Isabella
He is brought down and locked inside a starkly lit interrogation room in the basement of the safehouse.
The concrete walls are painted in a lifeless gray, a drain in the center of the floor with one light overhead. There are two chairs bolted to the floor, separated by a steel table with a metal loop in the center and a short chain attached to a set of handcuffs.
Elio is sat down in the chair, his arms extended in front of him as both of his wrists are trapped inside the cuffs.
The cuffs look wrong on him. That is my first thought, and I hate myself for it. Not because I pity him, I don’t, nor can I afford to in this kind of aggressive climate.
Pity for a man like that is a luxury I have no business entertaining, anyway. But still, the sight of Elio chained up does something strange to me.
Usually, he is the only one in the room with keys.
I stand behind a two-way mirror with my arms wrapped around myself so tightly, my fingers dig into my ribs.
The glass reflects me faintly over his body, a ghostly projection layered over a prisoner. My hair is still damp from the shower I barely remember taking before coming down here.
Davide’s head housekeeper gave me a soft black sweater and loose pants after my shower, both too fine for someone like me wearing them.
The reflection of my image in the glass makes me look cleaner than I feel. The dried blood is gone from my hands, but I can still feel it beneath my nails invisibly.
It has only been a few days since I last saw Elio, but it feels like a lifetime ago.
Seeing him here trapped with no way out of that room feels strange in a way I cannot fully name. I never thought I’d see the day when Elio Conti would be the one interrogated, not the other way around.
Part of me wants to be satisfied, wants to press my palm against the glass and laugh at the poetic irony of it.
Let him feel a fraction of what he made me feel and sit beneath someone else’s clemency with his choices reduced to whatever mercy the one in front of him decides to offer.
Davide enters the room and pulls the door shut behind him.
My eyes track him through the two-way mirror as he slowly makes his way to the other chair and lowers himself into it. He draws his hands together in front of him, lacing his fingers.
“While I am curious how you found this place, I suppose it doesn’t really matter at this point.”
Elio’s voice carries clearly through the small speakers on either side of the glass. “I need to speak to Isabella.”
Davide laughs coldly. “You think you’re in a position to make demands, Conti?”
“I’m not here to negotiate with you,” Elio replies.
His eyes move over Davide’s shoulder, locking on the mirror as if he can see straight through it to me.
A shiver races up my spine.
He can’t see me. The rational part of my mind knows that. He sees only himself, the table, Davide, and the harsh light above him. He cannot possibly know where I stand and yet his gaze finds mine with the same impossible accuracy it always has.
For a moment, the interrogation room disappears and I am back in his apartment with city lights burning behind us.
I am back in the Conti safehouse with his body too close and my hatred failing to protect me from reacting to his touch like it should.
“You aren’t in a position to be negotiating with anyone,” Davide says.
Elio’s attention shifts back to him. “Five minutes. That’s all I want. I’ll give you what you want after that.”
“What I want?” Davide asks.
“Reprieve from my family overtaking your territory. I’ll help you push them back.”
Davide goes still for a fraction of a second.
Enough for Elio to catch, judging by the faint tightening around his eyes as he stares at the man sitting in front of him. Davide is quiet for a while before slowly rising to his feet.
Elio watches him carefully, though I see the exhaustion beneath the mask keeping his expression locked tight now that I let myself look closer.
His eyes are bloodshot with a faint dark bruising beneath as if sleep has become something he no longer remembers how to do.
I hate myself for the little stab of tenderness that follows.
Davide crosses the room at the same time I move in the observation space, my body acting before I’m fully conscious of it. He opens the door and steps out into the hallway.
I meet him there, the door shutting behind him with a muted click. There are two Bianchi guards stationed near the stairs and one at the end of the corridor, all of them pretending not to watch too closely.
I feel a cold wave of anxiety washing over me.
“What do you think he wants?” Davide asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine he’d come all this way to ask me how I escaped or why. His motivations for doing this with no backup are anyone’s guess.”
Davide nods slowly, his features tugging into a thoughtful look. “Yes. I’m a bit baffled too.”
I look back toward the interrogation room door.
