“Oh, I like that better,” Alessio said more to himself than anyone else at the table. “Kitten—it’s appropriate.”
“Right? That’s what I thought.”
“Makes sense.”
Ginevra let out a breathy laugh. “You two are horrible.”
“But are we?” Alessio asked.
“We are a little,” Corrado said, and then to Ginevra, “Unless you want a plate made for you. All you have to do is ask.”
For anything, Alessio added silently.
He was sure they’d figure out a way to give it to her now.
Ginevra smiled. “I do like being spoiled.”
Corrado tossed his paper aside before Ginevra had even finished her sentence and was already getting up from the table to do her bidding. Alessio met her gaze across the way, and winked.
See?
Fine.
Everything would be fine.
• • •
“Cree,” Alessio greeted, standing from the couch and giving the other two a wave of his hand as he left them alone while he answered his phone. “What can I do for you?”
Alessio was on the other side of the large sitting room from Ginevra and Corrado when Cree finally responded. “You’re not picking up Dare’s calls.”
“I have nothing to say to him, he doesn’t need me for a current job, and I don’t like listening to him bitch at me because he’s in his feelings.”
Behind him, Alessio heard Corrado clear his throat. Okay, so he hadn’t been quiet about saying what he had to say, even if he was twenty feet away. Not that anything he said was a goddamn lie, either.
“He doesn’t want to talk about the auctions, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Cree said.
“I have no doubt it’ll lead into that, and I made my decision. It was mine to make.”
“I agree, and so does he.”
Alessio stuffed a hand in his pocket, turning to watch Ginevra sitting in Corrado’s lap on the couch while the two of them battled one another on their war game. She whooped his ass all over the screen which amused Alessio to no fucking end. Even Corrado seemed to enjoy it, and usually, he was a sore loser.
He wanted to be back there.
Not here, doing this phone call.
“What do you want?” Alessio asked.
Better to get straight to the point.
“To make sure you are okay,” Cree said. “Because otherwise, you don’t fill us in.”
“Because I’m handling shit I need to handle. And since at least one of you are of the opinion you get a say on how I handle my personal business, I no longer want either of you in on it.”
Cree cleared his throat. “He didn’t want you to do the auctions. Dare, I mean. He wanted to let you do what you wanted. He’s only in his mood now about it because he believes you backing out had to do with—”
“Corrado,” Alessio interjected. “And he’s not wrong, but that doesn’t change it’s still my choice to make. I don’t want to do it, and regardless of what happens here, I still won’t be doing it.”
“Les—”
“The only reason Dare is in his feelings about Corrado and I is because you took the information I shared with you back to him.”
“I don’t hide things from him.”
“Oh, I get that,” Alessio said, “and I don’t blame you, but you also can’t fault me for keeping my private business private from here on out, yeah?”
“We worry.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Alessio.”
“Any news on that Albania hit yet?” Alessio asked.
Cree made a noise under his breath. “That’s what you want to ask me?”
“I’m not talking about anything else with you, or him. Not until you both learn that taking me in when I was ten doesn’t mean you’re owed everything I do now, Cree.”
“We don’t assume that.”
“I beg to differ.”
Cree sighed. “Are things better there? That’s all I want—that you’re happy, Les.”
A loud, happy holler drew Alessio’s attention back to the other side of the room. Ginevra’s hands flew high in the air as she tossed her head back and laughed in her triumph. On the screen, the words Mission Accomplished flashed across her character, while Corrado’s only had a red FAILED.
“How did you beat me again?” Corrado groused.
Ginevra grinned, turning her head enough to catch his scowling lips in a kiss that had Alessio’s own smile growing. He wished he was over there, sharing their moment with them, instead of on this damn call.
Because they were happy.
He was happy.
“We’re all happy,” Alessio said. “And you can tell Dare, too.”
“I’ll try to rein him in, Les. It’s the best I can do.”
“I would appreciate it.”
He had to get back to his life.
• • •
“Stop it.”
Alessio’s words came out in a mumble given that his face had buried in the pillows on the bed, and he was half asleep. Nearly there, but not quite. He couldn’t fall into sleep like he wanted when a foot away from him on the large king-size bed, Corrado kept tensing every few seconds.
It wasn’t the movement, or even Corrado’s sighs in the darkness, but rather, the fact his lover was annoyed. Or bothered ... likely both.
Alessio didn’t like that.
“Am I keeping you up?” Corrado asked.
Alessio twisted his head around, so he could stare at Corrado, or what he could see of him. “Yes, and if you want something different, go do that. Don’t lay there and fret about it. That drives me fucking crazy.”
“You don’t—”
A quiet shuffling echoed outside of their bedroom, because yeah, Alessio was back in here a couple of days later. This was where he wanted to be, he had a better night’s sleep, and didn’t give a fuck about the details. Those only held him back. Corrado left the door open in case the woman across the hall wanted something other than to sleep alone in her bed. Not that she had taken the invitation yet.
But at that sound, the noise Ginevra made when she rolled over in her bed again—for what, the millionth time since she had gotten out of the bathtub two hours ago?—Corrado tensed again. The woman wasn’t sleeping, but she was far enough away that she probably couldn’t hear their quiet conversation, and he wasn’t sure she had a clue that they were aware she wasn’t sleeping.
Her choice to sleep alone was hers.
They said nothing.
“At night, she worries,” Corrado said.
“About home, you mean.”
“What else? When does her brain shut off? About her mom, I suspect, and her sisters. She doesn’t tell us because who knows why ... but it’s what she does. I don’t like it.”
Alessio sighed, and scrubbed a hand down his face, willing that sleepiness to go. “Just go do what you want to do. If you’re going to lie beside me wondering about it, and keep me up all night, too, then I will need you to do that somewhere else.”
“Well—”
“Go get her,” he grumbled in the darkness.
“Or this is her time, no? At night, that’s when she can actually be alone without us, Les. It’s how she deals with all the shit going on—her anxiety, and the rest, you know?”