Page 79 of Accidental Alliance

Something has shifted inside me again, a slow grinding turn of machinery that cannot be reversed. This is no longer an accusation he has shouted out of anger.

Unlike what my father suspected, I cannot definitely say this is his grief sharpened into suspicion and aimed at the wrong target. If there is a record that may have survived the fall of Isabella’s father, then it needs to be examined thoroughly.

I glance back over my shoulder to make sure the door is still closed before walking toward Giovano. He watches me warily, his body tensing even before I reach him, bracing for whatever pain he thinks will come next.

I hate that I cannot blame him. He has no reason to believe I am different from any of my family members.

Quite honestly, I’m not. Maybe the only thing separating me from my brother in this moment is the simple fact that my curiosity has been piqued.

My hand rests over the file left behind by him.

The folder is still open on the metal table, pages inside marked with printouts of messages between Giovano and Davide, timestamps, routing chains, all of it neat and damning and now suddenly suspect.

The elegant little noose Alessio had been so pleased to tighten is now being called into question.

I press my palm down over the paper.

“Where is this ledger?”

He doesn’t answer me right away. His one open eye tracks my face, searching for the trap. His suspicion breathes between us and I understand too well why.

Standing here and asking for the one thing that may prove my father’s guilt will undoubtedly put Giovano in a precarious position.

One where he will be forced to decide whether handing the information over will guarantee his and Isabella’s safety or damn them.

“Why protect her?” he asks suddenly.

Why now?

Why her?

Why stand up to your father after eight years of kneeling?

I could give him the simple answer, because Isabella is mine, though not in any way I have the right to say out loud. My father just proved every fear she ever had was justified, as did my brother.

The thought of her standing in this room, forced to watch the last living piece of her father’s world die under Conti hands, makes something in me grow violent.

I think of Matteo’s frightened eyes looking at me from his mother’s arms. I look at the blood on the floor and think of Isabella at just nineteen standing by my apartment windows with tears in her eyes she refused to let fall. I think of her asking me to run away with her, and of myself saying I couldn’t.

Regret is a horrid beast.

“Because someone should have,” I finally say.

I press my tongue hard to the back of my teeth until pain steadies me. I turn away before he can see too much written on my face. There is already too much of me exposed in this room.

If I let myself feel all of it now, I will not make it down the hallway without tearing this house apart trying to get back to her.

Behind me, Giovano speaks again. “If you want to protect her, protect her from all of it. Including yourself.”

I close my eyes for half a second, my hand pausing on the door handle.

In a way, he is right. I am part of the danger closing in around Isabella and her son.

I have been from the beginning, even when I thought I was keeping my distance to spare her.

I told myself my absence was a mercy, a brutal kindness and the only gift I knew how to give a woman born too close to the same violence that made me.

I was the blade hanging over her head, polished enough to reflect whatever lie I needed to believe in order to push her away.