by Bethany-Kris
A bit of spare time on his hands, a tattoo shop across the road from where he was hiding out when he wasn’t working in Siberia, and yeah. Shit happened. Things like that always happened when Alessio became bored.
That’s how all his tattoos got on his body, too.
Besides, now he had something to remember this hellish month by—and since he liked his new body modification, he’d think about that instead of the rest.
Certain places were wastelands, okay?
That’s what he felt like he just came back from.
Dropping his carry-on bag, which was nothing more than a black backpack that made travel easy but also had the essentials he needed should his luggage disappear, to the airport’s tiled floor, he gave Cree a smile.
“Nice to see you, too,” he said.
Cree chuckled, and folded his arms over his chest. “I already know how it went, but go ahead and tell me.”
Alessio shrugged. “It was fine.”
“That’s all you want to say? Your first assignment, alone, too, and it was fine?”
“Yeah.”
Boring.
A little too easy, all things considered. His main part of the job had been the recon mission, which was basically doing nothing except watching, looking for shit, and staying out of sight. Then, when he had confirmation the Russian mobster’s son was in fact in the isolated prison camp, he could prove it, and also had a good idea of the man’s schedule inside the place, he called it into the team.
It was up to The League’s team leader on whether or not he would be allowed to take part in the retrieval, and he had. Not that it had been anything exciting, either. They went in at night, armed and ready, took out the main security that would be a problem, grabbed the guy from his building where he was housed, and then blew out the side of the cement fence that was also wired to electrocute people who touched it.
Simple.
“Well, come on, then,” Cree said, tipping his head sideways a bit, silently saying the two of them should get going. No one from The League liked to linger too long in a public space like an airport after a job in another country. “Let’s get out of here.”
“All right.”
Alessio picked up the bag he’d dropped before and followed behind Cree until they were at the luggage carousel waiting for his to come around. Cree stayed quiet as brightly colored bags passed them by on the conveyer belt. He didn’t mind the silence, as it gave him a chance to relax a bit, more so than he had over the past several weeks.
Nevada felt like home.
In a way nowhere else did.
He watched the people gathered around the conveyer, some leaning close to talk, others laughing, and a few looking as though they were simply ready for the day to be over. It was funny because he related to every single one of them.
For different reasons, obviously.
Did it feel good to be out and finally doing a job?
Yeah.
It also felt good to be back here. For the past three weeks, he felt like that last conversation with Corrado had left a lot of shit unsaid between the two of them. They had unfinished business, and that’s where Alessio’s mind continued to go back to every time he had a moment alone to think while on assignment.
He didn’t need that distraction.
Didn’t want it.
But here he was, so ...
Alessio wasn’t going to dwell on the whys of it all, because a part of him knew that was obvious, but he figured now that he was back, the two of them could settle out some shit. Then, he could put that behind him and get back to work. He wouldn’t be kept awake at night by thoughts of a guy who clearly didn’t know what in the hell he wanted where Alessio was concerned.
Or, whatever.
Who knew?
“You’re quieter than I expected you to be after coming back from your first assignment,” Cree murmured as Alessio’s bag finally came around, and he could pick it up from the belt. “I thought you’d want to tell me all the things.”
Alessio passed him a look as the two turned to navigate the busy arrivals area so they could leave the airport entirely. “Is that what you want me to do?”
“I want you to do what you need to do, Les. That’s what I spent years teaching you, even if you didn’t realize it.”
He did realize, though.
He’d simply never said it out loud.
“I left some business unfinished back here with someone else,” he said, refusing to explicitly state Corrado’s name, not that it would have made a difference to Cree either way. Still, if there was anything Alessio learned from watching the men he was closest to, it was that things like relationships—and the fickler, love, if that’s even what this was because he didn’t know—was not something you offered out for public consumption. Not in this life. “And it’s followed me for weeks.”
Cree nodded. “That happens.”
“I’m not a dweller. I don’t dwell.”
“Except when it’s important. Then, you dwell entirely too much, overthink, and usually ... overreact about it all. That is what you do.”
Well ...
“You’re not wrong,” Alessio muttered.
Not happily, though.
He caught sight of Cree’s amused smile, but the man was quick to hide it by looking away. He wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed that his affections for someone else was so clearly on display for those he was closest to, or that he should be grateful someone knew him well enough to see it at all.
This shit was confusing.
A mess.
And he still didn’t know if he liked it.
Once the two were outside of the airport and had found Alessio’s smoky gray Mustang parked in the underground garage where he’d left it three weeks earlier, Cree turned to him with a sleek burner phone in his hand.
“Here, one more quick job for you ... although this one can end when you’re ready for it to, I suppose,” Cree said. “My car is on the other side of the garage, and I can find my own way back to the complex, I’m sure.”
Alessio took the phone, his gaze drawn to the red, blinking dot on the middle of the screen. “What’s this?”
