Chapter 16
Sabine
The alarm shrieked through the walls, drilling into my skull until it felt like my bones carried the sound.
Ellie’s order to stay put still rang in my ears, but she was gone, boots pounding down the stairs.
The library door gaped open, leaving me in the roar of that siren and the thunder of movement below.
I clenched the armrests to anchor myself, lungs straining for air that tasted of dust and old leather. Every instinct said to move, to follow, but the shriek pinned me in place as surely as if the door had been locked.
This wasn’t a drill. If they were reacting with that kind of urgency, then something was out there. Something close enough to shatter the illusion of safety I had barely begun to trust. And I was alone with it.
I could hear movement through the house and wondered what was happening out there.
Closing my eyes only made the alarm drill harder, pressing images of each of the women into my head.
Kara, shoulders squared, voice like cut glass.
She gave orders sharp enough to bite. She moved through a room with every step measured like it had been rehearsed.
There was nothing casual in her, nothing that allowed slack.
And where did that leave me? On crutches, ankle swollen, dependent.
A flaw. Women like her didn’t tolerate flaws.
My mind slid to Cam, and the heat that still clung to me from the bathroom.
Her silence had been heavier than a command, her words few but direct, wrapping around me until I gave in without realizing it.
She had bent me with hardly any effort at all, and I had let her.
The thought made my stomach twist. If she could push me that fast, if she could steer me with nothing more than quiet direction, what else could she take from me?
What else could she demand, and how quickly would I yield before I even understood what was happening?
I tried to push the memory aside, but Ellie’s face broke through next.
I pictured her crouched in front of me, unwinding the bandage without preamble, her hands steady and professional as if I were no more than a field dressing.
Her efficiency had cut deep, colder than her scolding words.
When she caught me on the stairs, she had treated me like a problem to be solved, not a person to be considered.
And yet, when she kissed me, touched me on the stairs, just for a second, something had slipped.
A spark under all that ice. I didn’t know if that made her safer than the others or more dangerous.
A woman who could keep herself that tightly bound might snap in ways I could not predict.
Their faces crowded me. Kara’s sharpness, Cam’s silence, Ellie’s control.
I was surrounded by strength that had already proven it could contain me.
I had stepped into this house thinking I could maneuver, that I could stay on guard.
The truth pressed harder with every second the siren screamed.
I was at their mercy, and I didn’t know yet if any of them had it to give.
My mind wandered. Ugly details from my research into the Bellante family floated to the top, unbidden.
The family in New Jersey, gone overnight, neighbors whispering about suitcases in the dark.
An accountant pulled from the river weeks apart, his mouth filled with silt and his ledgers gone with the waves.
One photograph had never let me go. A man collapsed on the floor of his own living room, his throat cut wide.
His wife and two children slumped against the wall, each with a single bullet hole neat between the eyes.
Their faces were frozen in shock, the blood spray bright against the pale paint behind them.
Punishment under the Bellante name never missed its target. I had charted the patterns, lined them up against arrests and disappearances, and the conclusion had always been the same. They made examples, and those examples stayed permanent.
I had stared at that image until I couldn’t eat, until I had seen it when I closed my eyes.
I told myself it was fuel, that I had to see the truth if I wanted to write it.
But now, alone in this house with the alarm screaming, I felt the weight of it pressing close.
If the Bellantes could erase entire family for one man’s disloyalty, what chance did I have if I was sitting within their reach?
My pulse matched the alarm’s pitch, my body braced though there was nowhere to run. Every blast felt like foreshadowing, as if the sound itself was spelling out what I had known from the start. It was not a question of whether their reach would find me, but when.
I pressed my palms harder into the velvet chair, breath shallow.
The house had seemed like a fortress when I first arrived, stone and locks and women with rifles on every wall.
Now it felt like the gates of a prison, a cage waiting to be breached.
I had thought I could use the Bellante family as a story, hold them at a distance with facts and interviews and paper trails.
Instead, I was sitting in their silence, hearing the siren carry the echo of my own name.
I couldn’t sit still anymore. The chair felt like it would swallow me whole if I stayed pinned there, so I pushed myself upright, fumbling for the crutches.
They rattled against the carpet as I wedged them under my arms, the motion clumsy, but forward was better than frozen.
Every swing of my body felt unsteady, but I forced it, one stride at a time, until I reached the tall windows that lined the far wall.
The glass stretched far above my head, the view beyond washed in pale light.
Land unrolled in every direction, wide and endless.
The tree line pressed thick against the horizon, dark and close-knit, swallowing the edges of the property.
No road in sight. No gate. Nothing that suggested an outside world existed past the forest.
