Page 24 of Accidental Alliance

I nod to the table, my eyes focusing on the north end of the map. “The Bianchi family has been sniffing around the Russo routes for months. They’ve been loyal to the Russos for some time now, but that loyalty dies once the man who commands it does.”

“Perhaps,” my father says, his eyes narrowing on the map too. “However, the Bianchi family are also not known to be opportunists.”

A fair point.

They are an ambitious family, yes, but I’ve never considered them sloppy. Not usually, at least. They prefer leverage that can be disguised as a mutual partnership, unlike many other syndicates.

Killing Amos in this manner would be a sharp deviation from their usual character unless someone else inside the family has started steering the wheel.

Unfortunately, internal betrayal always remains on the table no matter how loyal a house claims to be.

Men kill for power, insult, fear, and imagined futures just as often as they kill for orders.

But my father is right about one thing.

To take Amos out like this from within would require either breathtaking arrogance or desperation so severe, it borders on madness.

Alessio pushes off the wall then. “Isabella…”

The muscles in my back tighten automatically.

“She was at the dinner tonight, wasn’t she?” he asks, voice still maddeningly calm. “Last seen slipping away with…”

His eyes glance in my direction, quick enough that most of the room would miss it, but I catch it. It is a hook baited with a subtle accusation, and it is meant for me alone. Heat surges through my veins, anger that is nearly violent.

Touch her and I will end you, brother or not.

The thought is instant, primal in a way. I’ve never felt the need to put my brother in his place before, least of all over a woman. We are not like that and never have been.

As the only two sons from our father’s line, Alessio and I have always been unusual in one respect—neither of us has ever been interested in turning succession into sport.

The future of the syndicate has always sat between us like a practical problem waiting for the right time to be solved, not a crown to be torn from the other’s head.

Eventually, once our father passes, we will sit down and discuss the details, I have no doubt of that. But even then, I have never believed any real rivalry would occur between us. We were not raised to fracture like lesser bloodlines fighting over smaller scraps. We were raised to function like a well-oiled machine. Alessio thinks, I strike. Simple.

Feeling any kind of anger toward him is unheard of. Even now, it feels unnatural despite the emotion raging through me.

I do not know what unsettles me more, that he is implying Isabella is behind any of this or that I am one breath away from stepping around this table and reminding my brother, quite physically, that there are boundaries even he does not get to test.

I school my face into an indifferent mask before I can betray anything.

“There’s no reason she would be involved in this. It isn’t like she’d gain anything. She’s a woman,” I say flatly.

The words taste like ash in my mouth. I hate saying them. I hate even more hiding behind the same patriarchal logic that has caged Isabella her whole life. But in this room, at this moment, it is useful. Men like my father and brother do not see women as capable unless they are forced to.

If I can shove Isabella back beneath the category of ornamental irrelevance in their minds to turn their scrutiny elsewhere, I will do it.

Alessio’s smile is thin. He knows exactly what I am doing. “Displeased daughters become weapons all the time, Brother. Especially when there are promises made from a third party.”

My eyebrow ticks. He is pushing my buttons now. “Promises such as…?”

He lifts one shoulder in an almost lazy shrug. “Freedom, perhaps? Something else equally desirable? Whatever could be promised to convince a daughter to plot against her own father wouldn’t be something simple.”

My hands flex at my sides.

Freedom hits too close to the conversations Isabella and I had mere hours ago back at my apartment, to the future she told me we could build if we walked away from all of this and never looked back.

Standing here in my father’s office, that offer follows me like a ghost.