Page 58 of Accidental Alliance

My head turns with the impact.

For a moment, neither of us speaks.

“You don’t get to do that,” she finally says after a while.

I look back at her slowly. The sting in my cheek is nothing compared to the thing splitting open behind my sternum. Her entire body is trembling with barely contained rage, her hand still slightly raised in the space between us.

There is no defense. Not one worth insulting her with, anyway. I could say I lost control, that seeing her again has dragged every dead thing in me clawing back to the surface.

After spending eight years trying to cut her out of my system, I thought I’d gotten every last fragment. But clearly, I was wrong. Because the second I touched her, the past yawned its mouth wide and swallowed me whole.

Though, none of that matters in the grand scheme of things. It does not matter that I wanted her, or that she remembers it too. What we are now is enemies and that will never change. Not as long as she’s helping Bianchi like Alessio suspects.

I step away from her with my jaw locked, every muscle in me coiled with the need to drag her back into my arms and finish what was started. But instead, I turn toward the door, the protector and the monster continuing to war inside me.

When my hand reaches the handle to leave, I look back over my shoulder at her. “This isn’t over, Isabella. I will be back.”

She says nothing in return.

The door locks behind me with brutal finality, and I stand in the corridor for a long time breathing hard. The jealousy from before curdles into shame so fast, I almost choke on it. My cheek still burns where she struck me, but the rest of me has gone cold.

For the first time since I walked away eight years ago, I am not sure how to move on from this, or her.

Christ.

What have I become?

11

ELIO

I find Alessio back in the main common area after I finally force myself away from Isabella’s door.

Every step away from that reinforced room is another reminder that she is close enough to reach and still locked away because of the circumstances that have led our paths to collide in the first place. Yet despite all of that, leaving her in there feels like tearing skin from bone.

My brother leans against the wall over by the camera feeds again, arms crossed over his chest, wearing that predatory calm mask like usual. He watches me for a silent moment, his face betraying nothing as my eyes drift up to the feeds to take in the outside perimeter again.

“You disabled the cameras. Care to explain why?” he finally asks.

I don’t answer him and instead bypass him altogether.

My feet carry me down the hallway toward the back room. The last thing I am in the mood for is my brother’s inquisition.

No answer I give will satisfy him and save me from a lecture, that I know for certain. There is nothing I can say that will not eventually become the rope tied around my neck courtesy of Alessio’s own unforgiving hands.

So why bother trying to explain myself?

He follows me down the hallway, silent at my back.

It bothers me more than if he were to shout at me because I know exactly what he is doing. Alessio has always been most dangerous when quiet.

Our father has always used biting comments when he wanted obedience, but my brother learned early on that the absence of that always makes men fill it with their own anxious chatter. Now with each step behind me, I can feel him measuring the tightness of my shoulders and my stride.

Before I get the chance to cross the threshold into the back room, a hand wraps around my arm and yanks me back.

“Elio,” my brother says.

I shove him off. “Don’t.”