Elio #3
Davide making contact with Isabella does look bad. The timing of our cold war turning hot makes it look even worse.
If I were looking at this from an outside perspective with no past attachment, and Isabella were just another daughter from a bloodline that is now gone, I would be asking the same questions.
Maybe harsher ones.
I know she was terrified when we took her. She fought like hell when she saw us taking her son away, not because she thought a scene might buy her sympathy.
That had nothing to do with theatrics and everything to do with real fear.
What happened in that house was absolutely not acting. There is no faking that kind of motherly rage, even if it’s to save your own skin from being questioned by an ally’s enemy.
I lift my eyes to Alessio. “She’s been out of our world for a long time. What would give her a reason to step back into it?”
He lifts a shoulder, the gesture casual. “Revenge, for one.”
It is the easiest answer. Revenge moves people to do irrational things all the time, turning patience into virtue and obsession into purpose. It keeps wounds fresh long after they should have scarred over and deems that righteousness.
Still, I hear myself say, “Eight years later?”
“When has revenge ever had a statute of limitation?” he counters, one brow lifting.
We have wars in our family records that outlived the men who started them.
Feuds that passed from father to son like heirlooms, grudges preserved longer than alliances.
Revenge does not rot in our world. It ferments and grows more potent with time, not less. Some need only a single reason to finish what’s already been started.
I drag a hand over my mouth and hold it there for a second, breathing through my nose while the thought settles where I do not want it.
I hate that it makes sense.
I can look at Isabella Russo, brilliant and angry, vanished for years, and imagine exactly how revenge might have helped her bide her time.
Waiting for the right opening, the right reason to step back onto the board where she could finally make old ghosts answer for what they cost her.
If revenge remains on the table as motive and there is even a chance she stepped back into this world through Davide for reasons that trace all the way back to us, then we cannot afford any kind of sentiment.
We cannot assume that because she built a softer life, she stopped being capable of hard choices.
She is still a Russo, after all.
Alessio straightens from where he has been leaning against the console table, lazy elegance draining out of him within the blink of an eye.
What replaces it is colder, more final. “We will need to kill them both before Davide realizes we have his precious strategist. We cannot afford to hesitate on this.”
I say nothing.
I keep my eyes fixed on the monitor behind him, on the driveway feed. A squirrel bounds up one of the tree trunks at the edge of the frame, its tiny body moving in frantic jerks that look almost comical against the hard geometry of the rest of the world around it.
Years of training have made it easy to hold my face still. My hands do not curl even though I can feel the tendons in them wanting to fist tightly together. The squirrel disappears higher into the branches and out of view just as quickly as it had come.
I have just seen a small snippet of exactly what Isabella will do for that boy if harm comes to him. If someone threatened his life, she would talk.
Love, as my father and brother have always preached, make even the strongest people weak. The right threat aimed at the right pressure point can force open almost any door if you press hard and long enough on it.
Alessio is right about one thing. We can no longer hesitate.
Her presence here is already a weakness.
Every minute she remains close by, every second I stand outside that reinforced door instead of doing what must be done, the weakness within me deepens and the more certain I become that I will not let anyone, not my brother, not the syndicate, not even my own father, take her from me again.
That is exactly why it has to die.
Even if it means becoming the monster she already believes I am.
I glance down the hallway without meaning to, toward the locked room where the woman I once fantasized leaving everything for now rests.
The memory of that fantasy feels almost laughable now in its innocence.
Burning it all down for love… as if love has ever built anything in my world except softer targets.
“I’ll get the truth out of her,” I hear myself say, my voice sounding distant even to me. “To confirm your suspicions.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I find my brother studying me. He knows me too well. Better, maybe, than anyone still alive. Better than I would like, actually. I turn my head slowly to meet his gaze.
“Make sure you’re actually looking for the truth. Not an excuse to avoid what it really is,” he says at last.
I stand without another word. If I stay another thirty seconds alone with him, I may put my fist through his throat and turn this room into a different kind of problem entirely.
His mouth curves upward, but there is no humor in it. “Good luck.”