Page 110 of Accidental Alliance

ISABELLA

Three days have passed since Elio walked through the gates of Davide’s safehouse with his hands raised in surrender. He is kept under constant guard in a secure guest wing with two armed men rotating shifts outside his door and cameras monitoring the hallway leading to his room.

Davide insisted on restraints at first. For the first twenty-four hours, Elio was allowed out of his room only with his wrists cuffed in front of him and two guns following every step, which he bore without complaint.

I overruled it after the first day. As suspicious as we all find it, he is here by choice. Binding him like an animal only feeds the tension already crackling between all of us.

Though I do avoid him as much as possible, throwing myself into planning sessions with whatever information Davide is able to extract about the Contis’ movement.

Every answer Elio gives us adds another line to the map spread across Davide’s war room table, helping me to create the structures for the trap that will inevitably be set for Alessio when the time comes.

Matteo stays close to me most of the time. At first, he is barely out of arm’s reach, following me from the bedroom to bathroom to the sitting room without question. He sits under the war room table while Davide and I speak in careful phrases, drawing foxes and soccer balls on paper the staff bring him.

But every so often, I find him near the east hallway, standing at the far end of it while staring. Matteo never tries to sneak past the guards.

He never asks them to open the door.

He only stands there in that too-quiet way of his, staring toward the place where Elio is kept as if the hallway itself might eventually tell him what the adults around him refuse to say.

I don’t know how I’m going to tell him the truth. How do I explain that the man down that hallway is not only an underboss for a family trying to actively hunt us down, and whose family broke our lives apart before Matteo was ever born, but he’s also his father?

The darkness in his hair, the angle of his stubborn little chin, the way his silence can fill a room before his voice ever does, all came from a man I loved long before I ever thought it could break me.

Soon, those facts will undeniably link Matteo to his father. It’s only a matter of time before someone figures it out.

I am terrified that the moment I say it out loud, something irreversible will happen.

That Elio will stop being simply a man under guard and become something much more dangerous.

It’s not just Matteo’s pull toward him that scares me, though, even if that alone unsettles me enough.

It’s mine too.

Every accidental glance reignites an old fire. Eight years of abandonment should have smothered it. His betrayal should have buried it.

The sight of Matteo trembling in that Conti safehouse should have turned every remaining ember into nothing but ash. But with only one look, one breath whispered in my direction, one brush of proximity, and suddenly, the whole world inside me is burning again.

Tonight, after Matteo is finally asleep under the watchful eye of a trusted guard, I slip outside.

The terrace sits off the second floor, half hidden behind tall glass doors and heavy curtains the color of old wine. Davide’s house is full of such places, beautiful little exits that overlook the narrow gardens in the back.

The night air is cool, carrying the distant scents of pine and damp earth. It slides over my skin and settles me in a way I haven’t felt for weeks.

Below, the fortified grounds stretch beneath the moonlight. Floodlights are positioned discreetly among the trees, men patrolling in slow, watchful routes, their dark silhouettes cutting across the silvered grass.

Beyond them, the world is nothing but forest.

I lean against the stone railing, fingers curling over the cold edge. I don’t hear him approach until he is already behind me.

“Couldn’t sleep either?”

I stiffen but don’t turn. “You shouldn’t be out here without an escort.”

“I told Bianchi’s guard I needed air. He knows better than to argue with me this late at night.” There’s a hint of dark humor in his tone, but it fades quickly. “Isabella.”

My name.

Always my damn name.