Chapter 7 - The Answer He Never Gave
Isabella listened to the tape six times.
Each time, the final words sounded worse.
Too late.
Marcus had been barely twenty-five when Javier died.
Already involved.
Already dangerous.
Already close enough to her father to appear on a private recording.
Maya took the tape for forensic analysis.
“We’ll authenticate it.”
“How long?” Isabella asked.
“Forty-eight hours, maybe less.”
“I don’t have forty-eight hours.”
“You do if you want something admissible.”
Alessandro stood nearby.
“He’s right,” Maya added. “Marcus wants you reacting emotionally.”
Isabella folded her arms.
“Everyone keeps telling me what Marcus wants.”
“Because predictable enemies are useful.”
Alessandro finally spoke.
“And Marcus is predictable.”
Isabella looked at him.
“Is he?”
“Yes.”
“What does he want now?”
“You afraid.”
“Not happening.”
“I know.”
“What else?”
Alessandro hesitated.
“You isolated.”
That landed.
Marcus had spent months creating pressure around her business.
Then the ballroom incident.
Then surveillance.
Threats involving Sofia.
Daniel.
Every move pushed Isabella toward distrust.
Toward believing everyone around her might betray her.
Even Alessandro.
Especially Alessandro.
Later that night, back at the estate, Isabella found Alessandro in the old library.
The same library where she had studied at sixteen.
He stood beside a window holding her letter.
“You carry that around now?”
“No.”
“Then why is it here?”
“I was reading it.”
“After twenty years, suddenly you need a refresher?”
He looked at the pages.
“I read it every year.”
The statement stole her next sarcastic remark.
“What?”
“Usually in July.”
“Why July?”
“You wrote it July seventeenth.”
“You remember the date?”
“Yes.”
She stared.
“Why?”
His voice softened.
“Because it was the first time anyone told me they loved me without wanting something.”
Isabella’s chest tightened.
“I never wrote I loved you.”
“You wrote around it for three pages.”
She almost smiled.
Then remembered.
“And you still said nothing.”
Alessandro folded the letter carefully.
“Do you want the truth?”
“I’ve wanted it for twenty years.”
“The night your father confronted me, I told him I would wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For you to grow up.”
Her breath caught.
“He said waiting would still make you a target.”
“So you agreed to disappear.”
“Yes.”
“That was your brilliant plan?”
“I was twenty.”
“Old enough to know silence hurts.”
“I knew.”
“Then why?”
“Because your father showed me the photograph.”
The surveillance image.
THE GIRL IS HIS WEAKNESS.
“I thought if everyone believed you meant nothing to me, they would leave you alone.”
Isabella’s eyes burned.
“Did it work?”
“For years.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No.”
She walked toward the bookshelf.
“You know what I thought?”
“What?”
“That you laughed.”
Alessandro’s face tightened.
“With your friends. About the stupid girl who wrote you a letter.”
“I never showed it to anyone.”
“I spent years imagining you did.”
“I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes.
The apology arrived twenty years late.
It still found the exact place it belonged.
“I hated you.”
“I know.”
“I tried very hard.”
“I know.”
“I hated that too.”
He stepped closer.
“Isabella.”
She looked at him.
“What would you have written back?”
The question seemed to surprise him.
Then frighten him.
“Don’t ask me that.”
“I’m asking.”
He remained silent.
She stepped closer.
“Twenty-year-old Alessandro. What would you have written?”
He looked at the pages.
Finally:
“I would have told you that you were too young.”
“That’s responsible.”
“I would have told you I couldn’t promise anything.”
“Less romantic.”
“I would have told you to go live your life.”
“I did.”
“I know.”
“And?”
His voice dropped.
“And I would have told you that if we ever met again when you were older, and if you still looked at me the same way…”
He stopped.
Isabella’s heartbeat pounded.
“What?”
“I would have asked you to let me take you to dinner.”
She laughed.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
She wiped it angrily.
“All that misery for dinner?”
“It would have been a very good dinner.”
Another laugh escaped.
Alessandro smiled.
Actually smiled.
It transformed him.
For one second she saw the young man she remembered.
Then Sofia appeared in the doorway.
“Mommy?”
Isabella stepped back immediately.
“What are you doing awake?”
“I had a dream.”
She held a stuffed rabbit Rosa had found somewhere.
Isabella crouched.
“Bad?”
Sofia nodded.
“Come here.”
She picked her up.
Sofia rested her head on Isabella’s shoulder.
Then looked at Alessandro.
“You made Mommy cry.”
He looked horrified.
Isabella almost laughed again.
“It’s okay.”
“You said boys who make girls cry are trouble.”
“I did say that.”
Sofia pointed at Alessandro.
“You’re trouble.”
“Yes,” he replied. “I’m beginning to understand that.”
Sofia reached toward him.
“Carry Bunny.”
He took the stuffed rabbit.
And the sight of Alessandro Vieri—the man half the eastern seaboard feared—walking behind a sleepy four-year-old while carrying a pink rabbit nearly broke something inside Isabella.
She put Sofia back to bed.
When she returned downstairs, Alessandro’s security chief waited.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“We intercepted a message.”
He handed over a phone.
Marcus had sent Isabella a photograph.
It showed parcel seven.
Taken that evening.
Someone standing inside the construction site.
Below it:
MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.
COME ALONE.
I’LL TELL YOU HOW YOUR FATHER REALLY DIED.
Alessandro read it.
“No.”
Isabella took the phone.
“Yes.”
“You are not meeting him alone.”
“He thinks I will.”
“He may kill you.”
“He may.”
Alessandro’s eyes flashed.
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“It terrifies me.”
“Then why?”
“Because scared doesn’t mean stupid.”
She handed the phone back.
“I’m going.”
May you like
Alessandro stared.
“And you’re going to help me make Marcus believe I’m alone.”
