Chapter 9
Isabella finally gave me a location.
Not hers.
Matteo’s.
He had returned to New York three days earlier.
Victor went pale.
“How do you know?”
“I saw him.”
Silence.
That changed everything.
Isabella had not merely been hiding.
She had been watching.
Matteo met with three men at the Marlowe Hotel.
Again.
The same type of neutral ground powerful families used when they wanted distance from their own houses.
I asked Isabella why she had not told me sooner.
Her voice broke.
“Because I needed to know whether Victor would move against you or warn him.”
Victor stared at the phone.
She had been testing him.
The ringing urn was not simply contact.
It was a trap.
If Victor tried to flee after hearing her voice, he confirmed fear.
He had.
I looked at my brother.
“You were going to Matteo.”
He said nothing.
That was answer enough.
“Why?”
“To warn him.”
The guards moved.
I raised one hand.
Victor continued.
“Not because I’m with him.”
“Then why?”
“Because if Matteo knows Isabella reached you, he moves immediately.”
I considered that.
Possibly true.
Still unacceptable.
“You were going to warn the man who may have tried to kill me.”
“I was going to control the timing.”
There.
Victor’s addiction.
Control.
Always control.
Never trust.
Never tell.
Never allow anyone else to choose risk.
Isabella heard it too.
“That is exactly why I stayed away.”
Victor’s face hardened.
She continued.
“You still think everyone survives only if you decide what they know.”
Silence.
I looked at my brother.
May you like
For two years, he had mistaken managing information for protecting family.
He never understood that secrets can become cages even when built from fear.
