The safehouse was a weathered cottage two
hours up the coast, tucked behind a wall of
scrub pine so thick it was invisible from the
road unless you knew exactly where to turn. It
had been bought under a shell company decades earlier, back when Salvatore was still
building his empire instead of defending it, and
forgotten by everyone except the man who
now needed it to not exist.
Isabella hadn't spoken since Romeo told her in
the car. Not out of shock — she had grown up
in this world; she understood exactly what a
contract meant, had understood it since she
was old enough to notice which of her father's
associates stopped showing up to family
dinners — but out of a colder, more familiar
fury. The particular fury of a woman who has
spent her whole life being managed instead of
informed.
"He's done this before," she finally said, once
they'd unloaded the car and she was standing
on the porch staring out at the dark water. Her
arms were crossed so tightly it looked like she
was holding herself together by force. "Made a
mess of something, and then sent me away so
he doesn't have to look at what he built while it
burns."
"This time the mess is coming for you." Romeo
checked the perimeter lock on the gate for the third time, a habit his hands performed without
asking his mind's permission first. "That's
different, Isabella."
"Is it?" She turned, and in the moonlight coming
off the water she looked older than twenty-four
— tired in a way that money had never been
able to fix, that all the guards and gates and
privilege in the world had never once
addressed. "I've been collateral damage my
whole life. I just usually don't get told about it
in advance. Usually I find out years later, in a
newspaper, or from someone who thinks I
already know."
He didn't have an answer for that, so he did the
only useful thing he knew how to do. He
walked the property twice, checked every
window and door, set the motion sensors he'd
brought in his duffel bag, and then he sat
outside her bedroom door that night on a hard
wooden chair he'd dragged in from the kitchen,
and he stayed there until dawn without once
closing his eyes.
She found him there in the morning, still
awake, coffee gone cold on the floor beside him. She didn't say anything. She just brought
him a fresh cup and sat down on the floor
across from him, back against the opposite
wall, and for a while they just breathed the
same quiet air, two people who hadn't yet
decided what they were to each other.