It sounded so needy.
So desperate.
He just wanted to give it to her.
Soon, the thrusts of his came to a still with one final flex of his hips as he spilled into latex while he panted against Ginevra’s heartbeat thrumming fast like a hummingbird’s wings at her throat. He couldn’t make sense of anything—couldn’t speak beyond the dark cusses that fought their way past his lips.
“Fuck, fuck ... fuck.”
It was blinding.
That release?
Everything he needed.
And it changed everything.
Of that, he was most sure.
Ginevra dragged in lungful after lungful of air as she stared at the ceiling, and he stared at her profile. “Oh, my God.”
“Stay in my bed tonight,” was all he could think to say. “Sleep here with me. Be here with me.”
Because if he couldn’t have one, then he needed the other.
She blinked. “Okay.”
• • •
Corrado stared out the window of the office as he fixed the phone in his hands simply by touch alone. He didn’t look down to check what pieces he was snapping back together. The battery, and the back. Holding the phone, he pressed the button on the side until he felt it vibrate against his palm.
Turned on.
He swore it was muscle memory that allowed him to swipe his thumb across the screen, pulling up the messenger app, and hitting the most frequent contact at the top. Alessio.
He was too busy watching his reflection in the window of the office because he thought part of him didn’t recognize the man staring back in the glare of the city below. The shape of his body, and the way his undone pants rested low on his hips were all the same.
The face?
Identical.
But in his eyes, something was different.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Corrado glanced away from the reflection, not wanting to indulge those thoughts more than he already had, he peeked over his shoulder at the dark doorway of the office. Just down the hallway, sleeping in his bed, was a woman who, a month and a day ago, had meant less than nothing to him and his life.
He’d never known she existed.
But now that he did?
Corrado knew nothing would be the same.
He’d done this once.
Except it couldn’t be as simple as it once was where there was now a before, and an after. A time when Alessio and Corrado were them before Ginevra, and this ... what they had become after her. What came next would be now, but he didn’t know what that was, or what it would look like for them.
The phone still in his hand waiting for him to just do what he had to do, his thumb danced across the screen, keying in a message he knew would be received, but that he couldn’t predict the impact when it was delivered. He poured over the four words, taking them in until the black letters began to bleed together. And yet, even had he hesitated to send the text, he never once considered not sending it.
It was just a matter of doing it.
He sent the message.
As the phone beeped, and the tiny delivered popped up under the message, Corrado let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He waited longer, still staring at the screen for maybe fifteen seconds before the delivered message turned into a seen one.
I slept with her, he’d written.
Alessio needed to know, whether that was what he wanted or was waiting for ... whether he was planned on staying away another week or coming back right this minute. It didn’t matter, this wasn’t about that, it was about the truth.
The loyalty.
The thing Corrado had already broken and failed to give Les. He didn’t think the message would fix what he’d done—not by a long shot, really. Still, it was a step forward. A reminder that, he knew what he had done.
He was so fucking sorry.
It was all he could offer Alessio because he no longer knew what to do; he didn’t think there was any right or wrong way to move forward here, and he couldn’t decide alone. There were now two other people he’d dragged into this mess that had to make their choices, too.
The text was one.
The rest was in God’s hands.
Or rather, Alessio’s.
Corrado lifted his stare, and watched the lights of the city below dance as he thought, well, what happens now?
ALESSIO
The Guzzi Legacy, 2
PART THREE: NOW
1.
Alessio
Pain taught Alessio Sorrento a lot of things.
A motivator, punishment, or a reward. In true pain, someone would find their boundaries, and the ability to go beyond their limits, too. Nothing reminded someone they were weak more than pain, and it was one of the few things that proved humans had the capability to be godlike at the same time.
Alessio hated pain.
Loathed it.
He much preferred numbness because it was a far more dangerous thing. Sure, pain made people do inexplicable, unexplainable things, but numbness? That was the flip side of the same damn coin.
In numbness, one found nothing. And one didn’t have limits or boundaries, one didn’t need a motivator or a reward when nothing was the goal. It was a vicious place to be, so numb that even happiness couldn’t find its way through to one’s heart.
And still ...
Alessio would take numbness over pain any day. One allowed him not to care, and the other forced him to care too fucking much. He also felt like his entire life had been one huge mountain of pain, time and time again.
People said pain was growth.
Survival.
Well, fuck that trash. He’d taken enough pain to last him several lifetimes over, and now, he didn’t want to feel at all.
The unfortunate thing about loving someone else was that love didn’t afford the gift of numbness. Which was every reason, instead of sleeping like he should be at two in the morning, he sat on a wicker chair in the warm August air with darkness all around. A humid dampness clung to the air, reminding him where he was instead of where he might have been if this situation had been different.
The back property of the Guzzi mansion expanded a far ways into a line of forest under the moonlight. Manicured pathways veered off to a large fountain with dancing stone doves at the top, and then into the flower garden that would make anyone with a green thumb jealous. Mostly, the silence called to him late at night. He stared at the stars—had to be alone.
Things hurt less here.
There was a time when coming to this place—Corrado’s childhood home—seemed awkward for a variety of reasons, and none he cared to list. Not that any one person here gave him that impression, but he wasn’t used to ... this.
They all loved.
They supported.
If someone needed something, then a few hands would be able help. The Guzzi family—just Corrado’s immediate relatives—were enough to seem like a small army, and that was something else Alessio got used to. A part of him had been so used to taking care of himself for so long a family unit seemed like a foreign thing to him.
Sure, he had a family unit of his own, in a way. The situation Dare and Cree gave him wasn’t the same as the Guzzis. Parenting hadn’t existed for him, and his most important lessons from Cree and Dare had been learning how to take care of himself.
And still when he came here, Alessio found a sense of home. He forgot the rest of the world for a time and focused on what he needed to do the most. No one here would judge him with their no questions asked policy when he walked through the front door, unless he wanted to talk. He’d never told Corrado those things because he shouldn’t need to, but it was true. Here, he found comfort that didn’t exist elsewhere.