Elio
It is a full week after my night with Isabella that my brother finally finds a new thread to pull. By then, the safehouse has become its own kind of purgatory.
The walls feel like they are closing in more than they did when we first arrived, suffocating me with each passing day I watch the sun rise and set with little sleep in between.
Every hallway carries too much silence and even the air tastes stale on my tongue, no matter how often the windows are cracked to let in the fresh breeze.
At least Isabella and Matteo remain in the reinforced room, together now. I watch them on the monitors when I know no one else is around.
Matteo is most often curled into her side on the cot as Isabella’s fingers glide through his hair to soothe him.
Sometimes, he wakes up crying in the middle of the night, his limbs flailing while his eyes stare wide-eyed at the ceiling.
Those are the nights she rocks him to sleep, whispering things I cannot hear through the feed even when I turn the audio up.
Afterward, she always looks straight at the camera. Whether she knows I am watching or not, I feel the accusation all the same. You did this.
I carry that with me everywhere now.
So when Alessio appears in the main room with the first real excitement I have seen on his face in days, I already know whatever it is isn’t going to be pleasant.
He stands in front of the monitors, blocking them, his eyes bright with a predatory kind of satisfaction as he holds up a file that is held loosely in one hand.
“We found Giovano Russo.”
The name stills the entire room.
Amos’s younger brother. Isabella’s uncle. The last surviving piece of her father’s inner circle.
The consigliere who fled after Amos’s assassination, vanishing before the city could finish tearing whatever remained of the Russo family apart. Some said he ran to protect the remnants of their bloodline.
Others questioned his motives because they suspected he knew more than he was willing to die for. In our world, both can be true, though neither would ever be enough to save you.
I haven’t seen him since the week after his brother died.
From what I remember, he was a grim man with silver at his temples and a hard attitude that matched the permanent scowl etched onto his face.
At Amos’s funeral he had stood beside Isabella’s grandmother, one hand on her elbow.
His face had been tight with exhaustion, his eyes darting around the procession as the priest gave final rites.
I had stood across the church aisle with my family and watched him from a distance, wondering over and over if he had any contact with Isabella after she disappeared.
I remember Giovano looking at me once, finding the hatred reflecting in his eyes had been pure enough to leave a mark in my mind permanently.
Even remembering it now it sends a shiver rolling down my spine.
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.
From what I saw, there had never been any true hostility breeding between them. Not enough for the Russo family to suspect ours was behind the attack. It would make no sense for my father to kill Amos Russo.
The Russo alliance brought stability and kept profits on both our sides consistent, and enemies cautious. Amos had influence my father respected, and my father respects very few things he does not own.
Killing him would have created chaos. The kind that costs money and invites vultures just as Giovano is accusing us of being now.
The next thought comes sharp and unwelcome.
Except… we did benefit from chaos.
After Amos died, the Russo family fractured almost immediately. Old loyalties turned brittle while the men in Amos’s inner circle who had once smiled at one another across wedding tables and formal dinners began whispering about succession and territory, none of which they wanted to share.
There were no loyalties left after those first few months. Not a single hand strong enough to hold the syndicate together remained once internal conflict grew.
That was when my family stepped in. To stabilize operations, my father had said, and prevent outside exploitation in order to protect shared interests.
At the time, I swallowed those ideas back then because I needed them to be true. Because if they were not true, then what did that make me?
What did that make the choice I made when I walked away from Isabella? Foolish? Misguided?
My father moves closer to Giovano now, his polished shoes near silent against the floor. “Your brother understood the nature of power. You never did. That is why Amos led and you advised.”
Giovano snarls at him with bloodied teeth. “I advised him not to trust snakes. Look at what good that did when he ignored me.”
My father stops in front of him, towering over him with an old king’s calm. “Perhaps that says more about your value as consigliere than it says about his judgment.”
Giovano surges against the restraints again
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Alessio watching with the smallest curl of satisfaction tugging at his mouth, but I do not look at him for long.
My attention is fixed on my father and the controlled line of his shoulders. On the faint boredom in his voice and the fact that he has not once denied anything.
Not directly, at least.