Page 2 of Accidental Alliance

In my opinion, it only makes it feel more obscene.

Violence always has a tendency to wear its nicest face at events like this.

Men toast one another beneath candlelight, then send someone to a basement before sunrise to have their teeth pulled out one by one for speaking to the wrong contact and fumbling a deal.

I let out a short breath before rolling my shoulders back.

I know if I were to step out into the light, all eyes would fall on me immediately.

At thirty-three, this city already knows my name like a prayer it fears whispering too loudly, superstitiously believing invoking it would lead to an automatic death sentence.

Elio Conti—my family’s underboss, my father’s right hand.

The man sent when negotiations fail and examples need to be made. In the streets, in the clubs, in back rooms where men swear loyalty with one hand and hide knives behind their backs with the other.

My name travels ahead of me like the smell of smoke before the sight of fire.

People hear it and lower their voices, they straighten in their seats and think twice before pulling the trigger.

I am the blade that never misses.

The cold-blooded son of a dynasty old enough to have roots in every judge’s pocket and every ballot box that matters.

Men twice my age flinch when I enter a room because they know I have buried men older, richer, and more protected than they are.

They know I do not bluff.

They know I learned young that hesitation gets you killed and mercy is never an option.

Fear is a useful language in this city.

Women, I’ve found, feel it too, though usually in a different dialect.

The smart ones avoid my eyes entirely, sensing the violence in me the way prey animals sense a predator lurking nearby.

The foolish ones are the ones who linger.

They smile too long and brush past me in dresses that cost more than most people make in a month.

They let their perfume trail behind them like an invitation, thinking danger can be flirted with, seduced, made gentle by a soft mouth and a willing body.

They look at me the way moths circle a live flame, dazzled by the heat, too stupid to understand that fire does not love what it burns.

Normally, none of it touches me.

Indifference has always clung to me like a second skin.

However, tonight, that armor has begun to wane.

Because she is here.

Even thinking her name feels dangerous. Like pressing on a bruise I know better than to keep touching.

From across the banquet hall, I track her without meaning to when she finally comes into view.

The disciplined part of myself that should know better by now refuses to cooperate.

This room is full of threats and shifting alliances that could redraw the shape of this city by morning.