by Bethany-Kris
That’s what Siena said.
Trust them, her mind whispered.
Except, who exactly was she trusting?
A man who led her to believe he was going to marry her right up until the point she was almost ready to walk down the aisle? A half-sister she barely knew, but always seemed kind enough for her to let down her defenses?
Corrado?
A man who barely spoke to her.
Who was Ginevra supposed to fucking trust?
Maybe that was the thing that bothered her the very most. Beyond the fact she was in a whole new country, or couldn’t speak to her sisters. Separate from the fact she felt stir-crazy here, and didn’t know anything that was going on back in New York.
It was that she didn’t know their motives.
Andino.
Siena.
Corrado.
None of them.
She didn’t know their motives, alone or with her, and that bothered her. The very last thing she ever intended to be was someone else’s pawn, but right now ... that’s exactly what she felt like at the end of the day.
A pawn.
Being moved.
No control.
It was only once she had poured a bit of cream into the mug that she turned back around to sip on her coffee, and stare at the phone again. She didn’t know what made her reach out to pick it up, but she did. Staring at it, but not deciding to make that call, she simply held it.
She didn’t hear Corrado until he was right there, grabbing the damn phone from her hand. He moved like lightening, silent and dangerous. She jumped when he came up behind her, and nearly rammed right into his naked chest when she spun around fast to face him.
With the phone in one hand, he cocked his head to the side, and smirked a bit. “What were you doing?”
“Uh ...”
It was hard to focus—hard to talk—when he was standing this close to her. She could blame it on the fact he wore nothing but a pair of boxer-briefs, and she had a glorious view of the hard lines, and ridges of muscle that made up his lean, yet muscular, form. He reminded her of a runner in the way he was built, and the way the waistband on those boxer-briefs rested against the hard V of his groin had her gaze lingering before he cleared his throat.
Ginevra’s gaze traveled back up his body.
Jesus.
Skin uninked.
Though he had scars.
A few.
Yeah, she could have blamed her inability to speak on the way he looked—because he was shamelessly gorgeous, and he probably knew it—but that wasn’t what did it. No, it was the way Corrado stared at her that always seemed to silence her.
He did it when she was looking.
And when she wasn’t.
Did he even know how intense his stare was? Like he’d found prey, and was ready to go in for the kill?
A part of her wouldn’t mind that.
Being his prey.
Not at all.
Corrado’s right eyebrow arched when Ginevra’s gaze drifted over his strong features, and she couldn’t stop that heat from rising up her cheeks. This close, there was no hiding the fact she just stared at him like a foolish girl for at least two minutes.
Just stared.
He was kind enough not to say anything.
His smirk deepened, though.
“Well?” he asked.
“I was just ... looking at it,” she said lamely.
Corrado cocked his head to the side. “You know the rules.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No calls out. Yes, I can take you out of the penthouse, we can go do things, and whatever else, but if there is any chance someone could track you back here, then that’s a no-go. From what I understand, you were mostly unknown back in New York, being that you were only recently brought into the folds of the Calabrese family, right?”
Ginevra swallowed hard. “Yeah, my mom ... was Matteo’s mistress for a time. We were kept a secret until—”
“They needed someone to marry off.”
“Basically.”
“So like I said,” Corrado replied, shrugging one shoulder, “you’re mostly unknown, and that means you’ll be able to do other things here besides stay hidden away in this penthouse. But if you go off doing stupid things like calling people, which will make it far easier to track us, then we’re going to have to move again. I doubt you’ll like where we’ll go, or the fact you won’t be able to leave the place. Got it?”
Well, when he put it that way ...
She nodded.
What else could she do?
“I understand.”
“Perfetto.”
Corrado leaned around Ginevra, making her entire body seize when heat shot through her gut at the feeling of his body grazing hers—how?—and he froze, too. She felt the way he stiffened, and a jolt of something passed through her before he sucked in a quick breath, too.
Like he felt that, too.
Electricity, maybe?
A shock.
Ginevra lifted her stare to find he was staring at her again, his hand holding the phone hovering over the charger like he forgot what he was supposed to be doing again. She didn’t know how long the two of them stared at one another like that—a few seconds, or more, but it could have been longer, too.
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.
She didn’t mind.
Now, she could watch him cook.
21.
Alessio
“Why are you in New York?”
“Pretty sure,” he replied to Dare, “that I didn’t have the chip put in for you to track me just because.”
