Page 57 of Accidental Alliance

“Who is he?”

Confusion tightens around her eyes. “Who?”

“Your son’s father,” I say. “Tell me his name.”

Isabella’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second, then narrow to dangerous slits. “That’s none of your business.”

I grab her upper arms when she moves to push me away, not hard enough to bruise but firm enough to feel the defined muscle beneath her sleeves.

The contact burns through me. “Tell me, Isabella.”

Her mouth twists, and all that Russo fire rises to the surface. “Fuck you.”

The words should make me release her. Instead, they strike sparks off the jealousy to tear through me. The thought of a nameless man touching her makes me see red.

A phantom with hands where mine used to be, a man who might have watched her belly swell with a child, might have stood beside her in a hospital room while I was miles away, ignorant and loyal to a family that has taken everything from me and labeled it as duty.

My mouth twists into a deep frown. “Did he know exactly how to touch you, how to make you forget your own name? Or did you think of me every time another man was inside you?”

I should stop. I know that I need to. But the jealousy has teeth now, and it is chewing through every voice of reason faster than I can kill it. I hate myself the instant they leave my mouth, though not enough to take them back.

There is still too much poison moving through me to be sorry about it now, too much rage at a man I cannot kill because I have no idea what his identity is.

Who helped her build the life I had no right to want and no strength to choose? Who was there when I wasn’t?

I want to know like a gaping wound needs pressure to keep the heart beating, like a starving man needs food to keep his feet moving one in front of the other. I want a name to hate, a target to picture for all of these ugly feelings to focus on. Having nowhere else to go, the person I hate most in this room is myself.

She shoves at my chest. “As if you have any right to know anything about me or my son.”

I move with her until her back meets the cold concrete wall beside the cot, caging her in with my body. The room shrinks to the space between just her and me. Her breathing comes faster now, chest rising and falling in sharp bursts. Her eyes flare with rage, but beneath that, something more painful flickers.

An old current between us wakes, tangling up with too much damage to be anything considered uncomplicated. Desire, hatred, grief, betrayal, all of it churns together until the room feels oxygen-starved.

The jealousy within me does not die the longer I stare down at her trying to force myself back behind the disciplined neutrality I’ve always hid behind. It merely twists into something much darker.

I lean in until my forehead nearly rests against hers, my voice a rough growl. “Tell me.”

“No.”

My hands slide down her arms before I can stop them, pausing at her waist for one dangerous, suspended second. She goes rigid under my touch, and I feel the exact instant her body remembers me just as her mind rejects the memory.

The collision is there in the faint catch of her breath and the way her lashes flutter.

It is a cruel thing, the body, how it keeps records the heart tries to burn out of self preservation. For this one moment in time, the cycle we have never truly escaped reignites with the same fire that once consumed us both.

When my lips meet hers, it is a spark striking oil. The first taste of her after eight years nearly drops me to my knees. I am no longer an underboss standing in a locked room with an ally turned enemy.

Now I am simply a starving man beckoning at the altar of the only woman who has ever made hunger feel like devotion.

She makes a small sound against me.

Her hands come up between us, curling around the fabric of my shirt. Pathetically, I rationalize it as her way of pulling me closer, wanting me just as badly as I do her. Perhaps she’s just as lost in this as I am. Maybe even more so.

But then I feel her palms flatten, and without warning, she shoves me back with a surprising amount of strength.

The loss of contact is brutal.

I stumble back half a step before catching myself on the wall, my hand jutting out to keep me steady. Her eyes are wide and furious and slightly wet with something that looks too much like hurt to be mistaken for anything else. Her hand lifts, and the crack of her palm across my face slices through the room like a gunshot.