“Something I suspect you need.”
“I don’t—”
“Find the dot, Les, whatever happens after that is up to you. You know how to get yourself back, and besides, I’m not worried about you leaving. Where would you go?”
He gave Cree a look. “I wanted to go home.”
“I know.”
• • •
Alessio found the red dot.
Corrado.
He found him sitting at the bar of an upscale hotel in the very heart of Las Vegas. The drive following the little red dot move around the city wasn’t exactly hard, except for the fact Alessio hadn’t known what he was looking for.
That was annoying.
Until he found it.
Alessio suspected whatever phone Corrado had on hand was being tracked, which was where the red dot came into play. He almost wondered what Corrado had been doing all evening, and why he’d been allowed to leave The League’s complex before his first year of training was up, but those thoughts quickly drifted away as he watched him from afar. Nursing what looked like a glass of whiskey on ice, Corrado didn’t even notice Alessio just twenty feet away standing in the entrance of the hotel’s bar.
Despite being only eighteen, and not at all legal to drink, Alessio didn’t think Corrado looked out of place at the bar in his dark wash jeans, and leather jacket. He tipped that glass up for another drink and shook his head when the bartender came around like he was going to offer another round, if he wanted it.
Alessio bet—because of rare occasions, he knew Dare let people have a free day away from the complex—that Corrado had been given whatever he needed for the night. A vehicle, likely, and IDs to get him by; probably cash, too, if not black cards without a spending limit.
He was content to watch Corrado for a while, and not interrupt his time alon
e, but that idea quickly went away when he realized the man sitting next to him at the bar was leaning closer. To his benefit, Corrado wasn’t paying the guy any attention.
Not a lick of it.
That didn’t stop the man from trying, though. In a silk dress shirt, top two buttons undone around his throat, and a grin that said he was interested ... the man leaned closer still, his hand coming to smack Corrado’s arm.
All things Alessio instantly hated.
The guy could simply be attempting a friendly conversation. He might have noticed another quiet man at the bar and decided to make a friend.
Or maybe it was something else.
An attempt at more.
It didn’t matter.
Alessio didn’t like it.
He’d felt a lot of things in his life; far too much anger and bitterness from his childhood, and the loss of a father and mother that had never really been his to begin with. Abandonment and loneliness sometimes felt like his best friends when he was alone with his own thoughts at night, in a cold bed. Pride was something he’d learned to let go of years ago because someone always wanted to take it from you. He knew affection and loyalty because those were some of the first things Dare and Cree taught him when they took him in at only ten, and those emotions sharpened for him over time, but especially to those he cared for.
Right then, though?
All he felt was a hot, burning jealousy searing through his chest. It cut right through his fucking ribs, and stabbed him in an organ he liked to pretend didn’t exist a lot of the time—his heart.
And he’d never felt that.
Not like this.
Not that strongly.
It was so strong and piercing inside his body and mind, in fact, that it propelled him forward across the floor of the hotel’s bar before he had even thought about it. His legs taking long, sure strides until he came up behind Corrado, and the man that felt way to close to someone that Alessio felt like was only his.
Corrado was his.
He wasn’t sure when he decided that fact—possibly that day he saw Corrado in the knife room, and the man didn’t care to take his shit like everyone else did. Or maybe it was that first taste of him, mouth bloody, but damn, he still found something perfect there. It could have been late nights in his rooms where conversation wasn’t always present, but Corrado’s presence brought him the closest to the feeling of security that he’d felt in years.
He didn’t care when it happened.
It just was.
And that man was too close to something that wasn’t his. It couldn’t be his when Corrado was Alessio’s ... even if he didn’t think so.
Yet.
He would know soon.
The man beside Corrado saw Alessio approaching first, his eyes widening a bit. Maybe it was just the fucking aura Alessio gave off—a back off kind of vibe—or it could have been the severe expression he couldn’t shake, not that he bothered to try.
At the man’s obvious distraction, Corrado turned to look over his shoulder. His gaze slammed into Alessio’s, and for a second, it felt like the world slowed down around them. Gone were the sounds of a busy bar, and chattering people. The music in the background was dulled, and he barely felt the floor under his feet.
None of it mattered.
Not when Corrado’s gaze skipped over his face and the rest of him like he was trying to correlate what he was seeing to real life. Like he didn’t believe he was standing there for a moment, and he needed to make sure it was really happening.
“That’s new,” Corrado said, pointing over his shoulder at Alessio’s face.
At the nose rings, likely.
He arched a brow. “I guess so.”
“What if they get ripped out?”
“That’d be shit, I bet,” Alessio replied dryly. “Say goodbye to your friend here, we’ve got other things to do.”
“Excuse me?”
Alessio didn’t look away from Corrado, not even bothering to spare the man beside him any attention. He wasn’t fucking around here, and if he didn’t put some distance between Corrado and the stranger, someone was going to get hurt.
