by Bethany-Kris
George sneered. “I said fucking qu—”
“Les,” Ginevra whispered, her hand reaching out to grab him.
Her, and those words, had him glancing her way. Not that it mattered, his attention flew back to the Capo behind their booth when Corrado turned, and launched himself over the back of the seat.
Nobody saw it coming.
Nobody planned for this.
Not when Corrado had always been the one with the calmer head between the two. He’d resigned himself for years to turn his cheek, and ignore the shit people liked to say about him, or them.
Not this time.
And nobody had time to react.
By the time Marcus decided to climb over the table at their booth, and head for Corrado, it was already too late. Someone else tried to jump in, too, but nothing helped.
Alessio stood stunned.
He heard every fucking punch.
Smack, smack, smack.
Bone hitting bone.
He saw the blood.
Spewing to the checkered floor. Spraying across Corrado’s silk shirt. Dotting his busted knuckles every time his fists slammed into the face of the Capo again and again. Marcus tried to pull his brother back by grabbing onto the back of his shirt, but Corrado would not move.
“Fucking help me here!”
“Corrado, stop! Stop it!”
Marcus’s shout echoed.
Ginevra’s ached.
Alessio cared nothing for Marcus’s demand, but Ginevra’s had him moving. And only because she looked like she would get out of the booth any fucking second, and Alessio couldn’t have that. She didn’t need to get in the middle of this mess.
Already a whole group tried.
And failed.
It was chaos. Men shouting. Corrado’s brothers holding back those trying to get to him to save the man on the ground. Pointless. In the background, Alessio seemed removed, somehow.
As though this had been inevitable.
Why were they surprised?
Alessio shoved between the semi-circle of people trying to yank Corrado from the man on the floor—who was no longer moving. He would have been fine to let Corrado get out years of frustration, hurt, and anger on the face of the asshole, but it only took one peek at a terrified Ginevra for Alessio to realize this wasn’t good.
“Corrado.”
His first shout did nothing, not that he expected it to. Alessio got down, wrapped his arms around Corrado’s chest, and pulled back hard enough to send them both tumbling to the floor.
“That’s enough,” Alessio muttered, forcing them over so he had Corrado pinned under him to the floor. The daze hadn’t left—fury stared back at him, written in heavy lines all over Corrado’s strong features, and exhaling in every hard breath he let out. “Fucking stop. That’s enough, Corrado.”
He didn’t fight him, though.
Didn’t shove him off.
No, he stared at him.
So goddamn angry.
And yeah, Alessio got it.
“Fuck,” someone—Marcus—hissed behind them. “He’s dead; someone call in the cleaner, this mess needs to go.”
Someone else cried.
Ginevra.
Alessio looked her way.
Corrado did the same.
That, more than even Alessio dragging Corrado from the dead man on the floor, brought him back to reality. Alessio sensed the change in Corrado’s body, how all the fight and tension and anger bled away when his gaze landed on where she stood just five feet away.
Shaking.
Crying.
Scared.
She could be frightened of them, or of Corrado, or just what he had done. Alessio wasn’t sure, but when Corrado reached out a hand to her, a sorry already falling off his tongue, she took a step back.
A whole step.
Away.
“Get him out of here,” Marcus said, blocking Ginevra from Alessio’s view when he came to kneel beside them. “Calm him the fuck down, I need to handle this and fast.”
Right, right.
Mafia business.
Can’t kill made men.
All trash.
“Ginevra,” Corrado said.
Marcus gave his brother a glance from the side. “She’s fine for now.”
Except she wasn’t.
Even Alessio understood that.
23.
Corrado
Alessio shoved Corrado through the exit door, making him stumble into a back alley that was cold, and yet still somehow smelled of garbage and piss. Fucking perfect.
Not that it mattered.
The cold air helped to soothe some of that rage inside his soul—that bitterness making the beats of his heart faster. And not in a good way, either.
It barely helped, though.
Alessio stayed back by the door, sticking a rock in the track to keep it from closing before he turned to face Corrado. He didn’t need to look at Alessio’s face to see the disappointment staring back from him.
Corrado wasn’t the hothead here.
He didn’t freak out.
Over the years, he had become rather good at pretending like people’s bullshit didn’t bother him, and ... tonight had been more than enough to make him fucking snap.
Oh, sure, Alessio would have taught the guy a lesson, too, but just differently than Corrado. Like taking him outside and beating the piss out of him where people couldn’t stand there and watch.
People like Ginevra.
Corrado let out a heavy breath, his back hitting the brick wall opposite to Alessio. Still, his companion said nothing as he snarled under his breath, dragged his palms down his face, and stared up at the inky sky with bright stars dotting its surface.
He still missed the stars.
They didn’t see them enough in Vegas.
“Corrado—”
“Just don’t,” he muttered.