The realization closed in sharp. Even if I screamed, even if I shattered the glass and cried until my throat tore, no one out there would hear.
The sound would die against the trees, just another echo swallowed by the night.
I was sealed inside with them, my world narrowed to stone walls and locked doors, my life hanging on women I didn’t fully trust.
My grip tightened on the crutches until the pads dug into my ribs.
Panic surged in a dizzy rush, my breath shallow against the rise in my chest. I made myself inhale, slow, pulling air deep enough to keep from collapsing under it.
The window gave me nothing but the proof of my isolation, so I turned back, dragging my gaze across the library.
Shelves climbed to the ceiling, stuffed with volumes that smelled of dust and old paper. The velvet chairs hunched in the corners like silent witnesses. My eyes swept the room again, searching for any distraction, any anchor that could hold me steady against the certainty pressing in.
My gaze caught on a shelf of leather-bound books. Their spines gleamed with gold embossing, the surface worn smooth by years of hands pulling them free. The detail that stopped me was a small but sharp monogram: a curling “B”—ornate and looping, stamped into every single spine.
I hobbled closer, the crutches awkward on the rug. My palm brushed the bindings, the leather cool under my fingertips. My stomach had already dropped, my body recognizing what my mind tried to argue away.
I slid one of the volumes from the row. My fingers traced the gilt design again, the pattern so familiar it made my throat close.
I had seen it before, inked into margins of ledgers pulled from the box my source had given me.
Papers that never should have left the family’s hands.
The same curling mark, bold and proud, crowning pages that tracked money and blood alike.
The book felt heavy as I fumbled it open. On the inside cover was a name stamped into the leather: Isabella Bellante.
I slid the book back onto the shelf with a shaking hand.
My breath caught sharp, and the room spun with the force of my pulse.
I lurched for the door. The hallway stretched ahead, dim but open.
I forced my body forward, each swing of the crutches clumsy, unsteady, my ankle flaring in protest. Urgency shoved me past the pain.
I needed answers, and I needed them now.
The stairwell came into view, shadows broken by the harsh sweep of the overhead light. Ellie stood at the top, rifle gripped tight, her shoulders squared to the world below. Tension radiated from her. Every line of her frame was coiled and sharp.
“Ellie! There are books—” The words tore out of me before I could catch my breath. “In the library. Bellante books. With their mark. Why are they here?”
Her head turned, eyes cutting toward me like steel, then back down the stairs. “You don’t understand,” she said, voice clipped. “Get back in the library until we clear the alarm.”
Dismissal. Cold, absolute.
My chest seized. If she wouldn’t explain, it was because she couldn’t. Because what I had seen was true. My mind reeled through the faces I had studied, the crimes I had traced, the bloodlines marked with that crest. And now it sat on the shelves around me, stamped on books they kept close.
They were with the Bellante family.
The thought hollowed me out even as the alarm roared on. I had walked into the lion’s den and told myself it was shelter. I had let them touch me, feed me, carry me, and every step had been deeper into their grip.
I leaned against the wall, trying to slow my spinning mind.
Boots scuffed against the floor below, doors slamming, voices carrying sharp and low.
Kara barked something I couldn’t make out.
Cam’s deeper reply trailed after it. The rhythm of their return sent a tremor through the house, order snapping back into place as they moved.
Ellie moved onto the stairs, talking to the others as though I hadn’t interrupted her at all.
Then another voice joined them. Different. Familiar.
The sound sliced down my spine, freezing me where I stood.
It was threaded with command, but I knew it before the words even registered.
The cadence was burned into me, electric and unmistakable.
My fingers bit harder into the wood rail as the alarm was suddenly silenced.
The house seemed to exhale, but my chest stayed locked.
I leaned forward, peering through the slats of the banister.
The foyer stretched open below, the heavy door swinging shut on a gust of night air.
Kara stripped her weapon harness loose, Cam shaking out her shoulders as if the false alarm had left its mark.
They moved like they belonged here, solid and sure.
And then she stepped into view.
The overhead light caught her in the center of the foyer, the curves of her body sharp against the pale tile.
She wasn’t just another soldier coming in from the cold.
She was the presence I had tried to bury in memory, the voice I heard in my sleep.
Recognition slammed into me, hot and cold at once.
My pulse spiked, every nerve on fire. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t breathe past the weight of it. The chaos below quieted as the women reset, rifles checked, voices dropping low. She was in the middle of it, not apart but central, as if the space had been waiting for her to return.
I gripped the railing until my knuckles ached, fighting the urge to scream, to demand an answer that wouldn’t come. The sound stayed locked in my chest, silent and jagged.
Fuck. What was she doing here?