Page 59 of Accidental Alliance

He ignores it and grabs me again, this time nearly slamming me against the wall before I twist enough to catch the impact with my shoulder instead of my spine. The framed security schematics rattle beside my head. Somewhere beyond us, voices hush in the back room, only picking up after another moment of silence when they think better of moving any farther.

“Then answer me,” Alessio says.

His face is close now, eyes dark and cold, the polished mask cracking just enough for the violence underneath to breathe.

“I have nothing to say,” I growl through my teeth.

His grip tightens on my shirt near the collar. “That is the problem.”

I stare at him.

For one second, we are not underboss and Don’s heir—two grown men standing inside a safehouse surrounded by soldiers and guns and a woman whose existence could detonate half our alliances.

We are boys again, two sons raised under the same roof, taught the same lessons with wildly different outcomes.

“Move,” I tell him, shoving at him again.

“No.”

My hands curl at my sides. “This is not the time to be monitoring me. We both have better things to do.”

“I want to know whether my brother is still capable of thinking with the correct organ.” His voice drops, his hand tightening around the fabric of my shirt. “You need to get it together. Whatever spell she has you under, it needs to break. We can’t afford for you to get distracted just because some woman you were interested in nearly a decade ago has suddenly reappeared.”

I laugh, the sound cold. “I’m not distracted. I told you I’d get you the information, but she has nothing. She turned Bianchi down and has had no further contact with him.”

“And you believe a whore like her?” he challenges.

I move before I fully register the motion. My forearm drives into his chest and shoves him back hard enough that he hits the opposite wall with a loud thud. He absorbs the impact with a grunt, the noise turning strained the longer I hold him there.

I look at the man who shares my blood and feel nothing brotherly or tender pulsing through me at the moment, only danger.

There is suddenly a black, very familiar understanding that loyalty in this family has always come with a cost.

What you are willing to lose because of it must be weighed accordingly against all that will eventually be gained.

“Careful,” he murmurs. “That temper has always made you sloppy.”

The urge to hit him is sudden and savage, enough to whiten the edges of my vision with an anger that makes my teeth clench.

I hate him for catching every small piece of weakness within me and turning it around to use against me.

Moreover, I hate myself for even showing it. I know better than to give my brother an easy avenue to torture me.

He sighs at me. “She’s playing you, Elio. Feeding information to Davide while you’re busy imagining playing house with her and that boy.”

I release him with a shove. “She has no access to the outside world. How would she be in communication with Bianchi from inside here? The safehouse is sealed. You know that.”

“What I know,” he says, straightening up slowly, his back still pressed against the wall, “is that you’re letting her get under your skin again the same way she did before Amos died. Before I had to force you to choose our family over pussy. With Davide still breathing, we can’t have an unvetted Russo living under our roof. I will kill them both before she turns you into a damn traitor.”

Revulsion coils in my gut.

The thought of standing over their bodies, of being the one to order it, let alone being the one forced to carry it out, makes bile rise in my throat.

I have ended men without hesitation, tortured them for less than what Isabella is being accused of.

I have burned entire territories to ash when our syndicate has demanded it.

But the idea of her eyes growing lifeless beneath my watch, of her son’s blood on my hands…