Because apparently, Alessio wasn’t good at this. He didn’t do well with jealousy. And since he was more than capable of causing some serious bodily harm to another human being, it was better if he just corrected the problem causing him the issue in the first place.
Like now.
By getting Corrado away from the man.
If it seemed like Alessio was being an asshole, then so be it. They could deal with that later. At least, people would remain alive.
Right?
Yeah, jealousy was not his friend.
At all.
Learn something new every day.
“Say goodbye,” he murmured.
Corrado’s brow lifted, clearly hearing the heat in Alessio’s tone. Yeah, he couldn’t even hide what he was feeling, for fuck’s sake.
This was ridiculous.
Downing the rest of his drink, Corrado set the glass to the bar, and pushed off the stool to stand toe to toe with Alessio. Alessio had all of a half of an inch on Corrado’s six-foot-two height. It wasn’t a lot—barely there at all, really. For the most part, it still put them damn near eye level.
He didn’t say goodbye to the guy, who was now slipping off the stool that had been beside Corrado’s, and moved further down the bar away from them entirely.
Corrado only looked at Alessio.
“Better?” he asked.
Alessio wasn’t going to lie.
“Not yet.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“Don’t sound so fucking smug about it,” Alessio returned.
Corrado smirked. “Kind of hard.”
Jesus.
Alessio needed to get off this conversation. He didn’t need his weaknesses available to the rest of the world for public consumption. “Do you have a room here?”
“And a fake ID, some cash ... twenty-four hours to do whatever I want.” Corrado shifted from foot to foot, glancing away. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“Clearly.”
Okay, that came out cold as hell.
Even he heard it.
Corrado looked back at him, a fire blazing in his gaze. “Do you have something you want to say to me, or what?”
Why lie?
“Yeah, but I don’t think you want to hear it.”
14.
Corrado
“Which room?”
Alessio didn’t even look over his shoulder when he asked that question. Corrado watched his hand flex tightly around the black bag that dangled from his fist, and the way his shoulders tensed with every step he took.
Pissed all over.
Or ... Alessio was something else altogether.
Jealous.
“Room 208.”
Alessio made a noise under his breath, still walking straight down the hallway without bothering to look at Corrado behind him. “All right.”
He wanted to deal with the fact that Alessio randomly showed up when no one was supposed to know where he was—that was Cree’s deal, right? If he made it back to the complex before the sun went down, then he would get one free night to do what he wanted without babysitters watching him the whole time. So, how the fuck did Alessio know where to find him?
At the same time, he didn’t mind. Or rather, he didn’t care that it was Alessio that showed up. Except going into that meant handling the fact Alessio was jealous. Because he didn’t like what he found when he showed up.
Not that it had been anything.
Or meant anything.
Corrado didn’t even know that guy’s name, or what the fuck he wanted. He’d been trying to have a drink before he went upstairs, and passed out on the king-size bed. He’d wandered around the city for a while earlier, trying to decide what he wanted to do. And maybe, had Alessio been there with him, he might have picked a half of a dozen things just because.
Instead, he wanted to be
alone.
Drink.
Sleep.
Feel fucking normal.
He’d been content to ignore the guy at the bar, whether his friendly attempt at conversation was just that—friendly—or whether it was a hint for something else. Which was exactly what he had been doing when Alessio showed up.
Not that Alessio realized that.
Or saw it.
Corrado could tell.
The bigger problem?
He liked it.
Corrado wasn’t a liar, or he tried hard not to be. So, it’d be a damn lie if he tried to say the warning—one for him, and for the other man at the bar—that flashed across Alessio’s face because he thought he knew what was going on there didn’t make Corrado feel some kind of fucking way.
Not that he wanted to feel that way.
Or any way.
He didn’t know what the hell he wanted.
Alessio stopped in front of the room that belonged to Corrado for the night. Stepping aside so he could lean against the wall while Corrado pulled the keycard from his pocket to unlock the door, Alessio asked, “Would you have done that, then?”
Corrado’s hand froze at the card reader, hovering overtop but not pulled down to drag the keycard through the lock. “Done what?”
“That guy—him. Would you have brought him back here had I not shown up? Spent the night with him? Any of it?”
“Why don’t you just say it, huh?” Corrado returned.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re jealous, Les. Say it.”
“That’s half the fucking problem, isn’t it?” Alessio let out a dark laugh, making Corrado’s chest clench from the sound. God, he loved that sound. “The fact you don’t want all that shit to be out there, right? Because once it’s out there, Corrado, we don’t get to take it back. You get stuck in your fucking pride, because you don’t know how to deal, and there we’ll be. That is the problem.”
Corrado’s jaw flexed, holding back words and anger. Because frankly, Alessio wasn’t wrong, and he didn’t know how to admit that without sounding like a fool. Nobody wanted to be the idiot with a foot stuck in his mouth.