Alessio sighed. “That was bad.”
“I don’t need the memo.”
“No, I mean ... that was a mess, and what the fuck?”
What was it?
A lot of things.
Nothing, too.
Everything.
Five fucking years of comments under people’s breath about what they thought with Alessio and Corrado, like they had any fucking business opening their mouths to say anything at all.
It was more years of him always being told famiglia should be the only thing Corrado did—he would only ever be useful as a man, if he was his father’s clone.
The frustration.
His anger.
A reaction.
Corrado finally reacted, and surprise, it came out badly. Why on earth was anyone surprised? Because he wasn’t.
This felt like a long fucking time coming.
“He didn’t give a fuck, you know?” Corrado asked.
“Who?”
“That fuck—George.”
He still stared at the sky and willing that hatred in his heart to disappear, loathing the emotion—it had no place in his life. He felt a lot of ways about a lot of different things, but hate terrified him.
Hate made people do awful things to one another. Fear bred in hate, and people had killed for nothing more than their hate of someone else, or for their hate of something.
Be it differences, sexualities, religion, or skin color ... hate caused pain. That’s all it was good for, and he proved that tonight, hadn’t he?
His hate came out in violence. How did that make him any worse or better than the man who was dead on the floor upstairs?
Corrado didn’t think he was better.
“I don’t understand,” Alessio said quietly.
Of course, not.
Because Corrado hadn’t explained.
All that shit unsaid.
“He didn’t give a fuck,” Corrado repeated, “because he didn’t know anything about us, and that’s what pissed me off, okay. All he sees are two men who are affectionate, and that made him uncomfortable enough to say so
mething about it. Not because it hurts him, or affects his fucking life, but just because he didn’t like us.”
“There are millions of people like him, Corrado.”
Yeah, he understood.
Clearly.
“Does that mean they should open their stupid fucking mouths and spew their bullshit, though?” Corrado asked, lowering his gaze from the sky to stare at the man across the alley from him. Alessio stared back with his face an expressionless mask, not that Corrado took offense to that. They all needed a few seconds to deal with this, and what it meant. “When they know nothing—not what we are, what it’s been like for us together, or what you mean to me. And they sure as fuck don’t have a clue how much I fucking love you because they’re too worried about the fact two men might kiss where they can see.”
Silence echoed between the two in the alley.
Finally, Alessio cleared his throat and muttered, “You drop that bomb, huh?”
“What?”
“The love bit.”
Corrado gave him a look. “Cette partie de mon cœur est à toi—this part of my heart, it’s yours. I have been telling you this for years, but you only wanted to hear it in the way you wanted me to say it, Les.”
Alessio’s throat jumped, and his cheek twitched. Corrado waited him out because now, he didn’t have a choice. He did what he did—it’d been said. The rest would be determined by the man across from him.
“I figured out something over the last while,” Alessio murmured.
“Do tell.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole.”
Corrado checked his attitude. “Sorry.”
Alessio shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he looked up at the sky above them while he spoke. “I figured out I clung to that—to words, Corrado, putting too much faith and weight in what words meant, and not what’s true. I thought, if you said those words, then it would mean this was real. I held onto a need for words when literally everything else about us and what we are is the definition of what I wanted. It’s love, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this sooner.”
Corrado blinked, quiet again.
This thing that had been such a fucking problem ... now wasn’t one. Like that, it was done, and he wasn’t sure if he understood what it meant.
“And you know I love you, so,” Alessio added. “I’ve always loved—”
Corrado crossed the alleyway before Alessio could even finish his sentence because no ... no, that could not be an afterthought. Not when he was aware, regardless of what Alessio decided he had figured out about all of this, that those three little words had meant a lot to him when he felt like they weren’t freely given.
Alessio might have understood now Corrado wasn’t like him, and he didn’t show his affection and love in the same ways. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do it, anyway.
Because that was love.
Corrado crashed into Alessio hard enough to send them both into the wall beside the propped open door. Alessio’s fingers threaded into Corrado’s hair when their lips met, moving to a fast, familiar rhythm as his frustration and anger started to bleed away.
All the hatred?
Gone when he got a taste of Les on his tongue.
Because that was the thing about hate, too.
Love always won.
Corrado flexed his hands, the pads of his fingers scraping against the brick wall as his mouth ghosted over Alessio’s when he whispered, “I fucked up tonight.”
“You had a moment. We all have them. He’s a prick, and so fucking what if he was made, they’ll handle it, Corrado.”
Right.
But no.
“I meant with Ginevra, not la famiglia.”
Alessio let out a slow stream of air. “It scared her.”
“Of course, she was.”
“She comes from violent men. She’s sensitive to this kind of thing. Give her a second to come back. We’re not them, and it might take a bit for her to figure that out.”
