Elio #2
Something restless begins moving under my skin.
Giovano spits blood onto the floor near my father’s shoes.
“My brother was going to pull away from you. That is what this has always been about. Amos saw what you were becoming. He saw how much control you wanted over territory that wasn’t yours and what you were willing to do to gain control over it. ”
My father lifts a shoulder in response. “Amos was a businessman. He understood negotiation. Sometimes, that led to a difference of opinions.”
“He refused you.”
“We disagreed,” my father corrects.
“He refused you,” Giovano repeats, voice gaining strength through sheer fury. “Two days later, he was dead.”
My father’s mouth tightens. “It seems you have spent eight years building resentment out of your own misplaced grief. That is understandable. Pathetic, but understandable.”
Giovano laughs again, and this time it nearly breaks into a cough. “You always did mistake emotions for weakness. I see nothing has changed.”
Alessio sighs then, the sound cutting into the conversation. “We are getting off topic.”
The fluorescent lights hum overhead, the sound irritatingly loud. Giovano breathes harshly through his bloodied lips before sitting up fully and rolling his shoulders back.
His bound hands flex uselessly against the restraints, though that seems of little interest to him now as he pulls his gaze away from my father to focus it on my brother instead.
Alessio smiles at him. “Shall we bring your niece in, then?”
Giovano’s eyes widen.
For the first time since they dragged him into this room, real fear cracks through the old man’s defiance.
Not fear for himself. A man like Giovano has long since made peace with pain and even death.
That has, and will always be, the inevitable conclusion for a consigliere of a once powerful family.
Men like him do not survive the collapse of an entire bloodline without learning how to look at their own impending gravesite and give it the finger in response.
No, this fear is purely for Isabella.
Alessio sees it too, and satisfaction curls through his expression slowly. “I’m sure having her here to witness this will help soften that mouth of yours. Perhaps even get you to talk about what we’ve found in the correspondence between you and Davide.”
His fingers tap the file twice behind him.
My heart stutters in my chest and the room tilts for half a second as everything inside me shifts dangerously.
The thought of Isabella being dragged here as Matteo is left behind screaming for her, or worse, brought too, makes my stomach roll violently.
I won’t be able to handle Isabella’s face when she sees her uncle bound and bloodied in front of her. Giovano will try to straighten in the chair despite the pain because he will not want her to see him broken, but that won’t matter. She will see what has been done to him.
And if Giovano does not give Alessio what he wants?
Then she will watch him die.
Before I can stop myself, I push away from the wall and drop my arms back down to my sides. “We don’t need to involve her.”
Alessio drags his gaze back over to me slowly. He looks almost amused, but his eyes are black glass. “And why not?”
My mouth opens to argue, because she has already lost enough and I will not allow you to use her grief against her like a tool until she breaks, before I stop myself.
If she walks into this room and sees what we are doing to the last living connection to her father, she will never look at me again without seeing the monster she already has accused my bloodline of being. I cannot stand there and watch her break. It might actually kill me.
Alessio’s mouth curves again at my silence. “All she’s been doing is sucking up resources since she’s been here. Guards, food, medical attention. Your attention.” His eyes narrow on the last two words. “We might as well make use of her, even if it’s someone else’s pressure point.”
The thing about Alessio is that he knows how to make cruelty sound practical. He takes horror and dresses it in logic that no amount of arguing against can make it sound less so.
Revealing my ever growing underbelly that has become Isabella Russo will not only be detrimental to me but to her as well.
My brother’s cruelty toward Isabella will force her to have a front row seat to whatever depraved actions he plans to take in order to punish her uncle for refusing to cooperate.
My hands fist at my sides. I can feel my father’s stare on the side of my face the longer my silence continues. It’s heavier than any gun held to my forehead before now.
Giovano snarls weakly. “Keep her out of this.”
“If you still have affection for your niece, then her presence should provide you with ample encouragement to start talking.” His gaze lands on me next.
