It felt like forever.
She found heat in his gaze.
Interest.
Something unknown.
And she liked it far too much.
Not that she understood that, either. She didn’t know anything about this man.
“Are you like them?” she dared to ask.
Corrado’s tongue snaked out to wet the edge of his bottom lip. “Like them, how?”
“Mafia. Made.”
“No.”
“I don’t know if I believe that.”
He felt like them, in a way. Dangerous, and dark. Like he held secrets in his eyes, and in his heart. He didn’t feel average, and God knew she had met enough average men over her lifetime to know it.
No, he felt like something else.
“I’m not like them,” he said, “but I am a little worse.”
She hesitated to ask more.
What did that mean?
Corrado seemed to take her hesitation as a chance to break their moment. Whatever in the hell that had been ... that touch, the heat, that fucking feeling. She didn’t know what that was, and while she might like it, it also terrified her.
Because she didn’t know him.
And she still didn’t know if she could trust him.
He placed the phone back on the charger. As fast as he was touching her, he was gone.
It didn’t matter.
He still lingered.
She felt it.
Everywhere.
What in the hell was that?
Corrado cleared his throat, and wouldn’t meet her gaze. She wondered if he felt that, too? God knew he didn’t say much to her. For the most part, he’d spent the last week avoiding her as much as was possible when they were alone together in the penthouse.
“Would you like me to cook you breakfast?” he asked, a thickness roughening up his tone as he reached for the cupboard beside her.
Ginevra was back to feeling like she couldn’t speak, so instead, she whispered, “Sure.”
“And you can tell me about your sisters,” he was quick to add, shooting her a smile, “maybe then you won’t feel like you need to talk to them, if you’re talking about them.”
“You want to know about my little sisters?”
Corrado shrugged. “Why not?”
Well, okay.
Like he said, why not?
“So, there’s Greta,” Ginevra said, “and she’s seventeen. And then there’s Giulia, and she’s fifteen. They’re typical teenage girls. We’re all close ... I guess because us girls are all we really had growing up since our dad just came and went. Usually when he came around, it was to give our mom money. So, we all leaned on each other.”
“What about your mom?”
Ginevra stiffened, and Corrado didn’t miss it. He turned to look at her, raising his brow in question at her sudden silence. Something painful came to wrap around her heart, and she swore those tears wouldn’t be very far behind.
Did he see that?
She didn’t know.
Not when she was too busy trying to hide it.
“Don’t do that again—those tears,” he said quickly when she peeked up at him. “I can’t do the tears, girl. You might as well stick a fucking knife in my chest, and finish the goddamn job while you’re at it. It kills me.”
Ginevra did her best to hold back the emotion.
Barely.
“They killed my mom,” she whispered, “Kev and Darren, I mean. My half-brothers. They made it look like a suicide, but I knew. They told me what they would do if she tried to help me, and that’s what they did. Because she tried to help me get away.”
Corrado let out a fast breath. “Hey, that’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. And I’m sorry. About your ma.”
Yeah.
She still hadn’t gotten the time to deal with that. It was like one minute, her mama was there, and then the next, she was gone. Except she had to move on to taking care of her sisters, and dealing with the upcoming wedding. Her brothers, the bastards. And everything else, too. The wedding day, Andino letting her escape, Corrado, and coming here.
One thing after another.
It didn’t stop.
Not for one second had she really been able to handle her grief for her mother. Until now, really.
“It’s worse at night,” she admitted. “Maybe because that was the time I used to spend the most with her ... we would read, or talk.”
Corrado made a noise under his breath. “I know, I hear you crying.”
She kind of wished he didn’t say that. It just made her feel worse to know that someone was a witness to her pain, and couldn’t help.
Nothing helped.
“You’re allowed to grieve,” he said quietly, leaning against the island and giving her a bit of breathing room. “And you’re allowed to do it however you need to. If that means crying at night when you’re alone, then that’s what it is.”
“It doesn’t make it better, though.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Ginevra glanced away. “Then, I ran away, and left my sisters there.”
“Hey,” he murmured, his hand coming up fast so that his fingertips could graze down her arm with a soft touch. That light stroke was enough to send heat licking up her arm, but somehow, she ignored it. “I think someone else made that choice for you, and you’re doing the best you can with it. Because what were the options, huh?”
“Well—”
“What were your options back there?”
“To marry a stranger.”
Corrado nodded. “And your sisters ... you were told they’d be taken care of, I’m sure.”
“But what if they aren’t?”
“And you think, what, calling them, getting tracked down, dragged back there, forced into a marriage, possibly being hurt for running away ... do you think that will help their situation at all?”
“When you put it that way.”
“Perspective helps everything,” he murmured.
Sure.
Still ... “That doesn’t make the guilt easier to swallow.”
“Yeah, you’re not wrong.” Corrado smiled crookedly. “I know that. All too well.”
Did he?
“What makes you feel guilty, then, Corrado?”
He straightened in place, the widening of his brown eyes telling her that he hadn’t expected that question. Still, he continued pulling items from the cupboards, before moving to the drawers where he found utensils. “I don’t know what to make of you, Ginevra.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You continue to surprise me.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I haven’t decided yet. People rarely surprise me anymore. I’m not sure what to do with the ones that manage it.”
“You know, you didn’t answer my question. About what makes you feel guilty, too, I mean. Instead, you deflected it back to me.”
He pointed a butter knife at her, and winked. “You’re absolutely right. And look at that, you’re surprising me again.”
That said, he moved around her with the grace of a predator, opened the fridge, and pulled a carton of eggs out along with butter. That gave her an answer, too, even if it wasn’t the answer she wanted: he wasn’t going to tell her what made him feel guilty.