A few trees towered around the building that, partly looked like a warehouse but also brought to mind the word compound, when Corrado thought about it. The plain cement walkway didn’t give anything away about the place, but the very expensive cars parked any which way they wanted to stop next to the side of the building made him think something was happening here.
Out in the middle of the desert, apparently.
“Was that a fucking tumbleweed?” Corrado asked, his gaze drifting to the line of cars again and the dry item that skipped behind a black Hummer.
“If you two don’t fix your mouths and questions,” Gian murmured a few steps ahead. “Correct it before we go inside, s’il vous plait.”
“I’m just saying horror movies start like this, Papa.”
Gian made a noise under his breath but said nothing else. At the front of the building, there were no windows. Just a wall of tan-colored brick and a black door. Stark black, really. One couldn’t miss how it stood out blatantly compared to the rest of the yellow earth and walls surrounding it. Above the door rested a camera blinking with a red light.
Silently, Gian pulled a card from his pocket. Corrado glanced at it quickly, taking in the matte black cardstock, the wax seal on the back side with a cursive L stamped into it, and the white, classic lettering on the front.
What did it say?
The League, Corrado thought.
What in the hell was—
His thought process was interrupted by a buzzing noise that was loud enough to scare a scavenging bird sitting on top of the entrance door’s eave. It squeaked before flying off to rest somewhere else. By the time Corrado glanced at his father, both Gian and Chris were already heading inside the dimmed corridor of the tan building.
Ha.
Just like how the fucking horror movies started.
“Are you coming?” Chris called back to him.
Corrado didn’t think he had a choice, even if he didn’t like the feeling this strange place left him with in his gut. Like a heavy weight had come to rest there, and he wasn’t about to get rid of it anytime soon. He didn’t pretend to understand all his father’s business—being a criminal organization meant Gian did not dabble with just one thing. He had his hands in several pots, and Corrado was not aware of every single one of them.
Was this just another thing?
Why were they brought here?
Why not Marcus, their oldest brother?
He didn’t consider Bene or Beni, his youngest brothers—another set of identical twins in their family; their mother’s genes were strong, it seemed. Those two were wild, and there was no way they’d relax enough for something like this.
“Corrado!”
“I’m coming,” he snapped.
Not that he wanted to. He had the distinct feeling that once he stepped inside this building, something was going to change. Maybe for him, or his brother or father, he didn’t know. He just had that feeling, and Corrado wasn’t the type to ignore his gut when it acted up.
Slipping inside the building, but not before shooting one last look over his shoulder at the outside world, his gaze took a second to adjust to the dim lighting just beyond the black door. A door, which, closed without prompting once Corrado was out of the way while doing that annoying buzzing sound again.
Gian slipped the black card he’d flashed at the camera back into his pocket before turning to his sons, his expression a mask of nothingness. He didn’t give anything away before he said, “A couple of decades ago, I was approached by an old friend to ... invest in something. He had a plan—he wanted a League of people who could do many things, and who had many skills. Did someone need a robbery done? He had a person for it. A hit in another country on a political figure? There was someone for that. A retrieval of someone that had been missing? He could make it happen.”
His father rubbed his hands together and glanced down a long hallway that led to yet another black door with a camera blinking red overhead. “The idea was interesting because imagine what someone could do with that kind of ability at their fingertips. I invested immediately. I invested a lot. And it has been incredibly beneficial for me in the long run. Here is where those people are trained.”
Beside Corrado, his twin blinked. “Like mercenaries?”
Gian chuckled, and waved a finger at the older of the two twins. “Mercenaries are choosey—they pick what they want to do or who they want to work for, and often, their work is for the greater good even if they are doing bad things.”
“Assassins,” Corrado said. “They train assassins here.”
“Smart boy,” his father returned. “We call it The League. This is the new complex that was finished three months ago, but I haven’t had time to make the trip to see how it turned out. I thought the two of you might enjoy getting a peek at another part of this business because you’re ... at an age to come into the folds more than you already are.”
Gian said that like he honestly meant what he said—directed at both his sons—but he really only looked at Corrado. Was his father giving him another choice? Something other than what everyone else expected from him?
“This building is a living quarters, office, and training complex,” Gian said. “Behave while we’re here, oui, and try to stay out of trouble while I meet with my partner. Do you both understand me?”
Chris nodded first.
Corrado came second, but now, he didn’t have that heavy feeling about this place like he did when he first stepped inside. He just wanted to know more.
• • •
Corrado was enthralled with the fact that the deeper they went into the complex, the more it seemed like a maze of living areas for several people. He saw those people, too, but they barely spoke as they moved from room to room, doing their business.
He stopped just outside of one room and peered in as his father headed further down the hall with a laugh.
“Dare,” he heard Gian greet.
Corrado was busy staring at all the knives lining the wall inside the room in front of him. And when he meant a wall of knives, it was more like three walls. It wasn’t all knives, he realized as he took one step inside to get a slightly better look. No, it was several different kinds of weapons, but all meant to be sharp and deadly.
At the far end of the room, which looked to be at least thirty feet long, if he were to guess, was a wall of targets. Wooden, mostly, with paper figures taped across them. One in particular still had an axe right through the head of the paper figure.
He swallowed hard as he neared the wall of black knives with sleek, shiny blades. He didn’t know if his twin had continued to follow his father, or not. These knives were far more interesting to him than anything else at the moment.
Reaching up, he drifted his fingertips along the edge of a six-inch knife that he bet would be quite heavy in his hand. Wrapping his fingers around the hilt, he pulled the weapon down from its spot on the wall to get a better look at it. Eyeing the targets at the other end of the room, he wondered if he might be able to hit one—
“Careful with that. Rich hands aren’t meant to throw those; they’re meant to pay someone else to do it.”
Corrado spun around so fast, the navy-blue walls of the room were nothing more than a blur to his eyes. He found the source of the voice standing in the doorway of the room. The man standing there took Corrado by surprise. Not because he was strikingly handsome—he was—but because he didn’t look much older than Corrado’s seventeen.