“And if she has been telling the truth about her involvement, or lack thereof, with Davide, then perhaps seeing the man who no doubt helped her disappear exposed as a traitor will clarify certain loyalties.”
He strains against his bindings again. “She has nothing to do with this!”
“Then prove it,” Alessio says.
“I would rather die.”
He leans closer to Giovano, his voice touched with amusement. “Yes. I believe you would. Shall we test that?”
“Enough,” I snap.
He straightens slowly, twisting around to look at me, his brows pulling together in confusion.
My father’s eyes narrow out of the corner of my eye, his entire body turning to face me. I feel the entire room pivot toward me even if most of the men in here hardly move from their statuesque positions.
My brother tilts his head. “Excuse me?”
I look at him and let him see the proverbial line I’ve drawn in the sand because there is no point in subtlety now.
It died somewhere between my father refusing to refute the truth about Amos’s death and my brother deciding Isabella’s grief could be another instrument to play with at his leisure.
“You heard me,” I say.
The amusement in my brother’s expression disappears completely.
My father’s voice lowers. “Elio.”
The warning should work. It has my entire life up until this point. My name in that tone used to pull my spine straight and reel my conscience back into whatever locked drawer he preferred it stored.
I have killed men after hearing that tone without question. I have swallowed every question that rose in me because Vittorio Conti did not raise sons to question the architect of our family’s empire.
Tonight, the tone only irritates me. I do not look at him, only at my brother. “Isabella stays where she is. She has no reason to be involved in any of this.”
Alessio laughs once, disbelieving. “Are you giving orders now?”
“I am the underboss.”
He watches me for a long moment. “You think she’ll thank you for this?”
“No.” The answer is immediate.
Isabella will not thank me for keeping her out of this room, nor will she thank me for protecting her from any sort of grief involving her family after I have already dragged it right to her doorstep.
She will never forgive me because I stopped one cruelty from happening after committing ten others. She may never even look at me without seeing the man who shattered the life she once had.
I know that, yet it changes nothing.
Protecting them openly creates a target on Isabella and her son’s backs, one that I’m well aware is already beginning to form right here in this room.
It gives my enemies, my brother, my father, and anyone else willing to try to harm them a direct line to my largest vulnerabilities. The moment I claim them, I endanger them. The moment I refuse to claim them, I abandon them.
There is no winning here.
Quite frankly, there never was. Not from the moment Davide found Isabella or even now.
Every path is poisoned, built off the remnants of a dynasty my own sought to claim after its collapse.
My whole life, I have been taught to look for the efficient road, the least messy solution.
But I am done pretending those are the only choices worth making.
I lift my chin and meet my father’s eyes. “If anyone touches them, they will have to go through me first.”
“Stand down,” he says.
My hand drops to the gun at my side in response. Every man in this room understands the language of that movement and it causes everyone to freeze in place. Alessio’s face tightens. For a second, I can read him as clearly as Isabella reads me.
He sees the danger now that is the fracture running straight through the Conti household, me on one side and them on the other. He looks at me as if I am a stranger, some foreign entity inhabiting the body of his younger brother.
My brother has always believed our family could survive anything as long as we remained loyal to the genesis that made us. What he does not understand is that same structure has been eating us alive since we were boys.
Or maybe he does and simply considers that the price of power.
My father’s eyes narrow to slits. “You would draw on family for them?”
My hand doesn’t move. “Only if you force my hand.”
His eyes harden, though for a fleeting second, I see something almost like pride pass through the anger boiling there. It disgusts me more than his contempt would have because I know what he sees.
It isn’t the courage of a man finally standing between his family and the people that would love nothing more than to destroy it. He sees the violence in me, the willingness to draw a line and enforce it without question, only now, the weapon is aimed in the wrong direction.
I know some part of him admires my tenacity even as he hates being the target.
Family has been the altar at which I have sacrificed every piece of my soul and never asked for anything in return.
It took Isabella from me and stole the life I wanted to have with her, torturing me with the knowledge of her finding it with someone else while I lived and died for the same people who are now eager to harm her.
Never once have I questioned any of that until now.