Corrado
“I can take the job,” Corrado said to his brother on the phone. His voice echoed throughout the empty hall he walked down.
Although, it was partly a lie. He could take the job that Andino Marcello called through to The League, but for one, he didn’t give a fuck about that man. And for two, it meant the break he took to focus on Ginevra and Alessio and their life would have to be put on hold.
Corrado wouldn’t do that.
Les and Ginny didn’t come second.
Not now.
They came first.
No exceptions.
“But I knew you wouldn’t,” Chris said, “and Dare called me with the offer because extractions are my specialty.”
Corrado cleared his throat, coming to the end of the entrance hallway where he would wait closer to the front door for his lovers to arrive. It was just about the time when they needed to arrive, and Alessio had a habit of being on time, if not early.
“How long has it been since you took an independent job from The League?”
“Four years,” Chris said.
“A while, then. Do you think—”
“They have the auctions coming up, from what Dad explained. And Cree’s team is heading to Syria for a job I wasn’t allowed to get the details for.”
“Government involved,” Corrado replied.
The League had their hand in everything.
“Anyway, they would have pulled someone from somewhere else to do the extraction job for Andino down in Mexico, but I happened to be there with Dad when Dare called, and when your name got brought up, I offered.”
Corrado smiled.
His twin, still looking out for him.
“Thanks, man.”
Chris made a dismissive noise under his breath. “Yeah, well ... gives you some time to figure things out over there in New York, huh?”
Right.
The shadowy figures approaching the frosted glass of the front door drew Corrado’s attention there instead of his phone call. As the door opened, and he said goodbye to his brother to give his time to the people who needed it, the only thing to drift through his mind was, I don’t need time to figure this out, I know what I want.
Alessio and Ginevra.
Until the day he died.
• • •
Alessio
“Why is this stoop twice the size of a normal brownstone?” Ginevra asked.
Alessio opened the door without knocking—as per Corrado’s earlier instructions. Although, he hadn’t known until they pulled up to the place that it would be a brownstone, so he still wasn’t sure why they were here. “I’m not sure, you’ll need to ask Corrado that.”
“Ask me what?”
Corrado stood just beyond the doorway, leaning against the wall like he had watched the two of them walk up the stoop together. He probably had. Smiling at the two, he winked.
“The stoop,” Ginevra said, leaving Alessio’s side to greet Corrado with a quick kiss, and a soft pat to his cheek with the tips of her fingers. “It’s double the size.”
“Because this brownstone is also double the size.”
Ginevra looked around the empty hallway, the hardwood floors gleaming under their feet. Then, she peeked back at Alessio with an arched brow. “And very ... lonely without furniture, or anything on the walls.”
Corrado chuckled. “Well, that’s because you’ll have to decorate it, or hire someone to do that for you.”
Ginevra stilled.
Alessio looked to Corrado. “What?”
“It’s double the size because double the people need space here what with the girls, and all of us. It’s empty because I closed on it yesterday, and the only thing we can keep is the big oak desk in the office upstairs because the movers weren’t able to take it apart to get it out of the door without compromising the structural integrity.”
“You bought this?” Ginevra asked.
Corrado lifted a shoulder. “Well, I had to use private accounts separate from Les’s, so he wouldn’t have a clue what I did either—it’s not often I get to surprise him, too.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Ginevra’s apartment happened to be a good size for a New York place, but it still wasn’t that big. And when you had two teenage girls, two grown men, and Ginevra trying to share the same spaces, it became ... crowded.
“Three bathrooms,” Corrado murmured, “five bedrooms, a little backyard, and an underground garage that can fit three vehicles.”
“How much?” Ginevra asked.
“A lot,” he returned, “but worth every single penny.”
“Corrado.”
Having money that was disposable still seemed like a foreign concept to Ginevra. She couldn’t throw away money like them, but she was getting better at accepting they would spend money.
A lot.
“You need a bigger space,” Corrado said, “you can’t keep studying in bed, or trying to find space at a tiny table when the girls have their books all over it. I don’t like you’re in an apartment building with hundreds of other people. And Les and I ... we’re moving everything around to be here with you until we figure out something different, Ginevra. Because this is where we want to be—starting a life. That starts with somewhere to live.”
She made a soft noise under her breath.
Alessio smiled. “This is a good surprise.”
Corrado laughed. “You think?”
“Not what I expected.”
“But it’s perfect,” Ginevra whispered, letting Alessio pull her in close to press a kiss to the middle of her forehead.
“A big enough grand gesture for both of you, then?”
Right.
Corrado had always been the one willing to take a step back from telling them what he wanted for the sake of his pride. Heaven forbid they understand he needed them as much as they needed him.
Not now, though.
He made it perfectly clear.
Ginevra left Alessio’s embrace to lean in and press another quick kiss to Corrado’s grinning lips. Alessio stepped forward, too, finding Corrado’s hand with his own to squeeze tight before he wrapped his other arm around Ginevra’s back.
They were better together.
“Yeah, more than big enough,” Alessio told him.
Ginevra smiled at both. “I want a tour.”
She said the magic word.
Want.
They were always quick to give.
CHRIS
The Guzzi Legacy, 3
1.
Beautiful distractions hid the worst of crimes.
The table, draped in silk, and filled with food cooked by a renown chef, welcomed their guests, in a dining room with walls covered in expensive art. It proved to Valeria that the other people sitting down at the table for dinner would forget the young lady—who was barely a woman—across from them had been in the papers just a few months ago.
They wouldn’t remember her face had been on the news after her mother’s murder—the wife of a prominent Mexican politician. They didn’t seem to remember how just months later she walked down the aisle, not yet sixteen at that point, forced to marry the son of the man who had invited them to this dinner.
None of it mattered to them.