I hate how affected by him I still am. I want him gone, yet at the same time, I want answers from him.
I want to stop feeling this gravitational pull from him across every room we’re separated between. At this point, it’s become some kind of sickness with no cure.
Davide lowers his voice. “Isabella, you do not owe him five minutes.”
I sigh and look back at him. “I know.”
I know the danger. I feel it radiating off Elio even from behind the locked door. But something deeper whispers that I need to hear what he has to say.
The same part of me that once trusted him more than anyone still lives inside me, however broken it is now.
Davide finally relents with obvious reluctance. “Five minutes. If he tries anything, I put a bullet in his head.”
I nod in agreement.
The moment I step into the interrogation room and the door closes behind me, the air shifts.
Elio’s dark eyes lock onto me immediately. He leans forward as much as the bindings keeping him in that chair allow, dark gaze burning into me.
I slowly sit down in the chair Davide had been occupying only moments ago. The leather is still faintly warm beneath me. My hands lace together in front of me on the table, fingers interlocking so tightly, my knuckles threaten to pale.
Underneath the table, my knees press together, my spine straight, my chin lifted. My face is composed the way my father trained into me.
On the outside, I am sure I look every bit the polished strategist Amos Russo molded me into. The last member of a dead empire and the only remaining Russo still connected to my father’s blood.
It’s all a mask to ensure no one sees what’s really hiding underneath. My heart is pounding so violently, I can feel each beat against my sternum. The sound of it fills my ears, drowning out the quiet hum of the light above us and the murmur of movement beyond the door.
Elio and I being at odds is nothing new. Perhaps it has been inevitable from the beginning. A Russo and a Conti were never meant to sit on the same side of anything.
Our families have made entire legacies out of smiling across tables while sharpening blades aimed at each other beneath them. Finding ourselves on opposite sides of the same table should not shock me, and yet for some reason, this does.
Because tonight, the balance is wrong.
The wolf is caged and I am the one holding the key.
That is the last thing I expected when I fled from the safehouse. I never imagined Elio would walk himself into a rival’s house and for all the power to be arranged, at least for this brief moment, on my side of the table.
Elio’s lips part.
Before he can speak, I cut him off. “My uncle. Is he…?”
I cannot finish the sentence. I hate that after everything, there is still some small, stupid piece of me that cannot force the word alive out of my mouth.
Surprise flickers across his face. He does not insult me by denying my uncle was there, nor does not pretend not to know what I am asking.
He only exhales softly, then he shakes his head.
My heart sinks so fast, it feels like falling through ice.
I already knew. Of course I did.
The moment I heard that gunshot, some part of me understood without question that the man who had put so much on the line for me to help me disappear was no longer in this world. I felt it in my bones before now, even if I refused to accept it.
I just… thought perhaps there was a chance I could be wrong.
That maybe what I heard had been something else—a warning shot, a miss. I thought maybe, just maybe, the world might allow me to misremember one terrible thing. Unfortunately, the world has never been that kind to me.
I lower my gaze to my hands before Elio can see too much, but I already know he does. He has always been able to see everything. That has always been one of the more dangerous things about him.
My fingers tighten together in front of me. The pressure hurts but I welcome it. Pain gives me something to hold onto that is not grief.
My uncle.
My father’s only sibling.
A man who had once carried me on his shoulders through my family’s gardens while my mother scolded him for letting me get mud on my clean clothes.
A man who smelled of cigars and citrus soap no matter what he wore and who used to slip me candied almonds from his pocket before dinner. A man who was too loyal to survive the collapse of a family like ours and died because of it.
For a moment, I cannot breathe through the anger. Out of the corner of my eye, Elio watches me gather myself. He does not reach for me, thankfully, or offer some placated apology.
He knows better than that. If he tried to comfort me, I think I might hate him enough to forget there are guards outside to stop me from hitting him until he was unrecognizable.
When I finally lift my eyes again, the burn behind them has not vanished, but I have forced it down and replaced it with something colder. “Why are you here?”
Elio’s mouth pulls down into a faint frown. “I traveled back to Italy a few days ago.”
My brows furrow.