Page 112 of Accidental Alliance

It is there and gone so quickly, I almost convince myself I imagined it. But I know men like him. I know the way possession crawls through their bones before morality can put a hand over its mouth.

I know what his world does to children, especially sons.

“If you think I will let you use him as your family’s heir, you are mistaken. I will cut both our throats and let us bleed out on the floor before I ever let your family touch him,” I say.

A complicated expression crosses his face. He steps closer, slowly enough that I can stop him. When I don’t, his voice lowers to just above a whisper. “Every instinct I was raised with tells me that if he is mine, then he belongs with me. Under my protection. Under my name and behind walls no one can breach.”

I glare at him.

Elio’s expression flinches with disgust, but he does not look away from me. “That is the first thought that crosses through my mind. The one my father put in me before I was old enough to know better. But it isn’t the only one I have. It isn’t the one I am choosing.”

My fingers dig into my arms as I continue to stare at him.

His fingers lift, hovering near my cheek but not quite touching it. The hesitation tears through me more violently than if he simply reached for me. Once, long ago, Elio Conti would have touched me because he wanted to.

Because desire, like power, was something men in his world learned to take before anyone thought to deny them.

Now he waits, stops himself with barely an inch between his skin and mine, and that restraint is its own kind of brutality.

It gives me the choice to pull away if I want to.

“I am not asking you to forgive me, Isabella. I’m not even asking you to love me. I’m… I’m asking you to use me to protect our boy. Let me prove to you that I am not the man you think I am. Not anymore,” he says, his voice low, rough around the edges.

My eyes begin to burn. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to give you.”

I want to sound cold, have that Russo steel reflect on my tongue. I want to stand here as my father’s daughter and make him bleed because he deserves to feel the hurt more than I do, not have this ragged grief pouring out of me like a wound reopening without warning.

Except, right now, I am not only my father’s daughter. I am only the girl Elio left behind, the woman who carried his child with no hand at her back.

The mother who learned to protect at all cost because love had made me vulnerable in ways violence never could.

A shuddered breath leaves me. “I woke up alone, Elio… I found out my father was dead and you weren’t there. I found out I was carrying your child alone.” His face pinches with pain. I keep going because if I stop now, the words will crawl back into me and poison whatever is left of my soul. “I had already seen exactly what your love was worth when duty came calling. There was no point trying to tell you when I already knew what would happen.”

His throat works. What surprises me most is how he does not defend himself, nor does he try to tell me I don’t understand what it cost him to stay with his family when I left.

The pads of his fingers glide over my skin, catching the tears I am furious to realize have spilled over.

His touch is careful, reverent in a way that feels unfair after everything his hands have done to me. All that they failed to protect.

“I never should have let you go,” he whispers. “I was a coward. A fool. You deserved better, and I am sorry.”

I used to imagine those words in the early months when Matteo was no bigger than a small melon in my belly. I imagined Elio coming back, pretended he would be standing in a doorway when I woke up with his face drawn with regret, telling me he had made a mistake.

I imagined slapping him, kissing him, screaming at him until my voice gave out. In those fantasies, I could refuse him with dignity I never actually possessed outside of those dreams.

Then time passed and Matteo was born.

The fantasies died right alongside my love for him because survival had left very little room for ghosts that do not help or hold a fussy baby at three in the morning.

Now that Elio is here, touching my face and saying the words I thought were too late, I am finding that the girl who waited for them all this time is not dead, after all. She has only been buried under motherhood and rage, but she is still alive enough to weep at hearing them.

Trusting him could be the worst mistake of my life. However, this is no longer just about me anymore.

If it were, perhaps I could run forever. I could take the old hurt and wear it like armor as I always have and keep it from shattering my heart again and again. I could tell Elio Conti he is too late, that regret has no currency here and that love which fails at the first sign of struggle does not get to return for a second chance.

But Matteo exists between us.

My son with Elio’s dark hair and my eyes, who watches the east hallway with questions building with no answers to follow. My bright baby boy who deserves truth and also safety, and who may someday ask why I kept him from a father who wanted to try.