Chapter 38 Isabella #2
You don’t get to rewrite that, I think, staring at Domenico. You don’t get to control this narrative. Out loud, I say, “You’re wrong.”
He tilts his head. “About what?”
“About him. About me. About what he’ll carry,” I say. “You can try to make us into props in your tragic little opera, but we’re not your chorus. We’re not your audience. We’re the people who’ll be standing over your grave when this is done.”
His eyes flash, just for a moment, with something that looks like respect and irritation spliced together.
“It’s a shame,” he says. “You’d have done well in our world. Not like my sister. She didn’t have the stomach for it. She turned my best friend into a weak man, and in so doing, took everything from me.”
“I think I’m doing just fine in mine, and she’d be ashamed of you,” I reply.
I see his eye tic at my words. He shakes his head, almost fondly. “We’ll see how much you’re still saying that when the smoke starts.” He turns to Orlov. “You know what to do.”
Orlov nods. “I’ll be right behind you.”
They leave together, the men at the door falling in behind them like shadows. A new man steps in their place, stockier, with a face like a mangled fist and eyes that slide away from mine.
He shuts the door. I hear the lock turn.
Silence drops, heavy and sudden.
It lasts exactly forty seconds.
Then there’s a faint scratching sound. A chemical tang hits my nose, sharp and wrong. I move to the door, press my ear against it, then jerk back, coughing, as smoke threads in around the edges.
Panic claws at my throat.
They’re really doing it.
They’re going to burn the building and me with it.
For a heartbeat, every atom in me is twelve years old again, standing in the rain staring at the spot where my father fell, deaf to everything but my mother’s sobs.
No.
The word lands in my chest with a thud.
No.
Not this time.
Not like this.
I spin, scanning the room with new eyes.
Fire needs fuel. Air. Time.
I don’t know how much of them I have.
There’s a wardrobe, heavy and old, that looks like it weighs more than I do. A dressing table. The bed. The drapes. All flammable, all wrong.
The windows look original, though. Old glass in thick frames. If they’ve been painted shut over the years, I’m in trouble. If they haven’t…
I cross to the nearest one and yank the curtains aside. The latch is stiff but not immovable. My fingers fumble on the cold metal, slipping once, twice, then catching. I force it up.
The window grudgingly gives.
Cold air rushes in, biting my lungs but blessedly clear. Smoke curls past my ankles, snaking across the floor.
The drop isn’t far, one story, maybe, onto a flat strip of roof over a lower level. From there, if I can find a way down…
No time to overthink.
I grab the heavy quilt off the bed and fling it onto the sill, padding the edge.
For a second, I picture Nico’s face if he could see this. He’d have a heart attack and a lecture lined up for me at the bottom.
“Sorry,” I mutter to nobody, and jump.
The impact jars my bones, sends a crack of pain through my ribs, but I stay upright. The roof is graveled, the stones sliding under my feet. I catch myself on my hands, skin scraping.
Behind me, smoke is pouring out of the open window now, thickening from light gray to a darker gray. Heat licks at the back of my neck.
I scramble to my feet and run.
There’s a low ledge at the edge of the roof. Beyond it, a trellis climbs up from the ground, twined with the bare knots of what might be roses in summer. It looks fragile as hell, but it’s something.
I swing myself over the edge, gripping the wooden slats with both hands. It creaks, complaining, but holds.
“Hold it together,” I whisper to the trellis, to myself, to the world.
I climb down, feet slipping, palms burning, smoke chasing me in slow waves. By the time I drop the last few feet to the ground, my lungs are aching.
I stagger, catch myself on the side of the building, and look back.
The cottage, because that’s what it is, a large, ornate cottage attached to something bigger, is belching smoke from two windows. Flames are licking at the curtains inside, orange tongues tasting the glass.
For one awful second, I imagine being on the other side of that, choking. Then I make myself stop. You got out. Move.
There’s a gravel path leading away from the cottage, curving around hedges that have been clipped into submission. In the distance, I can see the main house, all stone and big windows and history. Beyond that, the faint suggestion of a gate.
I have no idea where Domenico and Orlov are now. On their way to the dock, if the timeline matches what they were bragging about, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t men left behind.
I don’t want to run screaming into the open and hand them the satisfaction of shoving me back into the flames.
I duck low and follow the hedge line, keeping to the shadows.
The air is cold, biting at my hair and sweat-soaked skin. Every breath tastes like smoke and determination.
This is not how I thought today would go when I got up this morning.
But as my feet crunch on gravel and my heart knocks against my ribs, something settles under the panic, unexpected and solid.
I’m not abandoned.
I’m not back in that alley, watching someone die and doing nothing.
I made it out of that room on my own. If I never see Domenico again, he doesn’t get to tell the story of how I died.
And Nico. I picture his face, the way it looked the first time he said I was his, like he’d set something on fire inside himself and decided to watch it burn.
If he kept any part of what happened to my father from me, I know in my bones it wasn’t to manipulate me into this position. It was to spare me a fresh wound. To keep me from tipping into that old grief and drowning there.
He doesn’t get everything right. He’s not supposed to. But the man I’ve come to know, the one who lets his niece fall asleep on his chest, who still checks locks out of habit because his father taught him to, wouldn’t stand by while his uncle took credit for mercy he doesn’t own.
I believe that.
I hold onto it like a rope.
A sound cuts through the crackle of fire behind me, a low growl of an engine on the other side of the property. Tires on gravel. A car door slamming, hard.
I stop, heart thudding.
Then I hear it: my name ripped out of someone’s throat, raw and frantic.
“Isabella!”
It’s Nico.
Every part of me snaps toward the sound.
I run.