest.
But the words are in the room now. Out loud. Real.
Love. The word arrives without permission. Not a thought. A fact. Present before I named it. Already in my chest before I caught it.
My mother’s face flashes and fades. The last person I loved, I lost. The woman in my lap. The hand on my heart.
I stay.
Light from the early dawn bleeds through the curtains before I clock the shift. Two nights of real sleep and my reflexes are shot.
Marco doesn’t knock. The door hits the wall and he’s in the room before I can reach the Glock on the nightstand. He stops two steps inside. Eyes going wide. Isabella in my bed. My hand in her hair. Morning light through the window.
“I—” He blinks. Recalibrates. “Sorry. I didn’t—”
“Talk.”
He shakes it off. Whatever he was about to say about finding Isabella here dies behind his teeth.
“We just got word.” He’s breathing hard. Still in last night’s clothes. “The Benedettis are moving Sofia. Tonight. Six-hour window before she’s gone.”
Isabella is awake. I missed when it happened. Between Marco’s entrance and the word “Sofia,” she went from unconscious to upright. Eyes clear. The grief from hours ago replaced by steel.
“Where?” Her voice is raw. Steady.
Marco’s eyes find mine. I nod.
“Warehouse compound outside Slidell. Nico’s been squeezing the Benedetti driver we picked up at the port. Guy finally broke an hour ago. Dante’s already mobilizing.”
“Then we go.” She’s on her feet. Ghost. “Now.”
Marco’s eyes flick between us. Isabella in my shirt. My bed.
The scene he walked into that he’s trying very hard not to think about.
“One hour,” I say. “Get everyone.”
He nods. Backs out. The door closes.
Isabella is already moving. Pulling her hair up. Finding her shoes. The version of her that runs on caffeine and fury and sheer will.
She stops at the door. Turns back. Not soft. Not tender. Something fiercer than both.
“Sofia first,” she says. “Then Paolo.”
“Then Paolo.” I hold her gaze. “You have my word.”
She leaves. I sit on the edge of the bed. The sheets still warm where she was.
Then I get up. Get dressed.
Become what she needs me to be.