Page 124 of Accidental Alliance

He darts to the left before the bullet from my gun can even leave the chamber and crashes into me. We topple to the floor in a heap, moving with identical practice even if we are driven by opposite purposes.

Every strike carries history, and whatever resentment buried since childhood has now finally festered to the surface.

The pressure of expectation, our father’s quiet favoritism, the decades I spent chasing Alessio’s approval even as it poisoned me, it spills into each blow I land on my brother. He counters with his own that make stars burst behind my eyes.

We are evenly matched, but his movements quickly grow erratic, fueled by whatever desperation led him to step onto the battlefield in the first place.

Mine become direct, heightened by the need to protect what is mine and the promise I made to Isabella right before I left.

I pin him down on the floor and sit on him, my fists raining down blow after blow.

He laughs through bloodied teeth, manic even now. “You were always a disappointment in his eyes. I hope you know that.”

Rage surges through me then and I grab him by the throat and slam him back down to the ground. My knee pins his chest as blood coats my knuckles.

When his face is ruined and he is left gasping for air, it is only then that I climb off him and retrieve my fallen gun.

I feel no triumph, only devastation, as my finger finds the trigger once again and aims it right at his chest. “Goodbye, Alessio.”

He draws in one more ragged breath before saying, “Fuck you, Elio… Rot in hell.”

The bullet exiting the chamber is deafening and with it, I sever the last tie that once bound me to the Conti legacy.

I stand over his fallen body with my chest heaving, knuckles split and bleeding as his blood pools on the stone beneath him.

For a long moment, I cannot move.

I stare down at the man who shaped so much of my life and feel my eyes burn.

The brother I once admired, the man whose approval I chased even as it hollowed me out, is gone.

Eight years ago, he talked me into walking away from the woman I loved because I believed him when he told me sacrifice was required of me, that loyalty demanded the destruction of everything that softened me and strength meant surrendering what made me human.

To him, duty meant choosing power over any kind of happiness.

But standing over Alessio now, I finally see the true cost of that belief.

My brother built his life by tearing apart alliances and murdering those who stood in his way.

He sacrificed bonds, trust, family, love, all because he believed it could make him vulnerable. In doing so, he fractured the very empire he claimed to want to preserve.

I realize with an ache so deep it nearly brings me to my knees that I had once been on the same path.

If I had stayed under Alessio’s shadow and continued to let the Conti name dictate the limits of my heart, I might have become exactly like him, convinced that power justified breaking everything else.

But Isabella changed me.

She forced me to see that true strength is not measured by what a man can destroy, but by what he refuses to lose.

And now with Alessio gone, I understand something I couldn’t grasp eight years ago.

Legacy is not built on sacrifice. It is built on the love I once tried to abandon and the family I nearly lost because of it.

I will not make that same mistake again.

I reach down and close my brother’s eyes with blood-stained fingers. “Be free, Brother.”

I rise slowly and leave to find the woman who made me whole.