33

33

Isabella's POV

The car ride home from the Palazzo Romano was the longest of my life. Aaron was in the driver's seat next to me, hands resting on the wheel, his face unreadable in the dimness of the dashboard. The silence between us was oppressive, carrying everything that we weren’t saying about what had just occurred.

I spent the whole meeting running through it in my head — Victor’s cocky presentation, the hard questions from the family elders, the slow taking apart of everything I had built up to that point for Victor. Most of all, though, I couldn't let go of Aaron's face through the whole thing. He hadn't appeared shocked or betrayed when Victor had produced the papers. He'd looked... prepared.

"Isabella," Aaron spoke up as we drove through the estate gates, "we need to talk about tonight."

"I can't," I said quickly. "Not right now. I... I need... I need time to think."

"I understand. But when you're ready—"

“When I am ready, I’ll tell you.”

Aaron nodded, not to press me any farther. I practically bolted from the car as soon as we pulled up to the house, dashing inside and up to my room before Aaron could say anything.
When I returned to my bedroom, I shut the door behind me, leaned back against it, and my heart raced. The evening’s events swept over me in waves—the humiliation in Victor’s eyes, the chill administration of the family elders, the looks on the faces of the representatives of the northern syndicates as they had regarded Victor as though he were already dead.

But taking a step back, there was an even more troubling fact: Aaron had set the whole thing up.

I stumbled to my vanity and I leaned heavily against it and just looked at myself. The person I saw looking back at me was now a stranger — wan, agitated, with eyes that were too old. How did I end up being the kind of woman who steals from her husband’s safe? Someone who facilitated a very public betrayal that could’ve ruined a man’s life?
And how had I failed to see what was really going on?

I took my cellphone from my pocket and looked at it, wishing Victor would phone and also that he would not. What could any of us say, either way, about tonight? How would we explain to ourselves the catastrophe that had befallen us?
My brain was straining to put dates and times to it. Since when had Aaron known what Victor was doing? For how long had he known I was involved? Had this whole relationship been a show to keep me obedient while he laid his trap?

The documents. Those bloody documents that had felt so damning when I'd snapped them in that safe I'd found in Aaron's office. If the elders of the family were correct, and they were experts, then those documents had to have been forged. Elaborate frauds made to look genuine by coming apart under examination.

Which was why Aaron had left them there and in a spot I’d find them. Knowing I would steal them. Because I knew I would give them to Victor.
Aaron had played us both from the very beginning.

I remembered all the times he had been kind to me, patient with my coldness, and gentle with my fears. Has any of it been real? Or was it all part of some intricate ruse to convince me that he hadn’t anticipated things ten moves in advance?

I had been mulling this over when there was a timid knock at my door.

"Isabella?" Aaron's voice sounded from behind the wood. "I brought you some tea."
"I don't want tea."

"Please. Just for a few minutes. Let me explain—"

"Explain what? How have you been playing me for months? How you allowed me to feel I was betraying you while you knew the truth all the time?”
No sound from the far side of the door.

“Aaron, I know you out there.
"I'm here."

“All those documents were forged, right? You planted them in your safe so I would find them.”
More silence.

"Answer me."
"Yes," he said finally. "They were fake."

Even though I had already known they were true, the confirmation hit me like a punch in the chest.
“How long have you known about Victor and me?”

"Isabella, please open the door. “This is not something that I want to talk through wood.”
"How long?"

"Since before our wedding."

Since before our wedding. Aaron hadn’t taken my hand in marriage even as I crossed the ranks from brother to brother seeking to break him. He had been good to me, tried to win my love, made me think he was falling in love with me, all knowing I was cheating on him.

"Get the fuck away from my door," I said as tears ran down my face.

"Isabella—”

"GET AWAY FROM MY DOOR!"

I could hear his footsteps as he walked away down the corridor, leaving me alone amid the ruins of everything I had believed I knew about my life.

Hours passed. I slumped in my seat, and looked out the window onto the grounds of the estate, letting my emotions wrestle about in my mind. Fury at Aaron for putting me up to this. Guilt at the humiliation of Victor by my hand. Fear that enemies would come after Victor now that he’d crossed powerful people.

And underneath it all, a dawning awareness that Aaron had been more truthful with me than Victor ever had, even while hiding his greatest secrets.
Victor had used me to cheat on my husband. And Aaron had allowed me to be successful in that betrayal — or so I had believed — all while sheltering me from the consequences. Both had been using me for their own ends, but for entirely separate reasons.

My phone rang and I jumped out of my stupor. Victor’s name came up on the screen.

"Isabella, thank God you answered."
"Victor, what happened tonight—"

"Was a disaster. Aaron played us both, Isabella. He’s cleverer than I ever imagined.”
"Where are you?"

"Packing. I have to get out of town tonight, maybe out of the country. The northern syndicates aren’t the types to forgive having been made to look foolish.”

"Leave the country?"

“Isabella, you need to come to terms with how serious this is. I didn’t bring one of these guys to the meeting tonight -- they are not the forgiving kind. They thought I'd bring them Aaron's head, but instead I brought them bad replicas.”

"Victor, I'm so sorry. Had I known that the documents were false — ″

"This isn't your fault. This is all on Aaron. He had us fooled from the start.”

“But it was I who robbed them. I am the one who gave them to you.”

"Because you trusted me. Because you thought I was doing you a favor, trying to protect you from a dangerous man.”

I sat silent, considering that Aaron had been gentle, patient, and that he seemed to truly care about my well-being. Was Victor right, when he had said Aaron was dangerous? Or had Victor merely been projecting his own readiness to tear family ties apart onto his brother?

“Isabella, I want you to listen to me.” I don't have much time."

"What do you mean?"

"You know I've got like, what, a couple of hours at best before very bad people arrive looking for me. “But first, before I go under, I have to know something.”

"What?"

"Come with me."
The words hovered in the air between us, pregnant with meaning.

"What?"
"Leave with me tonight. We can move to another place where he and his games can’t get to us.”

"Victor, I can't just—"

"You can. What have you there, Isabella? A marriage you didn’t want to a man who’s been fucking around with your life? A family that made your future without any reference to you?”

"It's not that simple."

"It is that simple. Do you love me?"
The question that was so easy to answer just days ago now seemed impossibly complicated.

"I... I thought I did."
"Thought you did?"

"Victor, what I thought I knew about this situation, about Aaron, about us – it was a lie.”

"Not lies. Misunderstandings. Aaron is excellent at positioning himself as a victim when in reality he’s the master puppeteer.”

"But what if he's not? But what if he really was trying to protect me from getting hurt in whatever war the two of you are fighting?”

"Isabella, listen to yourself. You’re propping up the man who made you feel guilty for months when he knew all along. How is that protection?"

I didn’t know what to say to that.

"I got to go," Victor was in a rush. “But I’ll be at the marina for one more hour. Pier 47. If you want a life in which you make your own choices, where you’re not just a chess piece in someone else’s game, then come find me there.”

"Victor—"

"One hour, Isabella. After that, you won't see me again.”
The line went dead; I was sitting in the dark looking at my phone.

Victor was making me pick. Not only between him and Aaron, but between two utterly different lives. I could go with him and have none of the manipulation and arranged marriages and family politics. Or I could remain and attempt to cultivate something real with a man who’d been playing chess while I had likely counted us merely among friends.

I looked at the clock. 11:47 PM. I needed to make up my mind now, or I was never going to make it to Victor.

But as I got up and headed to my closet, I couldn’t forget Aaron’s face when he’d said he loved me. Had that been manipulation too? Or had there been something real under all the strategy and secrets?

I had an hour to solve it.