Over his shoulder, he found Corrado glaring at him.
Scowl in place.
Fists clenched.
Body tense.
Angry all over.
“Don’t do that again,” Corrado uttered, teeth clenched.
Alessio said nothing because he didn’t need to. There was one thing the rooms downstairs didn’t take from Corrado, and while it may not seem important in the grand scheme of things, it might be the only thing that would get him through the training.
If only because he couldn’t give up.
His pride.
Not bothering to respond—Corrado wouldn’t want him to—he turned to leave the gym altogether. Dare had been right; he didn’t need to bother the prospects when they were being trained. He was a distraction.
At least, for this particular one.
“Les,” Cree said quietly as he passed, “you know better.”
He shrugged, saying nothing.
Cree only nodded back.
10.
Corrado
“Tomorrow, six AM, sharp,” Oliver said to the twins, “make sure you are both down here, and ready to go again.”
Corrado felt like telling the man to stick his early morning training session right up his fucking ass, but he didn’t think that would do him any good. Except to maybe have Oliver riding his ass worse than he already did.
“Got it,” Chris muttered, taking it slow as he bent down to pick up the shirt he’d discarded earlier. “Ass crack of dawn to get the shit beat out of me again—perfect.”
“I can hear the sarcasm.”
“I wanted you to.”
Corrado might have enjoyed the rare sight of his twin being a smartass—Chris was far more likely to fall back and stay in line—but he was too sore and way too pissed for that. If his entire body wasn’t a canvas of newly formed bruises, then he was going to be very shocked. He fucking hated bamboo now.
Hated it.
“And you, did you hear me?”
Corrado’s back tensed, knowing Oliver was talking to him. The only thing he really wanted to do to that prick was bust his mouth, but he had other things to handle first. Eventually, he would get his chance to put Oliver in his place, but today was not that day.
Unfortunately.
Soon.
“Corrado. Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” Corrado said, waving a hand over his shoulder.
Stepping off the mats, he didn’t even bother to turn around to directly speak to Oliver—he was a background thought, now. This session was done for the day, the asshole would get to leave the complex, and Corrado wouldn’t have to deal with him until tomorrow. That was fine with him.
“Cree.”
“What, Oliver?”
“Next week ... I want Alessio down here to spar with them both. He’s close to their height, give or take an inch, and build. We both know he’s good with a weapon in his hands.”
“That’s fine.”
“Good—”
“For Christopher,” Cree added, keeping that same bored tenor as he spoke. “We’ll have to find someone else for Corrado.”
“Why? They’re the same fucking people.”
Their conversation wasn’t all that important to Corrado. His thoughts were somewhere else entirely as he stepped behind the half partition wall in front of a line of showers that gave them some privacy from the rest of the gym. Not that it gave them any privacy when someone else was under the showers, too.
But that was the thing.
Here, there was no privacy. And if one thought they were having a private moment, then they were foolish. There was also no sense of a man—or woman, although Corrado had only seen a handful of those since his arrival—holding onto any shred of dignity, either.
After the rooms, what was the point?
Dignity was gone.
Corrado wondered if he might get his dignity back or even his sense of shame ... but he didn’t think so. At least, not while he was at The League. They made sure to remind them whenever it was needed that here, things like that were nothing more than a distraction. Lose it, get rid of it, hand it over, tuck it away ... whatever someone needed to do to forget about it, that’s what The League expected. They were here to mold them into what they wanted them to be, not to hold someone’s hand because they were worried someone might see their cock when they showered.
Not that he was concerned about that.
If people wanted to look, they could look.
Fuck ‘em.
Corrado tried to follow along with Cree and Oliver’s conversation as he dropped his shorts, and slung them over the wall. He still wasn’t even sure what the problem was, or why Cree was giving Oliver a hard time over his request that Alessio be in the gym next week to spar with both twins, but whatever.
“I just don’t understand why we have to bring in a whole second member to train with the other—”
“Because I said so,” Cree replied dryly.
“What’s he on about?” Chris asked, slipping behind the wall.
Corrado shrugged, stepping under the spray of hot water after turning the dial almost as hot as it would go. There was nothing better on sore, aching muscles than hot water. Later, he might see if he could find a bathtub in this maze of hell.
“I mean, didn’t you spar with Alessio the first day we were here?”
Water sluiced down Corrado’s face, and he closed his eyes as he scrubbed his hands down his jaw to relieve some of the tension there, too. He wasn’t even listening to his twin, not when the hot water was making him feel ten times better than he had just a few minutes ago.
Chris didn’t seem to care. “Oliver is right. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Cree—”
“You cannot teach affection with your fists,” Cree said, “and that is not a lesson either of them need to learn between one another, sparring or not. If it is okay one time, it becomes okay at other times. My decision is made—find someone else.”
Corrado’s eyes popped open.
Chris made a noise under his breath. “Well, all right ... he ain’t wrong.”
He might have told his twin to shut the fuck up, but he was more interested in the fact that Oliver looked like a gaping fish, and Cree had turned away from the man now. Briefly, Cree looked his way, met Corrado’s gaze, and then just as quickly, left the gym altogether without as much as a glance back.
He was done.
Said what he said.
Cree never offered more than what he gave, Corrado found, but it was usually important things when he did speak. A man of few words because he watched more than he talked, Cree noticed far more than people gave him credit for, and he considered everything because of it.
Corrado cranked the latch to stop the water, wanting to get the hell out of the gym and back to the other thing that was currently on his mind. He barely bothered to use one of the towels waiting on hooks to dry off, instead haphazardly running it through his hair before throwing on his shirt and shorts.
“Hey,” Chris said.
He didn’t look back at his twin. “I’ll catch you later, okay?”
“Corrado.”
“What, Chris?”
Chris’s shower was turned off then, too. Corrado turned to face his brother—who was still naked, and didn’t seem to give a damn, much like he hadn’t earlier—without a shred of emotion on his face. He didn’t want people to know that it bothered him that his interest in Alessio was clear, or vice versa. Those were things he always kept to himself, and he wasn’t interested in sharing them now.