Scared.
She could be frightened of them, or of Corrado, or just what he had done. Alessio wasn’t sure, but when Corrado reached out a hand to her, a sorry already falling off his tongue, she took a step back.
A whole step.
Away.
“Get him out of here,” Marcus said, blocking Ginevra from Alessio’s view when he came to kneel beside them. “Calm him the fuck down, I need to handle this and fast.”
Right, right.
Mafia business.
Can’t kill made men.
All trash.
“Ginevra,” Corrado said.
Marcus gave his brother a glance from the side. “She’s fine for now.”
Except she wasn’t.
Even Alessio understood that.
23.
Corrado
Alessio shoved Corrado through the exit door, making him stumble into a back alley that was cold, and yet still somehow smelled of garbage and piss. Fucking perfect.
Not that it mattered.
The cold air helped to soothe some of that rage inside his soul—that bitterness making the beats of his heart faster. And not in a good way, either.
It barely helped, though.
Alessio stayed back by the door, sticking a rock in the track to keep it from closing before he turned to face Corrado. He didn’t need to look at Alessio’s face to see the disappointment staring back from him.
Corrado wasn’t the hothead here.
He didn’t freak out.
Over the years, he had become rather good at pretending like people’s bullshit didn’t bother him, and ... tonight had been more than enough to make him fucking snap.
Oh, sure, Alessio would have taught the guy a lesson, too, but just differently than Corrado. Like taking him outside and beating the piss out of him where people couldn’t stand there and watch.
People like Ginevra.
Corrado let out a heavy breath, his back hitting the brick wall opposite to Alessio. Still, his companion said nothing as he snarled under his breath, dragged his palms down his face, and stared up at the inky sky with bright stars dotting its surface.
He still missed the stars.
They didn’t see them enough in Vegas.
“Corrado—”
“Just don’t,” he muttered.
Alessio sighed. “That was bad.”
“I don’t need the memo.”
“No, I mean ... that was a mess, and what the fuck?”
What was it?
A lot of things.
Nothing, too.
Everything.
Five fucking years of comments under people’s breath about what they thought with Alessio and Corrado, like they had any fucking business opening their mouths to say anything at all.
It was more years of him always being told famiglia should be the only thing Corrado did—he would only ever be useful as a man, if he was his father’s clone.
The frustration.
His anger.
A reaction.
Corrado finally reacted, and surprise, it came out badly. Why on earth was anyone surprised? Because he wasn’t.
This felt like a long fucking time coming.
“He didn’t give a fuck, you know?” Corrado asked.
“Who?”
“That fuck—George.”
He still stared at the sky and willing that hatred in his heart to disappear, loathing the emotion—it had no place in his life. He felt a lot of ways about a lot of different things, but hate terrified him.
Hate made people do awful things to one another. Fear bred in hate, and people had killed for nothing more than their hate of someone else, or for their hate of something.
Be it differences, sexualities, religion, or skin color ... hate caused pain. That’s all it was good for, and he proved that tonight, hadn’t he?
His hate came out in violence. How did that make him any worse or better than the man who was dead on the floor upstairs?
Corrado didn’t think he was better.
“I don’t understand,” Alessio said quietly.
Of course, not.
Because Corrado hadn’t explained.
All that shit unsaid.
“He didn’t give a fuck,” Corrado repeated, “because he didn’t know anything about us, and that’s what pissed me off, okay. All he sees are two men who are affectionate, and that made him uncomfortable enough to say something about it. Not because it hurts him, or affects his fucking life, but just because he didn’t like us.”
“There are millions of people like him, Corrado.”
Yeah, he understood.
Clearly.
“Does that mean they should open their stupid fucking mouths and spew their bullshit, though?” Corrado asked, lowering his gaze from the sky to stare at the man across the alley from him. Alessio stared back with his face an expressionless mask, not that Corrado took offense to that. They all needed a few seconds to deal with this, and what it meant. “When they know nothing—not what we are, what it’s been like for us together, or what you mean to me. And they sure as fuck don’t have a clue how much I fucking love you because they’re too worried about the fact two men might kiss where they can see.”
Silence echoed between the two in the alley.
Finally, Alessio cleared his throat and muttered, “You drop that bomb, huh?”
“What?”
“The love bit.”
Corrado gave him a look. “Cette partie de mon cœur est à toi—this part of my heart, it’s yours. I have been telling you this for years, but you only wanted to hear it in the way you wanted me to say it, Les.”
Alessio’s throat jumped, and his cheek twitched. Corrado waited him out because now, he didn’t have a choice. He did what he did—it’d been said. The rest would be determined by the man across from him.
“I figured out something over the last while,” Alessio murmured.
“Do tell.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole.”
Corrado checked his attitude. “Sorry.”
Alessio shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he looked up at the sky above them while he spoke. “I figured out I clung to that—to words, Corrado, putting too much faith and weight in what words meant, and not what’s true. I thought, if you said those words, then it would mean this was real. I held onto a need for words when literally everything else about us and what we are is the definition of what I wanted. It’s love, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this sooner.”
Corrado blinked, quiet again.
This thing that had been such a fucking problem ... now wasn’t one. Like that, it was done, and he wasn’t sure if he understood what it meant.
“And you know I love you, so,” Alessio added. “I’ve always loved—”
Corrado crossed the alleyway before Alessio could even finish his sentence because no ... no, that could not be an afterthought. Not when he was aware, regardless of what Alessio decided he had figured out about all of this, that those three little words had meant a lot to him when he felt like they weren’t freely given.
Alessio might have understood now Corrado wasn’t like him, and he didn’t show his affection and love in the same ways. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do it, anyway.
Because that was love.
Corrado crashed into Alessio hard enough to send them both into the wall beside the propped open door. Alessio’s fingers threaded into Corrado’s hair when their lips met, moving to a fast, familiar rhythm as his frustration and anger started to bleed away.