Page 150 of The Cost of Silence

“Where else would he feel safe?” I’d said. “On ground he thinks is his, on land he thinks we don’t remember.”

“Fuck me, that’s bold, even for him.” Matteo’s eyes widen a fraction. “Right under my damn nose.”

“It’s like you said, he loves the symbolism of it.”

Adi had found the satellite images then, the property still in our holding company’s name, the little outbuilding near the back tucked in by the trees. It can be accessed by the lane at the back that nobody uses.

“He wants us at the docks,” I’d said. “He expects us to come to him.”

“So, we split,” Matteo had replied. “I go with Adi to the meet. We stall. You get her but take some of our men with you.”

I’d wanted to argue, to insist on being at the confrontation myself, but even in my rage, I knew this: if Isabella was burning somewhere because I chose to stand on a dock and trade words with my uncle, I’d never live with myself.

So, we split. She was what mattered most, not some grudge.

Now, as I pull around to the back road, the gardener’s cottage comes into view, the world tilts.

The building is on fire.

Not fully, flames haven’t gutted it yet, but smoke pours out of two upstairs windows, thick and black in places. Orange tongues lick at the curtains.

For a second, I can’t breathe.

I slam the car into park and I’m out before the engine fully dies, gravel slipping under my shoes as I sprint toward the cottage.

“Isabella!” I shout, throat tearing on her name. “Isabella!”

A shape stumbles out from behind the hedges, coughing. For half a heartbeat, I think my brain is conjuring her, some cruelmirage, but then she trips on the uneven ground and instinct overrides shock.

I catch her.

She collides with my chest, all smoke and shaking limbs and stubborn life, and I wrap my arms around her so tight I’m afraid I might hurt us both. She smells like burnt cotton and sweat and the faint trace of her perfume, ghostly under the ash.

“Jesus Christ,” I breathe into her hair. “Belle.”

She clutches the front of my jacket, fingers digging in, like she doesn’t quite trust gravity. “You’re early,” she croaks, voice wrecked. “I was going to meet you halfway.”

I pull back just enough to see her face. There’s soot smeared along her cheekbones, a raw scrape on her chin, tear tracks carved through the ash. Her eyes, though, are clear. Furious. Alive.

For a moment, nothing else exists. “Are you hurt?” I demand, hands skimming her arms, her sides, searching for blood, burns, broken bones.

“Singed pride,” she says. “Minor smoke inhalation. My hair will smell like barbecue for a week.”

“Did they touch you?” The question comes out sharper than I intend.

“Not like that,” she says. “They preferred emotional warfare.”

Of course they did.

I swallow down the images my brain offers, her in that burning room, gasping, alone, and focus on what’s in front of me. “You got out,” I say, equal parts awe and something like terror. “How?”

She glances back at the cottage, where a window is now belching flame. “Window, roof, trellis,” she says, a little dazed. “Turns out rage makes a great substitute for a ladder. I also might take up parkour after this.”

A laugh tears out of me that feels dangerously close to a sob. “You are never leaving my sight again,” I say. “Ever.”

“That sounds clingy,” she replies, but there’s no real protest in it.

I cup her face in my hands and silence the rest of her words with a kiss I never thought I’d get again. She tastes like smoke and her and everything that matters most in the world. “Fuck, I love you, Belle.”