Page 103 of Accidental Alliance

But this… this is not at all what I could have possibly expected.

“Isabella, did you know he would come?” Davide asks me quietly.

I shake my head. “I had no idea he even knew where we were. I had no idea anyone knew. We lost any tail long before I came here.”

He absorbs that without flinching, though his eyes harden slightly.

A leak, then.

Or Elio is better at finding ghosts than any of us wanted to admit.

Neither option comforts me.

Davide gestures toward the enforcers. “Restrain him and wand him before letting him past the gates. Bring him down to the interrogation room once you can confirm he isn’t bugged.”

“Yes, sir,” they echo back at him.

20

ISABELLA

He is brought down and locked inside a starkly lit interrogation room in the basement of the safehouse.

The concrete walls are painted in a lifeless gray, a drain in the center of the floor with one light overhead. There are two chairs bolted to the floor, separated by a steel table with a metal loop in the center and a short chain attached to a set of handcuffs.

Elio is sat down in the chair, his arms extended in front of him as both of his wrists are trapped inside the cuffs.

The cuffs look wrong on him. That is my first thought, and I hate myself for it. Not because I pity him, I don’t, nor can I afford to in this kind of aggressive climate.

Pity for a man like that is a luxury I have no business entertaining, anyway. But still, the sight of Elio chained up does something strange to me.

Usually, he is the only one in the room with keys.

I stand behind a two-way mirror with my arms wrapped around myself so tightly, my fingers dig into my ribs.

The glass reflects me faintly over his body, a ghostly projection layered over a prisoner. My hair is still damp from the shower I barely remember taking before coming down here.

Davide’s head housekeeper gave me a soft black sweater and loose pants after my shower, both too fine for someone like me wearing them.

The reflection of my image in the glass makes me look cleaner than I feel. The dried blood is gone from my hands, but I can still feel it beneath my nails invisibly.

It has only been a few days since I last saw Elio, but it feels like a lifetime ago.

Seeing him here trapped with no way out of that room feels strange in a way I cannot fully name. I never thought I’d see the day when Elio Conti would be the one interrogated, not the other way around.

Part of me wants to be satisfied, wants to press my palm against the glass and laugh at the poetic irony of it.

Let him feel a fraction of what he made me feel and sit beneath someone else’s clemency with his choices reduced to whatever mercy the one in front of him decides to offer.

Davide enters the room and pulls the door shut behind him.

My eyes track him through the two-way mirror as he slowly makes his way to the other chair and lowers himself into it. He draws his hands together in front of him, lacing his fingers.

“While I am curious how you found this place, I suppose it doesn’t really matter at this point.”

Elio’s voice carries clearly through the small speakers on either side of the glass. “I need to speak to Isabella.”

Davide laughs coldly. “You think you’re in a position to make demands, Conti?”