The same way it messed with everything.
“Ginny!”
Corrado watched an older girl, although still younger than Ginevra, dart across the ballroom floor, away from a young man who was staring after her like his favorite thing had been ripped out of his hands. Ginevra turned away from his mother, laughing at whatever the older teenager rushed to tell her, while the younger girl who had been beside her the entire time rolled her eyes.
“Her sisters,” Alessio explained next to him. “Greta is the older one—she’ll be eighteen in two months. Giulia, the youngest, is fifteen.”
Right.
Her sisters ...
Corrado felt like shit.
That was the best way to describe it. He didn’t have the right words, otherwise. He said it—entirely selfish. So caught up in his own wants, that he never even considered the people around him, or what they needed to handle.
Like Ginevra.
And her sisters.
“I do not deserve you or her,” he murmured.
But fuck him if he didn’t want them, and he would make damn sure both understood for the rest of his life they came first to him. Always, no exceptions, ever. That would be Corrado’s promise from this day forward, he would make sure.
Once he fixed this ...
Alessio glanced at him from the side, letting out a quiet sigh. “You’re not wrong, but ... we still want you.”
“Have you figured out why that is?”
“Love,” Alessio said. “It’s because of love.”
Right, because even until this point, Corrado’s own love had still been—in many ways—an extension of his own selfishness. It came back to him, and what would best serve his needs to wants.
No more.
Ginevra gave her sister—Greta?—a nod before turning away. Her gaze skimmed over the crowd. She bypassed him not expecting him to be standing there with Alessio, but she tensed, her stare darting back to him.
She smiled.
Soft, sure, but still ...
Corrado smiled back.
He didn’t wait for her to make the first move to cross the distance between them. He figured she and Alessio had been doing enough of that for all of them, and he had to try now. Alessio trailed behind Corrado when he closed the space keeping Ginevra too far away from him, and not as close as he wanted her.
She took only one step forward. Just enough to say she finished the conversation behind her and entered a new one. Not that it mattered because her sisters and his mother watched him and Alessio come closer with curious gazes that also seemed too knowing for his liking.
“Ginny,” he said when he came to a stop in front of her.
Not close enough, though.
A foot away.
He itched to touch her, but he didn’t reach out to do it. That would be her choice, always.
Ginevra’s gaze darted from Alessio a foot behind him and then back to Corrado in a flash. “No costume?”
“Where’s yours?”
“Big wings—they wouldn’t let me bring them on the plane.”
Corrado smirked. “Really?”
“No.”
“Damn, that might have been nice to see.”
Ginevra shrugged the delicate line of her shoulders, saying, “I didn’t have time to grab something for me and the girls. Alessio didn’t give me much notice about this. He told me when to be at the airport, and that’s it.”
He swallowed hard.
And she just came.
She didn’t question it.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
Ginevra smiled in that way again. “I love you, Corrado. Why wouldn’t I want to be with you ... wherever you are?”
He had a million reasons she shouldn’t want to be with him. The same way he could list the whys that Alessio shouldn’t be his, too. And yet, here they all were.
They didn’t fit alone.
They only worked together.
“Corrado, right?”
Behind Ginevra, he found which of her two sisters asked the question. The tallest, and oldest, of the two.
“Greta, right?” he returned.
The girl flashed her teeth in a smile. “That’s right.” She jerked a thumb toward the girl next to her, saying, “And this is Giulia.”
Corrado nodded. “Very nice to meet you.”
Greta arched a brow. “You’re very different from the other one.”
“Greta,” Ginevra admonished.
“What, he is. I thought he would be like Les, Ginny.”
Alessio chuckled behind him. “Where is the fun in two people who are the same?”
Giulia’s cheeks turned red, but Greta glanced between the two men like she wanted to take in all their differences, from the different style of clothing, to even the cut of their hair.
Corrado understood, then. Ginevra must have explained about this situation to her sisters, and they had to process all of it. That meant awkward questions, or comments at the wrong time.
He didn’t mind.
“Alessio is the fun one,” Corrado told Greta.
“Is he?”
Alessio scoffed. “Yes.”
“Girls,” Cara called behind them, saving Ginevra from saying anything, “do you want to see which rooms you’ll be using for the weekend?”
Just like that, Ginevra’s sisters were thoroughly distracted. It let Corrado take all her attention again.
“You’re staying?” he asked.
She nodded. “I left some unfinished business here. So, yes, if you’ll have me.”
“We both will,” Alessio said.
Corrado tipped his head in Alessio’s direction. “What he said, of course.”
31.
Alessio
“The girls—”
“Are fine in the mansion with Cara and Gian,” Alessio said quickly.
Corrado unlocked the front door to the Guzzi guest house, adding, “My mother rarely has girls she can spoil, so you’ll be lucky to get them back tomorrow.”
Ginevra let out a little laugh, but Alessio could still hear the stress there. Corrado didn’t miss it, either, if the look he shot Alessio over his shoulder when he pushed the door open was any sign.
Sliding an arm around Ginevra’s waist, he pulled her in close while keeping the overnight bags he held back so they didn’t get in the way. Then, he pressed a quick kiss to the side of her temple, saying, “Really, they’re good. And if they need you, then you’re not very far away. But better for us to do all the talking we need to away from everyone else, right?”
She smiled up at him.
Alessio winked back.
“Right,” she whispered.
He didn’t fault her for wanting to keep an eye on her sisters, though. She had been forced away from them for so long, now, that she tried to make up for lost time. Already, Greta was now in her senior year of high school, and Giulia asked to go to Siena’s almost as much as she wanted to stay with Ginevra.
Alessio didn’t think Ginevra was jealous of the girls’ affection for their half-sister, but change could be tough. And in some ways, people had a habit of holding onto the past.
It would get easier.
Eventually.
Alessio supposed him and Corrado could help with that occasionally. By being there, or with whatever else she might need to make her life easier. And the girls, too. He liked her sisters, even with their desire to make sure he understood not to touch their things on the bathroom counter, and including all their attitude first thing in the morning.