A second later, the booth feeds the confession into the port’s speakers and throws it back at the crowd like a thrown punch.
“Your boss? Who tried to take out the Valentine heir. Say his name.”
“Carraway. Benedict Carraway.”
“And his right hand?”
“Adrian Bavga.”
Somewhere, my uncle’s people hear the name and decide which version of themselves they want to be when the cameras are gone. Somewhere else, a man who loves revenge smiles like he's tasting sugar.
Security arrives like a wave that looks official and isn't. My uncle’s men blend with the Commission’s men. The crowd keeps clapping because the city hates seeing its own ugliness.
We fold the scene clean, quiet, and photogenic. Adrian is walked away without his dignity. Orfeo is walked away without his future. The bag disappears into hands that don't shake.
I find Isabella at the rail as the horns start up again and the parade tries to pretend it's still pure.
We don't touch. Not here. Not in front of men who mistake touching for ownership and would love to call what I feel for her a weakness they can leverage.
But I tilt my head toward her, close enough that my words belong only to her.
“Hold the line, Bella,” I murmur.
She doesn't smile.
Her eyes do.
Horns sound the end. The bell rings noon. The crowd thins. The truce closes on paper and in practice, because we made it expensive to break and impossible to deny.
A dockworker lifts his hand as we pass. Not a salute. A palm, clean. He doesn't know my name. He knows a day without shots means he goes home. I nod once, and he returns to crates.
The river runs beside us like a fact.
We carry a voice by the neck without touching anything but paper, and I feel the next room waiting, the Commission hall with marble and teeth, the signatures that'll turn confession into rule. We built the sting to work if I fell.
I didn't fall.
She closes her eyes for four breaths, then opens them and looks at me like she's already counting costs and consequences and the exact number of men who'll try to rewrite the story in the next twenty-four hours.
“Yes,” she says, soft enough that it's private.
“Yes,” I say, and steer us into the afternoon that changes rules, and into the next room where I'll make them sign what they owe her.
Because the city can clap all it wants. It can cheer even after it confesses.
The truth's already recorded, and Isabella Valentine is still standing.
Chapter Thirteen
Isabella
The port keeps cheering even after it confesses.
That's what crowds do when they're afraid of what they've heard. They clap to drown out truth and call it tradition so they can sleep, because tradition sounds gentler than complicity. Cameras keep drinking light, hungry for one ribbon moment they can file under peace. Men keep shaking hands for the lens while trading favors the second the lens turns away.
I walk out with my spine straight and my hands empty, because I learned early that men look for the weapon they can blame. If your hands are empty, they have to accuse your mouth, and a mouth's harder to cuff without drawing blood.
The weapon today is a recording. The weapontoday is a name.