Corrado looked away, the reality a little too sharp for his liking. It stung. “I—”
“We’re not saints, Corrado. This is our life; we are who we are.”
No exceptions.
No apologies.
He heard what Alessio didn’t say. This had always been their way.
“And what if it’s not the life she wants?”
“You always want what you love, even when you’re not supposed to.”
The door beside them swung open before Marcus stepped out into the alley. Corrado didn’t bother to step away from Alessio at the sight of his oldest brother—he no longer cared to make others comfortable by hiding the best parts of himself.
Because that was another thing.
Alessio?
Ginevra?
They were the better parts of him.
His better pieces.
“What?” Corrado asked.
“The cleaners have arrived. They will take the body out the back here.” Marcus fixed his suit jacket and shook his head. “You made a mess—I have to call Papa and make him aware.”
“Whatever Gian wants,” Alessio blurted before Corrado was able reply, “we’ll be happy to do for him.”
Marcus nodded, turning to head back into the club. “And Ginevra ... she asked to leave, and so I had someone take her home.”
“Home as in our pent—”
“Home as in my home,” Marcus said. “She asked for some time, Corrado. Let her have a moment.”
Right.
Yeah, he expected that.
It still fucking hurt.
Corrado went cold all over.
Alessio’s hand tightened on his shirt. “It’s fine.”
No. Not at all.
24.
Ginevra
Knowing something was different from it being your reality. Out of everything Ginevra learned since being put in the lives of Corrado and Alessio, that seemed to be the most important lesson to stick with her.
She’d known about many things before them. For life, about herself, and even the bad parts forced upon her. And then she met them—one by one, everything changed into something else.
About life.
Herself.
And even the bad parts.
Still, a piece of Ginevra had been hiding one aspect of who those men were and what it would mean to her. She understood what Alessio and Corrado did for a living—they were connected. They were more like the people who hurt her, and less like the boy who sat next to her during her first class of the morning at the community college.
She understood it, but knowing those things was different from seeing it. However, being shoved in her face, a man capable of violence that scared her and did it without retribution, reminded her she was not like these people.
Her life had been different.
She hadn’t seen their version of life through their eyes and experiences, and she’d been shaped differently because of it. And yet, she chose to turn her cheek.
That wasn’t right.
Even she got that.
And yet, that other part of her was clear, so much so it became impossible to ignore. Knowing might not be the same as seeing, sure, but she had still known and still stayed.
In fact, she wanted to stay.
Ginevra realized far too late, as she sat staring out the bay window of Marcus Guzzi’s beautiful townhome the morning after the night at the club, that she was not having an internal dilemma about Corrado and Alessio.
Of them, she was most sure.
Them, she wanted.
It stuck her in this dark place because of her own complex about who she thought she was, and how much changed. Ginevra never said she was a saint, but she had some morals. That in the end, she was the person who understood where right and wrong fit in her life.
The mafia came for her when she barely knew it existed.
She’d almost been forced into an arranged marriage.
Her mother had been murdered.
All
those things meant Ginevra should have made the easy choice—with freedom at her fingertips, she should run from these people, and those like them, that had done to her what they did without as much as a blink about it.
Because they were made differently.
And somehow, Ginevra found herself inexplicably and irrevocably in love with men who, while they’d not done bad things to her, had done them to others. She overlooked it before, but not so much now. The man they killed, she bet like others in their business, said awful things—he was not a good man, and to some, he deserved to die for it, and for other reasons.
But to someone?
That man had probably been a father—maybe a good one. A husband. He’d been a son, perhaps a brother, a grandson, and more. He was a person.
Her dilemma in a nutshell
For herself—just her.
After knowing what they could do ... what had been done to her ... After everything, Ginevra still found that need deep in her bones that she wanted to be with Corrado and Alessio more than she had wanted anything in her life.
Ginevra was not who she assumed she was before them. And she would never be the same after, either.
That terrified her.
And changed nothing.
“Ginny.”
Turning on the bench seat in front of the window, Ginevra found a very familiar face in the living room’s entryway room. Chris smiled, but the sight didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“How’re you doing?” Chris asked.
Ginevra shrugged under the oversized sweater that Marcus found for her. “I’m not sure.”
Chris cleared his throat. “Hmm. Corrado called—Les, too.”
She swallowed the ache in her throat. It only became even more painful with every beat of her heart, making it impossible to ignore. Somehow, she talked through it. “I just ... need a bit of time.”
To keep thinking, and to realize, this was the life she wanted. To get over herself, in a way.
After the time she had spent with either one, or both men in the past months, they should at least give her a day to herself.
“Let them explain,” Chris said.
Ginevra’s brow furrowed. “What is there to explain?”
She understood perfectly well what happened. The mess in her heart and soul needed dealt with now, and they couldn’t help with that. This was on her.
