“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I just ... have you heard anything about back home, or my sisters?”
He didn’t tell her about the calls and messages he’d made because Corrado didn’t want to get Ginevra’s hopes up only to watch them crash and burn when he got no response from Andino. She had enough to deal with, and that didn’t need to be something else on her plate.
“No,” he said.
“Will you try?”
Corrado sighed.
Ginevra frowned. “Please? I haven’t tried to leave, or use the phones or your laptop to contact anyone. I’ve followed all the rules, haven’t I?”
Jesus.
Why did she think he would say no?
That it depended on her behavior?
He would do it because he cared—he had been doing it because of that. Nothing else.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Quickly, she leaned down and pressed another quick kiss to his lips, winking before she turned away from his desk, and headed out of the office without a look back over her shoulder. She was gone all of four seconds before someone else came to stand in the doorway.
Alessio.
“Were you spying?” Corrado asked, never looking up from the papers on his desk. He had things to do. “Because you know, you’re more than welcome to join the conversation, Les.”
“And if I was?”
Corrado chuckled. “The door is open. I leave it like that for a reason.”
He met Alessio’s gaze.
Questions stared back.
Curiosity.
How much had he heard?
Corrado didn’t mind waiting to find out.
8.
Alessio
“Give Ma my love, yeah?”
Chris nodded at his twin where he stood next to a waiting Ginevra. “I will.” Then, the man’s gaze lifted over Corrado’s shoulder, drifting to where Alessio stood leaning against the wall further down the hall. “Les, it’s been a while.”
Had it?
A little more than a month, he supposed, since he sat with the man in that café.
“Chris,” Alessio replied. “Get her there safely, yes?”
He hadn’t meant for the statement to sound threatening, and yet somehow, it did. Except there wasn’t anything he could do about the looks coming his way now because the damn words were already out of his mouth.
Ah, well.
Corrado cleared his throat, passing a pointed look over his shoulder at Alessio. A quiet, hey, now, that’s family. Alessio only shrugged back.
“No worries,” Chris said, shaking his head as he turned to offer a hand to a grinning Ginevra. “She’ll come back in one piece.”
She better.
At least, that time, Alessio kept the thoughts inside his head. It wasn’t lost on him that his sudden protectiveness over Ginevra was for more than just him. He also felt protective of her for Corrado, and he didn’t want to get into it.
Not yet.
Once Ginevra and Chris had exited the apartment, Corrado turned to face Alessio with a raised brow. “You don’t need to go full-on asshole to Chris, right? It’s Chris, Les.”
“Gotta make an example out of everybody, or nobody will care, huh?”
It reminded him of that whole saying if you stand for nothing, then you’ll fall for everything. In a way ...
“It’s still Chris,” Corrado said, laughing under his breath.
Yeah, yeah.
Alessio didn’t need his nonsense pointed out to him when he was glaring at him right in the face every time he looked in the fucking mirror. He changed the conversation, because all too soon, the two of them would go right back to shit that had them snapping at one another’s throats again.
Wasn’t that the way, lately?
Well ...
“I’ve been here a little more than a month,” Alessio said.
Partially passing him in the hallway, Corrado’s walk came to an abrupt halt. He looked over at Alessio and nodded. “Yeah, I figured that out yesterday. Passed quickly, didn’t it?”
He hadn’t realized he had been here with Corrado and Ginevra that long, and he’d barely left other than to take his morning jog, and pick up a coffee from that place he liked down the street.
He took a second.
And then another.
Alessio couldn’t remember a time when he had stayed in one place for longer than a month. Or rather, two weeks. The longest was for a job, and he had been alone on that one. He stayed home for a while, and then he took off again. And sure, he recognized why he did that, but it was still the urge he had.
Well, the urge he didn’t have.
Not here.
With them.
He didn’t want to run like he’d been doing for years—trying to out run his problems, their issues, and just life because it worried him what might happen when it caught up to him. He wanted to be here with them, even if it meant pain and facing his own baggage because God knew he’d been throwing Corrado’s at him for so long, now.
Alessio wanted to be here.
Even if it wouldn’t be easy.
Even if it didn’t end well.
He still wanted to be here.
“Les,” Corrado said.
He lifted his gaze from the top button on Corrado’s dress shirt he’d been using as a focal point to ignore the man’s stare. There, in his lover’s eyes, he found an understanding reflecting at him.
Corrado always had known Alessio better than anyone, and he wasn’t fucking perfect ... that was one thing about Corrado that Alessio had never denied.
This man in front of him wasn’t perfect.
He was flawed.
So difficult.
Selfish, sometimes.
But he was still Alessio’s.
And he loved him, regardless.
He always would.
“Are you going to call Andino for her?” Alessio asked.
Corrado smirked a bit. “So, you’re admitting you spied yesterday on our conversation instead of joining?”
“Are you going to answer the question?”
“I have been calling. Three times this last week, in fact. He ignored my calls and messages. You’re informed on how Andino Marcello can be.”
“Rivals you for the biggest asshole, doesn’t he?”
Corrado flashed his teeth when he laughed. “Yeah, a bit. I asked Chris to see what he might find for her, and about her sisters, though. I figured ...”
“Cosa Nostra, made ... connections to New York, yeah,” Alessio said, “I get it.”
“It’s the best I can do right now.”
“Is it?”
Because if Corrado really wanted to, he would make a trip to New York himself, pay a visit to Andino, and get business done. Like Alessio had done when he wanted details about what in the hell Corrado had gotten himself into here.
It’s who they were.
Rules be damned.
Corrado sighed and glanced away. “For once, my pride isn’t playing a part here, Les. She needs to be safe more than she needs to be informed on what’s happening there ... doesn’t she? Yeah, I could go there, get what she wants, and come back, but it’s a risk. I don’t take risks with people I love.”
Alessio blinked.
Corrado stared back, silent.