Chapter Seven: Too Close to Miss

The order was fast and quiet. Isabella was starting to realize that all of Lorenzo's orders were like this.

"Get away from the windows. Now." 

He didn't yell, but three men suddenly appeared in the kitchen. One grabbed the blinds while another spoke quickly into a wrist microphone. 

"Isabella. Go to an interior room. Now, please."

"I want to see," she said. She started moving toward the hallway. She refused to be led blindly through her own life again.

"You can see from the study," Lorenzo said. He was beside her instantly, guiding her with a hand on her back. His urgency felt real, not like a performance.

The study had thick walls and no windows facing the street. Isabella sat on the edge of the desk and watched Lorenzo pace. He was looking at a bank of monitors hidden in a bookshelf. Each screen showed a different angle of the street outside.

"There," he said, tapping a screen. A dark, unremarkable car had stopped thirty yards down the block. The engine was idling.

"That's the same car from an hour ago," Isabella noted.

"Yes." Lorenzo's jaw was tight. "And it's no longer circling. It's parked."

"Watching the house," she whispered.

"Confirming the location, more likely," Lorenzo replied. His voice was flat, like a doctor giving a diagnosis. He was staying calm so that Isabella wouldn't panic. "A car that circles twice and then stops isn't guessing. It's reporting back."

One of his men appeared in the doorway. "The plates belong to a shell company we've flagged. It's the same company that leased the car used in the Aurelius incident three months ago."

Lorenzo's expression turned cold. "Same people."

"Looks that way."

"Clear the block," Lorenzo ordered. "I want the street empty in ten minutes. Tell me the second that car moves." 

He turned to Isabella. For the first time, she saw fear in his eyes—not for himself, but for her. "They know where you are."

"How?"

"I don't know yet. That's the problem." He took her hands in his. His grip was trembling slightly. "There are two possibilities: either Marcus betrayed us this morning, or there is another leak in my organization. Either way, you are in more danger than I thought."

Isabella's heart hammered, but she forced herself to breathe slowly. "What do we do?"

"We move you," he said. "To a secondary property Marcus doesn't know about. If he's the leak, this house is compromised. If he isn't, we've just lost an hour."

"What if that car doesn't wait for us to leave?"

"That's why I have twelve men in this house instead of two," Lorenzo said. His voice was absolute. He did not intend to lose.

They moved quickly through a hidden service exit and down a narrow alley. They piled into a black SUV with reinforced windows. As they pulled away, Isabella looked in the side mirror. The dark sedan was following them.

"They're behind us," she said.

"I know." Lorenzo looked at the driver. "Marco. Take the bridge, not the tunnel."

"Copy."

"Why the bridge?" Isabella asked.

"Tunnels have only two exits and no visibility. If there's a second team, that's where they'd trap us." He reached over and laced his fingers through hers. "Trust me for the next six minutes. Everything I'm doing is to get you and our child to safety."

"I trust you," she said. It surprised her how true that felt. Only eighteen hours ago, she had planned to raise her child entirely alone. Now, she was trusting a man she barely knew. "I just need you to survive the next six minutes, too."

A small smile flickered across his face. "I've survived worse odds than this. I'm not stopping now. Not when I finally have something worth surviving for."

The SUV roared onto the bridge on-ramp. The dark sedan closed the gap behind them. Isabella gripped Lorenzo's hand hard, realizing exactly how far these people would go to finish what they started three months ago.