Page 73 of Accidental Alliance

The fact that after eight years of telling myself I had burned Elio Conti out of me, one moment with his mouth on mine was enough to prove there was still something viable under all that ruin.

I lie awake and let my strategist’s mind turn relentlessly.

There must be a fracture in this prison.

There always is.

My father’s voice returns to me in the dark. No structure is perfect, Isabella. Men build prisons around what they fear and leave weaknesses where they overcompensate. No cage is seamless. No fortress is without a fault line. Use that to your advantage. Don’t allow yourself to believe they’ve outsmarted you.

I breathe in slowly.

The next opportunity that arises, I will take it.

Even if it kills me.

15

ELIO

It is a full week after my night with Isabella that my brother finally finds a new thread to pull. By then, the safehouse has become its own kind of purgatory.

The walls feel like they are closing in more than they did when we first arrived, suffocating me with each passing day I watch the sun rise and set with little sleep in between.

Every hallway carries too much silence and even the air tastes stale on my tongue, no matter how often the windows are cracked to let in the fresh breeze.

At least Isabella and Matteo remain in the reinforced room, together now. I watch them on the monitors when I know no one else is around.

Matteo is most often curled into her side on the cot as Isabella’s fingers glide through his hair to soothe him.

Sometimes, he wakes up crying in the middle of the night, his limbs flailing while his eyes stare wide-eyed at the ceiling.

Those are the nights she rocks him to sleep, whispering things I cannot hear through the feed even when I turn the audio up.

Afterward, she always looks straight at the camera. Whether she knows I am watching or not, I feel the accusation all the same. You did this.

I carry that with me everywhere now.

So when Alessio appears in the main room with the first real excitement I have seen on his face in days, I already know whatever it is isn’t going to be pleasant. He stands in front of the monitors, blocking them, his eyes bright with a predatory kind of satisfaction as he holds up a file that is held loosely in one hand.

“We found Giovano Russo.”

The name stills the entire room.

Amos’s younger brother. Isabella’s uncle. The last surviving piece of her father’s inner circle.

The consigliere who fled after Amos’s assassination, vanishing before the city could finish tearing whatever remained of the Russo family apart. Some said he ran to protect the remnants of their bloodline.

Others questioned his motives because they suspected he knew more than he was willing to die for. In our world, both can be true, though neither would ever be enough to save you.

I haven’t seen him since the week after his brother died.

From what I remember, he was a grim man with silver at his temples and a hard attitude that matched the permanent scowl etched onto his face. At Amos’s funeral he had stood beside Isabella’s grandmother, one hand on her elbow. His face had been tight with exhaustion, his eyes darting around the procession as the priest gave final rites.

I had stood across the church aisle with my family and watched him from a distance, wondering over and over if he had any contact with Isabella after she disappeared.

I remember Giovano looking at me once, finding the hatred reflecting in his eyes had been pure enough to leave a mark in my mind permanently.

Even remembering it now it sends a shiver rolling down my spine.