“No, it was for emergencies only, but—”
“This is not an emergency.”
“You didn’t pick up my last three calls, or reply to Cree’s texts,” Dare said quietly, “and yes, to me, that is warrant enough to check up on your tracker.”
All League members had them—or most. It was an option they were given simply because it was one thing to be forced into having a tracker put into your body, and it was another to willingly accept it. That was just about one of the only choices The League allowed the assassins to make for themselves.
Alessio understood the need for it. In their business, they made a lot of fucking enemies. A client one week could be a problem the next when a new client came in to take out the previous, or attempt it. Their business was dirty, no doubt about it.
Sometimes, in an attempt to get back at The League, the first thing someone tried to do was go after the members. The trackers at least gave Dare and Cree a chance to retrieve their man or woman, and hopefully, still alive, if they moved fast enough or got the team out. It didn’t happen often, but even once was too much.
Corrado opted for a tracker, too.
“I’m not on a job, right?” Alessio asked into the phone.
Dare sighed. “No.”
“Then, I can be wherever I need to be.”
“Answer my calls, and I won’t check in.”
Something akin to guilt stabbed Alessio in his chest. He should have picked up those calls, or at the very least, answer one of Cree’s many texts over the last week or so. It was entirely unusual for him to ignore both of them, never mind the fact he hadn’t been into The League’s complex since Corrado headed out two weeks ago for that ... fucking favor.
“What’s going on?” Dare asked.
“Nothing.”
Lies.
Alessio wasn’t a liar.
He wasn’t.
He would be right now, though, for Corrado. Because if this favor for Andino Marcello was something that might get him in trouble with The League—not that Alessio knew that was the case for sure—then he wasn’t going to be the one who delivered the news.
“Then why are you in New York?”
Alessio gave the café he passed a quick glance, trying to figure out a way to end this conversation so he could get on with his plans, and the day. “I have something to handle.”
“Corrado?”
“Corrado is in Toronto, which you know.”
“That doesn’t change the fact—”
“Everything is fine.”
“Alessio,” Dare murmured, “I am not asking about things for The League right now. I know you think that’s all I care about most of the time, but you have been my priority from the time you were ten.”
His walk slowed until he came to a stop altogether. People blew by him on the sidewalk, but Alessio simply stared up at the cloudy July sky. In Nevada, the heat would be dry, which he liked. Here, it was fucking humid.
Which he hated.
And still, here he was looking for answers because he couldn’t not seek them out. When it came to Co
rrado, Alessio didn’t know how to leave things alone, but especially not when something just felt off.
This favor?
Andino Marcello?
Yeah.
It all felt off to Alessio. Like something was going on, or whatever was happening might bring Corrado a world of trouble, and Alessio wouldn’t even be able to help him because he didn’t know what it was. For two weeks, he’d practically crawled out of his skin with the feeling that something was up here, and it was going to end badly.
So, here he was.
In New York.
Alessio was going to get those fucking answers one way or the other. He knew where to go, and how to go about doing it, too. If Corrado couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell him, then he would go to another source to get the details.
Simple as that.
Because God.
What in the fuck would Alessio do without Corrado? That, more than anything else, was what had been keeping him awake these past two weeks. He didn’t like not knowing things, but especially when it meant something could be wrong.
Add Corrado into that mix?
People were begging to feel pain.
Alessio didn’t fuck around.
“Les—”
“I just have business to handle,” he said, stopping Dare before the man could ask more. “That’s it, and that’s all.”
“Business dealing with him, no?”
“Even if it is, that’s for me to take care of.”
Dare sighed. “I wish you would learn the difference between something healthy and something that ... turns you into someone you don’t recognize when you look into the mirror at the reflection staring back, Alessio.”
Funny.
“I don’t even remember who I was before him.”
“I can tell.”
Alessio smirked, though Dare couldn’t see it. “And I’m fine with that.”
• • •
If it were possible for the ground to combust simply from Alessio glaring at it, then the pavement would be ashes under his feet currently. No doubt, it was his mood and current surly expression that allowed him a wide berth of space on the New York sidewalk as he headed down the busy block. People avoided him, parting the crowd for him to walk straight through.
He wasn’t going to complain.
This city was not Vegas. Of that, he was most sure. Even in the bright light of day, New York still had a dreary, dark quality to it. Now, that would typically be Alessio’s style. He liked all things moody and black—it reflected himself, after all.
