Page 35 of Accidental Alliance

There is no weapon in the house, not anymore, unless one counts the chef’s knife block still in the kitchen.

The nearest neighbor is two houses down and this town’s response time is quick for domestic emergencies and laughable for something like this.

I stop just short of the door and look through the peephole.

What I see surprises me but also does not.

There are four men in black standing on my porch.

Their posture is too rigid, their eyes too alert in that unmistakable way that tells me every one of them knows exactly how fast they can draw a weapon and how quickly it will take someone to call about the sound of gunshots.

Their hands rest near concealed weapons at their hips while their eyes scan the cul-de-sac like wolves who have finally picked up a long-cold scent and do not intend to lose it again.

At the front of them stands a man I never thought I would see again.

Davide Bianchi.

My stomach tightens, confusion rattling around inside my head.

For a moment, all I can do is stare through the fisheye distortion of the peephole, my mind refusing to align memory with what is standing on my porch.

Davide Bianchi, boss of the Bianchi syndicate and once one of my father’s most trusted allies, has no business being here standing in front of my house while my son plays soccer ten feet away in the back yard.

Yet… he is.

He’s older now, of course. Time has marked him in the ways it marks powerful men who survive long enough to be feared by a second generation.

Silver threads through darker strands at his temples. There are deeper lines bracketing his mouth and fanning from the corners of his eyes, etched there by years of command.

He still wears power with that effortlessly dangerous neatness men like him are born with. His dark coat is immaculately pressed at the collar. His polished shoes have no place on a quiet suburban porch like mine.

Confusion rattles hard inside my skull.

Why is he here? Why now?

I changed names. I became a woman no one would bother remembering or looking for. I lived small on purpose and told myself that enough years and distance would turn me into a dead branch on the family tree, at most. Something too inconvenient to dig up unless absolutely necessary.

He lifts his head then as if he can feel me watching him on the other side of the door.

Davide had always been loyal to my father with the kind of Old-World devotion that had become rare even then. He and my father understood each other in ways not even Vittorio Conti could.

They both believed in order and legacy, and in the careful architecture of power that could crumble in a single moment.

He had always spoken to me with a certain reserve that bordered on respectful. Seeing him at my door is easier to swallow than someone from another syndicate.

Whatever this is, I cannot let it unfold on the porch with Matteo outside or neighbors drifting out with coffee mugs and turning their curious eyes toward my house.

The absolute last thing I need is for these men to stay visible any longer than absolutely necessary.

In towns like this, people notice and gossip. Once someone starts asking the wrong questions, suddenly, this soft little life I’ve made will no longer be anonymous.

I pull in a breath and slowly ease the door open, only a crack at first and with the chain still hooked to the inside of the door. Davide’s gaze lands on me immediately.

For one horrifying instant, I am twenty again, back in the world of ornate ballrooms and bloodstained loyalties, standing in a floor-length silk dress surrounded by men deciding my future without asking me whether I wanted them to or not.

“Ms. Hayes,” Davide says, inclining his head toward me.

The use of my alias is not a courtesy as someone else in my position would be led to believe.