Page 77 of Accidental Alliance

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.