Page 74 of Accidental Alliance

It takes less than an hour for them to bring him in. He is dragged through the back entrance bound and gagged, two of Alessio’s men lifting him up high enough from the ground that his feet barely touch the floor.

He has aged in the years since I last saw him. His face is gaunter, his hair more silver than it once was. There is also a cut that bleeds sluggishly near his temple, and one eye is already beginning to swell.

Still, when the gag is pulled away, he bares his teeth at us before he says a word.

“Fuck you,” he spits out.

A Russo to the bone.

I stand near the back wall with my arms folded, keeping my expression blank.

The room is on the opposite side of the safehouse and had been cleared out and turned into a pseudo-interrogation room the moment Alessio’s announcement had been made. It is not built for this, not properly, at least, but Alessio has decided to make do.

A metal chair is bolted to the floor and plastic sheeting covers nearly every inch of the room.

A table with a recorder, a file stack, and a tray of instruments I recognize all too well sits in front of him. The second his ass hits the chair, he’s handcuffed to both arms and legs of it, giving him no room to squeeze out and make a run for it.

Alessio stands in front of him, looking almost elegant beneath the fluorescent light with the way his hair is pushed back from his face and both sleeves are rolled up neatly to his forearms.

He leans back against the edge of the table, his body weight shifted in a casual lean. My brother has always enjoyed dressing up interrogations like formal conversations.

Which is exactly what makes him monstrous.

He holds up the folder in his hand and twists his torso just enough to slap it down onto the table. The sound cracks through the silence. “We’ve found everything. Months of correspondence between you and the Bianchi branch. You’ve been feeding Davide information about our family, haven’t you? Planning to use the last Russo loyalist to bring us down.”

When there is no answer, Alessio rears his fist back and hits him square in the jaw. Giovano’s head snaps back from the force, a soft grunt escaping him before he can temper it back into submission.

“Haven’t you?” my brother says again.

Giovano’s head hangs forward for a beat, dragging in a rough lungful of air through his throat. Blood gathers at the corner of his mouth before he lifts his face again.

“I would never align myself with another syndicate after what was done to my own,” he rasps. “I know you Contis had something to do with what happened to Amos. You don’t think we suspected your involvement when it happened?”

Alessio snorts softly. “And why is that? All we did was offer help in finding the true assassin. What gain would we get by killing the head of our closest ally?”

Giovano bares his teeth at my brother again. “You tell me. You all swooped in to soak up our territory the moment it happened.”

My brother lifts a shoulder casually. “You were all too busy infighting. Someone had to pick up your slack so our operations weren’t destroyed.”

The man surges against his bindings, the chair scraping violently against the floor before the bolts catch. “You’re all vultures. You Contis love to dress yourselves up as allies. All the while, you were waiting to pick at my brother’s bones before he was even lowered into the ground. Your family made out good with what you took from us.”

“Careful, Giovano,” my father rumbles from near the doorway. “Threatening someone while you’re in this position will get you nowhere but left in an unmarked grave.”

The energy inside the room shifts the second his voice enters it.

His authority moves ahead of him like a weather front, pressing in from all sides until every man in this room recognizes that compliance is the only way through it.

Even Alessio stills slightly at the sound of him, though he would rather cut out his own tongue than admit it out loud.

Vittorio Conti looks untouched by the late hour and the old Russo consigliere bound to the chair in front of us.

He takes in the room in one slow sweep, not at all looking surprised by the violence, only faintly inconvenienced by its lack of resolution.

Giovano laughs, but it is wet and slightly rough sounding. “My brother was a fool to trust you. That was his mistake. ”

My father’s expression does not change, though mine nearly does.

I think of Amos Russo in the days leading up to his assassination sitting across from my father with a glass of scotch between them. Their meetings had always seemed innocuous from the outside, casual gatherings of two powerful forces turned allies. Quiet conversations behind dark closed doors neither I, nor Alessio, were ever allowed to be privy to.