There were things he should say ...
Things he needed to say ...
Corrado never knew how to say them without needing to deal with the aftermath of it when for too long, he’d been used to this. Them being like they were, it was comfortable.
Cette partie de mon coeur est à toi.
This part of my heart is yours.
Alessio swallowed audibly. “You know, Kass has been teaching me French whenever I go into the complex, huh? Thought it was hilarious that it bugged me you two could speak, and I didn’t understand, so he started teaching me some things. I didn’t think to mention it, or whatever.”
Corrado stiffened.
Well, then ...
Alessio let out a breath, and tipped his head to the door of the bedroom. “Better get on the road if you really need to go now.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So, go.”
• • •
Corrado’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel as his gaze drifted from the cathedral to his right, and then back to the street in front of him. The NO PARKING ZONE sign two feet away from the still running Porsche was like a flashing warning for him—God knew he didn’t need to get a ticket when the whole point of him being here was to stay under the damn radar.
Not that it mattered.
He had to stay here.
Until someone else got here, too.
Sighing, Corrado dragged his hand down his jaw while keeping a tight grip on the steering wheel, and a foot on the brake pedal. Because yeah, if Andino wanted him to get out of here quickly after he picked up this Calabrese chick, then he planned on doing exactly that.
He hadn’t given her—Ginevra, was it?—much thought during the long drive across country. She was a job, and something he had to do. He didn’t plan on making friends with her, so he didn’t see why it would matter if he considered her or her situation when he was just there to hide the woman, and keep her out of trouble for the time being.
Instead, his mind focused elsewhere.
On a man he’d left back in Vegas.
Alessio.
He’d left things unsaid, and business unfinished there. He knew, without a doubt, the next time the two of them were standing face to face, Corrado was going to be pushed into a conversation that had been a long time in the making.
Shit that hurt Les.
Him, too.
Both of them, really.
Corrado wasn’t sure when his family and people started putting things together about him and Alessio, but a lot of them knew the truth. It was kind of hard not to when they had lived together for the last few years and were practically inseparable except for when they were on a damn job.
It didn’t matter.
Nobody asked.
Maybe they didn’t want to.
Corrado didn’t know.
He still didn’t tell.
A part of him found comfort in that—in not feeling like he ever needed to justify why he loved Alessio, or in not needing to explain the complexities of their relationship. After all, it was theirs, not everyone else’s.
Why did they need to know?
Corrado kept circling back to the customs and culture of his family’s connections to the mafia, too. The fact that his sexual orientation could be used against them as a way to shame or harm them ... well, that about killed him.
It wasn’t his fault.
It wasn’t theirs.
He just ...
Didn’t want to put them in that position.
At all.
Was that so fucking bad?
Les wouldn’t understand.
Corrado was so lost to his thoughts that, for a moment, he’d forgotten where he was and why he was there. So stuck in his mind, in fact, that he didn’t see the young woman approaching the Porsche until she had practically ripped open the door, and threw herself into the passenger seat. He didn’t see her face at first, although he heard the sob that ripped out of her chest. He didn’t know what she looked like, but he saw her hands balled into fists against the leather of the seat, and shaking. The dress she wore—it looked like something someone might wear to a wedding, but not on the bride—had ridden up around her thighs in her haste.
And then she looked up.
The wide-rimmed church hat likely hid her face when she was looking straight on, or even down, for that matter. Her dark brown hair had been pulled back into a sleek chignon, and while the makeup on her face had taken hell from streaks of tears ...
He still had to look twice.
Take a breath.
Blink.
Soft, dainty features set off her whole face. Small lips, and a thin nose that curved up at the end just a bit. Oval face, with wide, doe-like eyes that made her look entirely too innocent. Tanned skin, and curves that filled out that dress perfectly.
Shit.
Corrado didn’t know what in the hell he expected from Ginevra Calabrese. He hadn’t given her a lot of thought—why should he?
He was looking at her now, though.
She was filling his thoughts now.
This felt like trouble.
A lot of it.
He just didn’t know why.
“Drive,” she snapped.
Angry.
Terrified.
So why did she sound musical?
“Drive!”
Corrado said nothing, simply checked his mirrors, and then let off the brake as he hit the gas hard. Time for the second part of this damn road trip.
18.
Ginevra
How long had they been driving now?
An hour?
She checked the clock on the dashboard of the Porsche, still kind of stunned she was in a Porsche at all. About an hour and a half of driving, it seemed.
The man in the driver’s seat continued his stretch of silence—he’d not said one word to her from the moment she got in his car. Or ... she suspected this was his car. Who else would it belong to?
Glancing over at him, again, Ginevra took in his profile. With the sun still high in the sky, she didn’t have to imagine anything about the way he looked when it was all there for her to see. From his strong jaw dusted with a bit of dark facial hair, to the dusky olive skin tone with just a touch of tan. His fingers—long, and deft, she thought—flexed around the steering wheel in a rhythmic fashion, as though he was thinking about something, and his hands told the story of his thoughts.
She wondered if he had been stressed about something before she got in the car—maybe about picking her up—if only because where his high-fade hairstyle melted into the longer bits of hair at the top of his head was messy. Like he’d been running those fingers through it, and the strands fell out of place.
Not that it looked bad.
Nothing about the man looked bad.
What was his name again?
Andino said it when he brought her a gift for their wedding day to her private suite. Her get out of jail free card, she thought, sadly. A way out, he’d told her.
But what was his name again?
“Corrado,” she said softly, remembering it all at once.
Just as fast, the man in the driver’s seat reacted, his head swinging in her direction for the first time since she had entered his vehicle. His profile did no justice to his rugged features when he looked at her head-on.
Strong lines.
Brown eyes, flecked with gold.
Intense all over.
“What?”
His tone, as sharp as the edge of a blade, shocked her. He seemed angry, his jaw tensing as his gaze flicked over her, but she didn’t know why. Maybe he didn’t want to be here, or to help her. She understood that—who would want to help someone they didn’t know?