Chapter 49: Territory
Isabella blinked her cloudy green eyes, her brows pulling together in total confusion.
She quickly tried to match the voice to the people she had met downstairs just twenty minutes ago.
It wasn’t one of the soft-spoken maids. It was young... maybe a teenager... but the voice carried a high, soft tone that belonged to a girl.
"What?" Isabella asked, her fingers tightening on the edge of her cardigan. "Who is that?"
"Freya Kazarov," the voice said, taking a slow step forward. Her fuzzy socks slid softly over the polished wood floor.
She paused, letting two full seconds of silence hang between them before adding,
"The one who actually lives here."
The words were sharp, clearly meant to mark a line in the sand. Isabella could hear the subtle puff of breath that came with them, the quiet confidence of a teenager marking her territory.
But instead of getting defensive or shrinking back, Isabella just let out a small, slow breath.
"Oh," Isabella murmured, her shoulders relaxing just a little. "Freya. It’s nice to meet you properly. I’m Isabella."
Freya didn’t answer right away. Isabella heard the faint, heavy rustle of fabric, followed by a loud, needy meow.
Mr. Cheese was shifting around in the girl’s arms, completely unbothered by the tense standoff happening right over his furry head.
"I know who you are," Freya said, her voice dropping into a snarky, matter-of-fact tone.
"You’re the new intruder. The latest creature Mishka decided to drag home from across the ocean."
Isabella opened her mouth, her face burning slightly. She was completely bewildered.
The girl sounded so small, so young, yet she spoke with the biting bite of someone twice her age.
Isabella didn’t feel angry. She just felt like she had walked into a room where everyone knew the rules of a game she hadn’t even been invited to play.
"I... I’m sorry if it seems that way," Isabella said carefully, keeping her tone soft, polite, and completely even. "I know this must look strange to you. But I promise I’m not here to intrude on your home, Freya. I didn’t come here to cause trouble or impose on your family."
"Then leave," Freya said instantly.
The command was so quick, so blunt, that Isabella almost laughed out of sheer shock. "I... I can’t leave. It’s not that simple."
"Everything is simple," Freya shot back, her voice rising just a fraction, losing a tiny bit of its bored cool. "You open the front door, you walk down the driveway, and you get in a car. That’s how leaving works."
Isabella shook her head, her hand coming up to rest against her chest. "I can’t just walk away right now, Freya. Aaron brought me here because... well, because I needed a safe place to rest. But I am not going to stay forever, and I am certainly not here to take anything from you."
"So you’re here to stay," Freya translated flatly, completely ignoring the second half of Isabella’s sentence.
"For now, yes," Isabella admitted, a faint sigh slipping past her lips. "Unfortunately."
Freya didn’t like that answer. Isabella heard the faint, light click of socks against the floorboards as the girl began to slowly walk around her in a wide circle.
Isabella stood completely still, turning her head as she listened to the soft movement, trying her best to keep track of where the girl was standing.
"Mishka doesn’t usually bring strangers home," Freya said, her voice drifting from Isabella’s left side now.
"He doesn’t like people touching his stuff. He hates having people in his private wing. And he’s busy. He’s not going to have time to sit around and babysit you forever."
The possessiveness in the girl’s tone was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Isabella slowly put the pieces together in her head.
Downstairs, Finn had been loud, happy, and excited to see Aaron, treating him like an older brother or a cool uncle. But Freya... Freya held onto Aaron like a hawk guarding its nest.
To Freya, Aaron wasn’t just a powerful man who ran a terrifying organization. He was hers. He was the center of her world, the one person who kept her safe, and the idea of a strange woman showing up in his arms was clearly a threat she didn’t know how to handle.
"I didn’t ask him to babysit me," Isabella said softly, turning her body as Freya moved toward her right side. "And I didn’t ask to come here either."
Freya paused mid-step. The soft sliding sound of her socks stopped entirely. "You didn’t?"
"No," Isabella said honestly, her blind eyes staring toward the sound of the girl’s breathing. "I didn’t."
"Then why are you here?" Freya asked, her dry, snarky shield cracking just enough for a tiny drop of genuine teenage curiosity to slip through.
Isabella hesitated. How could she explain the chaotic, terrifying mess of her life to a child like her?
How could she explain Kian, the divorce papers and the way Aaron had simply swept into her life like a dark storm and carried her away?
"It’s... complicated," Isabella offered quietly.
Freya let out a short, harsh snort that sounded remarkably like Aaron’s dry chuckle. "Everything with Mishka is complicated."
A sudden, loud ’MEOW’ echoed through the hall, cutting right through the heavy air.
Mr. Cheese had clearly decided that he was tired of being carried like a sack of flour. Isabella heard the heavy thud of four paws landing on the floorboards as the giant cat jumped out of Freya’s arms.
The cat let out another sharp, demanding meow and began rubbing his large body against Freya’s shins.
"Not now," Freya muttered down at the floor, her voice losing its cold edge for a second.
’Meow!’
"I’m talking," Freya warned the cat. "Go find Finn."
’Meow! Meow!’
"You don’t get an opinion," Freya growled softly at the animal. "You eat garbage off the floor."
Despite the tense atmosphere, despite the biting words the girl had been throwing at her, a tiny, helpless smile tugged at the corner of Isabella’s lips.
It was just so ridiculous. Here was this fierce, sharp-tongued teenager trying her absolute best to sound intimidating, while a giant, fat cat publicly ruined her tough act.
Freya’s eyes snapped back up, catching the small curve of Isabella’s mouth instantly.
"What’s funny?" Freya asked, her voice dropping back into a suspicious glare.