Page 128 of Corrado

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Besides, Chris can probably tell me more about these paintings, right?”

Chris laughed next to their father. “I certainly can.”

“Good. See? Everything’s great.”

So it seemed.

Ginevra gave him a wink over her shoulder when Chris stepped into the hallway, and took her arm in his before they both turned to look at another painting. Dismissed from their conversation, he was left with his waiting father, oldest brother Marcus, and the other two men.

“My office, then?” Gian asked.

“I guess so,” Corrado replied.

Corrado’s father stopped pretending to be polite the very second the office door closed, leaving him, his dad, and Marcus within. Standing just outside were Gian’s other two men who had not been invited in.

Something Corrado was sure they were unaccustomed to, considering what he knew.

“I will give you two minutes,” Gian said, rounding his desk and pulling out the large leather chair to sit in, “to give me every pertinent detail about that woman, and your business with her, Corrado.”

He smirked. “Or, you could just save me the time, and tell me what you know.”

Gian made a face. “That’s less fun, though.”

“But quicker, and I would—”

“Like to get back to her, I imagine,” his father murmured, steepling his fingers over his desk. Corrado opened his mouth to deny that statement, and the connotation behind it, but Gian was quick to add, “You know, I watched you for a while … the two of you. I could explain your hand constantly reaching for her, or staying on her, when I also know that you are supposed to be hiding the young woman from her family. Except … you know she’s safe here, and two feet of space won’t really make much of a difference, would it?”

Corrado swallowed back his denial.

What would be the point?

“So,” Gian continued, “the only explanation why you keep touching or reaching for her is because you want to. And then if I move onto the way you watch her … the way you stare when you think people aren’t looking, and I am left wondering something here.”

“Or you could mind your business,” Corrado replied.

His father shook his head. “I can’t … not when I’m concerned.”

“About what? The fact I have a woman with me, and I seem interested in her?”

“No,” Gian replied just as fast and still calm, “the fact that someone else isn’t with you … your brother mentioned, at the time he met Ginevra, you said Alessio didn’t know she was with you, and I have to wonder if he does now.”

Corrado stiffened.

Gian raised a brow in response. “What, son?”

“What would that matter to you—if Alessio knew or not?”

A flicker of confusion drifted over his father’s features before Gian was back to that same, unbothered demeanor as before. “Because I wonder if something happened with Alessio, Corrado. Has something changed there, and you’ve not told me?”

A lot happened, then.

Or rather, Corrado realized a lot of things.

This moment that he’d wondered and worried about for most of his life was actually happening. His father might not be directly saying it, but he wasn’t dancing around it purposely, either. Gian was outright asking about Alessio, and Corrado’s relationship.

Because he knew.