For a moment she said nothing. Isadora simply stared at them, her eyes hard and silent. Rossi stood where he was, showing no intention of moving, and worse still, Luca—her father—didn't even try to stop him.
"Just go back upstairs and—" Rossi began, but he was still speaking when Isadora snapped, cutting him off before he could finish.
"What are you going to do? Stop me?" she said, her tone sharp with visible annoyance, her words edged with challenge. "Damage the goods before they're sold?"
"I'll be sure to inform the old man of how terrible my family is before I get sentenced to a life of misery," she told them, making sure they knew it wasn't a threat but a certainty.
"You wouldn't dare!" Maria snapped back, even as Luca scrambled up from his seat.
"You would—" her father began to speak, but Isadora was barely holding a lid on her roaring emotions as she answered them.
The last thing she wanted was to remain there any longer than she needed to.
"If I'm going to suffer and be imprisoned before I'm sold, then I'm going to drag all of you down with me!" she told them, furious at the tears that filled her eyes—tears born more from anger than anything else.
"Get out of my way!" she snapped at Rossi, striding past him the next second before he could make up his mind to go against her or let her pass.
Isadora's anger carried her out, making sure to slam the door heavily behind her as she stepped out of the small three-bedroom apartment they lived in, the building sitting right beside the main road.
It was around seven in the morning, and getting a taxi was easy, especially since the roads weren't yet crowded the way they would be by eight.
'I'm a little late but this should still work,' she muttered to herself the second she was seated in the taxi and gave the driver directions on where she needed to go.
It was farther than she would have liked, but it had to be. The company was in a much more luxurious part of the city, so much so that it wasn't until after eight, and after transferring to a bus, that she finally reached her destination.
Bellini Corp.
The name stood out boldly, emblazoned across a huge skyscraper. Everything about the building was shiny, as though made of glass. Even its architectural structure—about which she knew nothing—was a different design than she was used to.
There were many people heading in and out, but not as many as she had expected, considering how working hours had begun about thirty minutes before.
Isadora stood there, admiring it, though mostly because her heart wouldn't stop racing and pounding in her chest. What she was about to do was crazy by any standard.
It could get her thrown out, or worse, simply create another powerful enemy for herself and her family.
'You can do this,' she mumbled internally to herself as she slowly began to walk toward the main door, trying her best to look more confident than she felt. It didn't help that everyone around her seemed dressed in suits while she alone was the odd one out.
Inside, she tried to steady her feet and not slip on the polished floors as she slowly made her way toward the receptionist at the lobby.
"Good morning," she greeted, only to get a glance as the female receptionist continued to type away on her computer in a way that made it too obvious the work wasn't urgent.
"Yes. How can I help you?"
"I'd like to see the CEO, Dante Bellini," Isadora said.
The woman paused whatever she had been focused on and directed a more intense look at Isadora as she carefully responded.
"You have an appointment?" she asked, her tone now lacking the sharpness she had previously used when speaking to Isadora.
"Yes. Yes, I do," Isadora responded, even as she heard her heartbeat grow louder in sequence with the lies coming out of her mouth.
This surprised the receptionist, who gave Isadora an even closer look, especially at her clothes and bag, which looked much cheaper than her own.
"Name, title, and reason for the appointment?" she dutifully asked, though her eyes were still skeptical.
"Isadora Conti. Tell him: Cole has information he desperately needs to hear," she responded.
Isadora hadn't spent all night sleeping, aware that getting an appointment to see him would be the hardest part before she went ahead and showed him what she had.
Her fists balled tightly by her sides as she refused to meet the scattering gaze of the woman in front of her, looking around as she waited for an answer, aware that her anxiety would betray her if she met her eyes.
The receptionist went ahead to type for a long time and even picked up a phone to make a call, stating all the things Isadora had said. Her eyes widened a bit before she dropped the call.
"Visitor's tag," she said, passing the tag to Isadora. "You need to head to the highest floor and ask to be directed to the CEO's wing."
"Thank you," Isadora murmured lowly, heading to the elevator that had been pointed out to her, a relieved expression on her face.
Getting to the top floor was easy, and reaching the CEO's wing, as the receptionist had explained, was even easier, as someone was waiting at every junction to direct her to where she needed to go, making it clear they knew she was coming.
But she had just asked for directions to the bathroom to calm her nerves, instantly walking there when she suddenly felt a painful grip on her arm that shoved her into a large storage room before she could make a sound.
She hadn't even heard footsteps behind her before it happened.
"What the—" she began, only to feel a heavy hand on her throat before she could continue.
"Who are you and how do you know Cole?" the voice asked, male and deep enough for her to realize she had no chance against him as she raised her gaze up in the dark, unable to make out the face of the man speaking to her.
"Are you going to kill me?" Isadora simply responded, aware that no matter who the man was, getting a dead body out of such a huge building without a trace was impossible.
"If not, you might as well let me go. I'll only speak to Dante Bellini," she told the man whose face she was still unable to make out in the dark but whose voice was clearly nothing similar to Dante's voice she had heard the night before.