Page 236 of Alessio

Who knew?

“You’re quieter than I expected you to be after coming back from your first assignment,” Cree murmured as Alessio’s bag finally came around, and he could pick it up from the belt. “I thought you’d want to tell me all the things.”

Alessio passed him a look as the two turned to navigate the busy arrivals area so they could leave the airport entirely. “Is that what you want me to do?”

“I want you to do what you need to do, Les. That’s what I spent years teaching you, even if you didn’t realize it.”

He did realize, though.

He’d simply never said it out loud.

“I left some business unfinished back here with someone else,” he said, refusing to explicitly state Corrado’s name, not that it would have made a difference to Cree either way. Still, if there was anything Alessio learned from watching the men he was closest to, it was that things like relationships—and the fickler, love, if that’s even what this was because he didn’t know—was not something you offered out for public consumption. Not in this life. “And it’s followed me for weeks.”

Cree nodded. “That happens.”

“I’m not a dweller. I don’t dwell.”

“Except when it’s important. Then, you dwell entirely too much, overthink, and usually … overreact about it all. That is what you do.”

Well …

“You’re not wrong,” Alessio muttered.

Not happily, though.

He caught sight of Cree’s amused smile, but the man was quick to hide it by looking away. He wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed that his affections for someone else was so clearly on display for those he was closest to, or that he should be grateful someone knew him well enough to see it at all.

This shit was confusing.

A mess.

And he still didn’t know if he liked it.

Once the two were outside of the airport and had found Alessio’s smoky gray Mustang parked in the underground garage where he’d left it three weeks earlier, Cree turned to him with a sleek burner phone in his hand.

“Here, one more quick job for you … although this one can end when you’re ready for it to, I suppose,” Cree said. “My car is on the other side of the garage, and I can find my own way back to the complex, I’m sure.”

Alessio took the phone, his gaze drawn to the red, blinking dot on the middle of the screen. “What’s this?”

“Something I suspect you need.”

“I don’t—”

“Find the dot, Les, whatever happens after that is up to you. You know how to get yourself back, and besides, I’m not worried about you leaving. Where would you go?”

He gave Cree a look. “I wanted to go home.”

“I know.”

Alessio found the red dot.

Corrado.

He found him sitting at the bar of an upscale hotel in the very heart of Las Vegas. The drive following the little red dot move around the city wasn’t exactly hard, except for the fact Alessio hadn’t known what he was looking for.

That was annoying.

Until he found it.