Page 93 of Corrado

On a man he’d left back in Vegas.

Alessio.

He’d left things unsaid, and business unfinished there. He knew, without a doubt, the next time the two of them were standing face to face, Corrado was going to be pushed into a conversation that had been a long time in the making.

Shit that hurt Les.

Him, too.

Both of them, really.

Corrado wasn’t sure when his family and people started putting things together about him and Alessio, but a lot of them knew the truth. It was kind of hard not to when they had lived together for the last few years and were practically inseparable except for when they were on a damn job.

It didn’t matter.

Nobody asked.

Maybe they didn’t want to.

Corrado didn’t know.

He still didn’t tell.

A part of him found comfort in that—in not feeling like he ever needed to justify why he loved Alessio, or in not needing to explain the complexities of their relationship. After all, it was theirs, not everyone else’s.

Why did they need to know?

Corrado kept circling back to the customs and culture of his family’s connections to the mafia, too. The fact that his sexual orientation could be used against them as a way to shame or harm them … well, that about killed him.

It wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t theirs.

He just …

Didn’t want to put them in that position.

At all.

Was that so fucking bad?

Les wouldn’t understand.

Corrado was so lost to his thoughts that, for a moment, he’d forgotten where he was and why he was there. So stuck in his mind, in fact, that he didn’t see the young woman approaching the Porsche until she had practically ripped open the door, and threw herself into the passenger seat. He didn’t see her face at first, although he heard the sob that ripped out of her chest. He didn’t know what she looked like, but he saw her hands balled into fists against the leather of the seat, and shaking. The dress she wore—it looked like something someone might wear to a wedding, but not on the bride—had ridden up around her thighs in her haste.

And then she looked up.

The wide-rimmed church hat likely hid her face when she was looking straight on, or even down, for that matter. Her dark brown hair had been pulled back into a sleek chignon, and while the makeup on her face had taken hell from streaks of tears …

He still had to look twice.

Take a breath.

Blink.

Soft, dainty features set off her whole face. Small lips, and a thin nose that curved up at the end just a bit. Oval face, with wide, doe-like eyes that made her look entirely too innocent. Tanned skin, and curves that filled out that dress perfectly.

Shit.