Page 198 of Alessio

Even if that better version was created from violence, darkness, isolation, fear, and pain. Alessio didn’t make the rules here; he only knew how to follow them.

“Stand up,” he heard ordered.

That was the thing that made him open his eyes again, although he didn’t try to peek around the corner to look down the hallway. Part of him knew it wasn’t a good idea. Cree would be pissed off like nothing else if someone interrupted his training team, but especially at the very beginning. He needed to stay out of sight as much as possible.

Coming to this end of the complex to get a couple of minutes with Corrado before the training began was a fucking risk anyway. A stupid one, probably, but he wasn’t going to admit that to himself. Alessio wasn’t very good at denying himself something he wanted, as it was, and he kept being drawn back to Corrado when he shouldn’t want anything to do with him at all.

And it’s only been a day.

Fuck.

The beating down the hall continued on like Alessio wasn’t having a whole fucking moment at the other end, just around the corner. Not that the rest of them could know that he was in the midst of his own goddamn issues.

Alessio had to give credit where it was due, though.

Corrado didn’t beg.

He fought back, by the sounds of it.

He didn’t take shit.

Some cried. That wasn’t unusual, and no one said a thing when it was all said and done. Some puked. Fear had a funny way of making the body do things no one could possibly understand unless it was them in the situation. Others begged and pleaded, realizing their mistake in signing a contract for something they didn’t truly comprehend. It was too late by then, though.

They were in.

There was no out until it was done, or you were dead.

But for now, Corrado wasn’t like the others. Very little was said to him from the team—orders like stand or move or stop asking questions. But nothing deep, nothing that answered the questions he kept demanding be answered about his brother.

Even Alessio didn’t know the answer to that.

Usually, one person was trained at a time because it was so intensive. Maybe Cree was going to try a new way of training the twins because it would happen side by side in time, essentially, but Alessio didn’t think he could stomach it to ask the details.

Part of him just didn’t want to know.

“You’re going to learn,” Alessio heard a muffled voice say down the hall.

“Fuck you.”

Corrado’s words were mumbled now—like he couldn’t speak right, or he had to make a great effort to do it.

That was enough for Alessio.

He knew what came next.

Instead of standing there to listen to it, he slipped down the corridor to go in the opposite direction from the rest of the team. They were taking Corrado to the west side of the complex, deep into the basement where even the people who milled about the building wouldn’t be able to hear the fucking screams.

Alessio went east, to Dare.

He suspected he would find Dare in his office, sitting at his desk and handling the paperwork of the day. People who thought they knew the inner workings of The League thought Dare was untouchable in a lot of ways because he never directly handled the assassins, for the most part. That was usually Cree, and his team of people.

They also assumed Dare was … the very top.

In a way, he was.

It was the same way people assumed Cree—his choice—was just another assassin with a bit more leg room to move in the organization than usual. They were cautious about keeping Cree’s real hand in controlling part of The League quiet. Instead, a carefully constructed story and persona for Cree was spoon-fed to the prospects and clients of The League where Cree was concerned, making them think he was less of a boss and more like them. They were far more likely to trust him in that case.

Dare, though, also had people like Gian Guzzi who fronted a lot of money for this organization to become something no one could possibly ruin, which meant things never stopped around here. If it wasn’t a new prospect being trained, it was the auctions selling off the assassins to people with deep enough pockets all around the world who might be in need of someone with a particular set of skills. And if wasn’t those things, then they were working.