Chapter 132 -
Isadora waited until the door was closed, until Rosa's footsteps had gone all the way down the hall, until the house was as quiet as a house full of armed men and one secured prisoner could get at 5am. Then she sat up in bed and looked at Nia.
"Now, talk."
Nia was sitting in the armchair by the window with her knees drawn up. She had been waiting for this. She had known it was coming the moment Isadora lay down, because Isadora had never once in her life actually slept when there was something unresolved in the room.
"Where do you want me to start?"
"The beginning. The night they took you."
So Nia talked. She went through it without performing anything, without editing for comfort. The apartment, the gun, Leo's voice in the dark, the drive out to the mansion at the edge of Pearlbot with her hands shaking and her brain refusing to catch up. The Don at the dinner table, old and still and frightening. Lucia's amber eyes watching from across the room. Gabriel finding his way into her life before she had decided whether she liked any of them.
She talked about Andrea, about what it meant to be in a house built around grief. She talked about the night she found out Alex was dead, and the week she couldn't eat. She talked about the drunken night with Micheal and what she had done after, the knock on Leo's door, the way he had looked at her, the push, the morning of avoiding each other in the same hallway.
She talked about Santiago's revelation, the full architecture of it, and what it had done to her understanding of everything she had been living inside. She talked about the planning sessions and the mole and the panic button sewn into her waistband and walking through the east door of the warehouse alone.
She spoke for 40 minutes or maybe even more . Isadora listened the way she always listened, with the kind of attention that made people feel heard all the way down to the parts they hadn't quite said.
When Nia finished, Isadora was quiet for a moment.
"You kissed him," she said.
"That's what you pulled from forty minutes of…"
"I pulled all of it. I'm starting with the most important part." Isadora shifted to sit cross-legged. "You kissed him when you were drunk and he pushed you away and you avoided him for days and then when everything was on fire you walked into that building for your best friend and you said yes when he asked you to come back." She looked at Nia with unblinking precision. "How long have you been in love with him."
Nia looked at the window. The Pearlbot skyline was going pale blue at the top, first light coming up behind the buildings.
"I don't know when it started," she said. "I just know that when I thought about leaving, after the Don let me go with his men, the feeling I had wasn't relief. It was something else entirely."
"What was it?"
"Like I was leaving something behind that I hadn't finished yet."
Isadora absorbed this. "He loves you too," she said.
"You've known him for four hours."
"I watched him for four hours. That's enough." She held up a hand. "He came into that building after you. He didn't have to. He could have coordinated from outside the whole time. He walked in because you were in there and standing outside was not a possibility for him." Isadora tilted her head. "That's not professionalism. That's something else."
Nia said nothing. She didn't argue with it.
"There's the Christian situation," she said instead.
Isadora blinked. "What situation?"
"His wife, Lucia. They have a complicated—"
"Gabriel's mother? The one Gabriel talks about like she built the moon?"
"She's the Don's daughter. The marriage was arranged. They've been stuck together for six years and they've been fighting the whole time but lately it seems like something is shifting between them."
Isadora considered this. "And you're telling me this because—"
"Because you should know what you walked into," Nia said. "This isn't a normal household."
"Nia." Isadora gave her the particular look she saved for obvious statements. "You were kidnapped from your apartment on our anniversary. I know it isn't normal." She stretched her neck. "Does Christian love her?"
"He doesn't not love her."
"That's a yes with too many steps." Isadora glanced toward the window. "And Jordan... You told me what he said about Alex. Are you okay?"
Nia pulled her knees tighter. "I don't know what I am about Alex," she said. "He's dead. He was lied to by Santiago the same as everyone else. He wasn't who I thought he was, but he also wasn't entirely who I thought he wasn't." She paused. "That sentence made sense."
"Perfect sense," Isadora said. "He was just a person who made choices that hurt people. Same as everyone. You're allowed to be sad about him and angry at him at the same time."
"I know."
"Are you?"
"Yes," Nia said. "Both at the same time."
Isadora nodded. "Santiago is in this building."
"At the lower level with two guards inside and two outside. He's not going anywhere."
"What happens to him?"
"The Don decides." Nia looked at her hands. "Leo said the Don has been waiting three years for this particular morning."
Isadora was quiet for a moment. Outside a bird was singing somewhere on the estate grounds.
"He can't go free," Isadora said. "Whatever the Don decides. Santiago can't just walk away from what he did."
"He won't," Nia said.
"You sound certain."
"I've seen what Don Emilio looks like when he's decided something," Nia said. "He looks like justice that has been waiting a long time and is no longer willing to be patient."
Isadora looked at the window. The sky was getting lighter, warming at the edges.
"I want to sleep," she said finally. "But I need you to tell me one thing first."
"Okay."
"Are you happy? Like really happy?"
Nia sat with the question. She let it land fully.
"I will be," she said. "I think that's the most honest answer."
Isadora lay back on the pillow and pulled the cover up to her chin. "Then I'll sleep," she said. "Wake me for whatever the Don does to Santiago. I want to hear it."
"You won't be invited to that meeting."
"Wake me anyway." Isadora closed her eyes. "Nia."
"Yes?"
"He's a good man," Isadora said with her eyes still closed. "Leo. He's a hard man and he's made terrible choices and I have a full list of grievances I intend to present at some point. But underneath all of that, he's good. Don't let him pretend otherwise."
Nia looked at her best friend, already half-asleep, saying the exact thing Nia had needed to hear since the beginning.
"I won't," she said.
She sat in the armchair until the light in the room went from grey to gold, and then she finally slept