This was one.
Chris nodded. “I understand.”
It didn’t sound like he did, though.
Then, he asked, “Anything else you want me to tell them? I’m about to meet up with them at the mansion in a couple of hours, so I can pass it along face to face.”
All over again, she considered the conversation with Cara in the restaurant. How she told her, in so many words, to always make the best of this life.
She didn’t have to make the best of anything.
Not when she had Corrado and Alessio.
“Ginevra?” Chris asked again. “Anything?”
“Yeah. Tell them I lo—”
Marcus stepped into the entryway beside his brother, making her words stop short as he held out a phone with a small smile. “Someone would like to speak to you from New York, Ginevra.”
Her gaze darted to Chris, but he stepped back to let Marcus offer the phone still outstretched for her to take. She did but didn’t look down at the screen right away to see if she might recognize the number.
She wanted to thank Marcus first.
He had been kind to her.
Even if he didn’t have to be.
“Thank you for everything,” she said.
Marcus shrugged. “No worries, this is what I was taught to do.”
She looked past him to finish her conversation with Chris, but she found the entryway empty. He already left.
Damn.
Ginevra would have time.
Later.
She would go back to Alessio and Corrado and say what she wanted to say face to face. They would get it from her mouth, and not from someone else’s.
She loved them.
They deserved to hear it from her.
“Take your call,” Marcus said, bringing Ginevra back to reality.
She laughed under her breath, and nodded, pulling the phone up to her ear as she said, “Hello?”
“Are you ready to come back?”
Ginevra stiffened all over. “Andino?”
The man on the other end of the line chuckled darkly. “That would be me, yes.”
“Why are you calling—”
“I am the one who sent you away,” Andino said fast, “and I should have access to call you if I need, even if I am in jail, right?”
He really was an asshole.
And ... “What?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re in jail?”
“Semantics, and I have access to a private cell, so my business, like you, is still being handled.”
Ginevra moved onto another topic, then. “What did you mean—about home?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“You mean—”
“I heard you spoke to Siena,” he noted, a slight hum in the background of his call lowering to nothing at all as a door shut on his end. “But what she didn’t tell you was just how close we were to the end the night you called. A few days before you spoke to Siena, Darren got caught in an unfortunate situation—a bomb that did quite a bit of damage.”
Ginevra dragged in a breath, surprising herself when she cared nothing for a man who shared at least half of her blood.
“And a while ago,” Andino added quieter, “they buried Kev—did they tell you?”
“No. Is Darren alive?”
“Barely. Life support most of the way. He won’t come out of it, and Siena only has to sign paperwork after filing to take over his next of kin as their mother is missing, and can’t do the job of pulling the proverbial plug. No one is left who will give a fuck, or can change the fact, that you didn’t marry me, and ran off instead. Not anymore.”
Jesus Christ.
“It’s over, Ginny,” Andino said, “and you can come home. Siena said your sisters have been told the truth about you recently, and they ask for you every chance they possibly can. I will be emailing Marcus with the name and contact of a pilot who is willing to overlook a hidden passenger on his private jet when he makes the trip across the border today, where he will land in a safe, private strip to drop the passenger off. You, I mean.”
It was over.
She didn’t know how to feel.
“But we are running on a short timeline,” Andino said, “because I was barely able to call in that favor and contact today. Just my luck that my old friend is making the trip this morning. So, otherwise, we’ll have to wait and pull strings to get you back home soon. It’s up to you.”
Ginevra didn’t have to think about it.
She wanted to be here.
Should be here.
But she missed her sisters. She needed to go back to them.
The boys would understand.
Surely.
“Well?” Andino demanded.
“I’ll be on that plane if it’s waiting for me.”
25.
Corrado
“Stop obsessing.”
“I’m not.”
“Corrado.”
He glowered at the phone in his hand. “What, Les?”
“It doesn’t help to sit there and—”
“Or you could leave me the hell alone?”
Alessio sighed.
Corrado shrugged.
“Fine,” Alessio muttered, “I need to pack up my shit, anyway. I got the new flight set for this afternoon, so we can head over to your parents together, and I’ll leave for Vegas after.”
Great.
Just perfect.
Corrado said none of that out loud because his pride kept him quiet. That stupid bitch of a thing seemed to follow him no matter how hard he tried to forget about it. He didn’t want to speak up and tell Alessio he couldn’t leave—right now, he was the only person here that Corrado wanted besides Ginevra, and she wasn’t calling.
All she had to do was use Marcus’s phone.
Except she didn’t.
And his phone was still in his hands, no calls or texts.
The very last thing he needed was for Alessio to leave. But they didn’t get a choice because of that fucking Albania job, and Corrado’s pride kept him quiet. Instead of saying what he needed and wanted in those moments, he kept his mouth shut.
It wasn’t easier.
It made sense.
“Give her some time,” Alessio said, “to process whatever it is she’s got going on in her head, and then we’ll go from there. That’s all you can do—she asked for it, Corrado.”
“I get it.”
All too fucking well.
And it killed him.
“All right,” Alessio muttered, stepping out into the hallway out of sight.
Just like that, Corrado was alone again. He was all too aware that soon, he would be far more alone than he was right now. Alessio would be gone—for a week, maybe two, who fucking knew? Ginevra was ... out of reach.
Not taking his messages, or calling back.
He’d not told her how he loved her. That, more than the rest, he regretted the most. The time had never been right to say that, but he realized now, far too late ... there shouldn’t be a right time for love.
Too little, too late.
His mind was hell.
Far too dark.
Frustrated, Corrado glared at that phone in his hand, and before he could think the action though, tossed it to the hardwood floor harder than he should have. Was it smart? Not particularly, but it felt better than feeding the hot fury flooding his veins in another way.