by Bethany-Kris
Silently, Gian pulled a card from his pocket. Corrado glanced at it quickly, taking in the matte black cardstock, the wax seal on the back side with a cursive L stamped into it, and the white, classic lettering on the front.
What did it say?
The League, Corrado thought.
What in the hell was—
His thought process was interrupted by a buzzing noise that was loud enough to scare a scavenging bird sitting on top of the entrance door’s eave. It squeaked before flying off to rest somewhere else. By the time Corrado glanced at his father, both Gian and Chris were already heading inside the dimmed corridor of the tan building.
Ha.
Just like how the fucking horror movies started.
“Are you coming?” Chris called back to him.
Corrado didn’t think he had a choice, even if he didn’t like the feeling this strange place left him with in his gut. Like a heavy weight had come to rest there, and he wasn’t about to get rid of it anytime soon. He didn’t pretend to understand all his father’s business—being a criminal organization meant Gian did not dabble with just one thing. He had his hands in several pots, and Corrado was not aware of every single one of them.
Was this just another thing?
Why were they brought here?
Why not Marcus, their oldest brother?
He didn’t consider Bene or Beni, his youngest brothers—another set of identical twins in their family; their mother’s genes were strong, it seemed. Those two were wild, and there was no way they’d relax enough for something like this.
“Corrado!”
“I’m coming,” he snapped.
Not that he wanted to. He had the distinct feeling that once he stepped inside this building, something was going to change. Maybe for him, or his brother or father, he didn’t know. He just had that feeling, and Corrado wasn’t the type to ignore his gut when it acted up.
Slipping inside the building, but not before shooting one last look over his shoulder at the outside world, his gaze took a second to adjust to the dim lighting just beyond the black door. A door, which, closed without prompting once Corrado was out of the way while doing that annoying buzzing sound again.
Gian slipped the black card he’d flashed at the camera back into his pocket before turning to his sons, his expression a mask of nothingness. He didn’t give anything away before he said, “A couple of decades ago, I was approached by an old friend to ... invest in something. He had a plan—he wanted a League of people who could do many things, and who had many skills. Did someone need a robbery done? He had a person for it. A hit in another country on a political figure? There was someone for that. A retrieval of someone that had been missing? He could make it happen.”
His father rubbed his hands together and glanced down a long hallway that led to yet another black door with a camera blinking red overhead. “The idea was interesting because imagine what someone could do with that kind of ability at their fingertips. I invested immediately. I invested a lot. And it has been incredibly beneficial for me in the long run. Here is where those people are trained.”
Beside Corrado, his twin blinked. “Like mercenaries?”
Gian chuckled, and waved a finger at the older of the two twins. “Mercenaries are choosey—they pick what they want to do or who they want to work for, and often, their work is for the greater good even if they are doing bad things.”
“Assassins,” Corrado said. “They train assassins here.”
“Smart boy,” his father returned. “We call it The League. This is the new complex that was finished three months ago, but I haven’t had time to make the trip to see how it turned out. I thought the two of you might enjoy getting a peek at another part of this business because you’re ... at an age to come into the folds more than you already are.”
Gian said that like he honestly meant what he said—directed at both his sons—but he really only looked at Corrado. Was his father giving him another choice? Something other than what everyone else expected from him?
“This building is a living quarters, office, and training complex,” Gian said. “Behave while we’re here, oui, and try to stay out of trouble while I meet with my partner. Do you both understand me?”
Chris nodded first.
Corrado came second, but now, he didn’t have that heavy feeling about this place like he did when he first stepped inside. He just wanted to know more.
• • •
Corrado was enthralled with the fact that the deeper they went into the complex, the more it seemed like a maze of living areas for several people. He saw those people, too, but they barely spoke as they moved from room to room, doing their business.
He stopped just outside of one room and peered in as his father headed further down the hall with a laugh.
“Dare,” he heard Gian greet.
Corrado was busy staring at all the knives lining the wall inside the room in front of him. And when he meant a wall of knives, it was more like three walls. It wasn’t all knives, he realized as he took one step inside to get a slightly better look. No, it was several different kinds of weapons, but all meant to be sharp and deadly.
At the far end of the room, which looked to be at least thirty feet long, if he were to guess, was a wall of targets. Wooden, mostly, with paper figures taped across them. One in particular still had an axe right through the head of the paper figure.
He swallowed hard as he neared the wall of black knives with sleek, shiny blades. He didn’t know if his twin had continued to follow his father, or not. These knives were far more interesting to him than anything else at the moment.
Reaching up, he drifted his fingertips along the edge of a six-inch knife that he bet would be quite heavy in his hand. Wrapping his fingers around the hilt, he pulled the weapon down from its spot on the wall to get a better look at it. Eyeing the targets at the other end of the room, he wondered if he might be able to hit one—
“Careful with that. Rich hands aren’t meant to throw those; they’re meant to pay someone else to do it.”
Corrado spun around so fast, the navy-blue walls of the room were nothing more than a blur to his eyes. He found the source of the voice standing in the doorway of the room. The man standing there took Corrado by surprise. Not because he was strikingly handsome—he was—but because he didn’t look much older than Corrado’s seventeen.
The guy arched a thick, dark eyebrow when Corrado stayed quiet. The action made his strong features and stormy blue eyes all the more intense. His thin lips pulled into a sly smirk, making his square jaw, covered with a few days’ worth of stubble, tighten with the movement. A slight shake of his head made the shaggy hair that seemed a little too long around his ears fly in all directions. Corrado tried to shake off the strange hum buzzing over him the longer he stared at the guy. He wasn’t the first good-looking person he’d run into, and he wouldn’t be the last. He didn’t need to feel stupid or speechless just because this guy looked half decent.
Except, that wasn’t it at all.
It was the way the man looked at him. The way his gaze drifted over Corrado with the slowness that reminded him of a predator, maybe. Like this guy had just found prey, and he was considering whether the kill would be worth it.
It irked Corrado.
Irritated him like nothing fucking else.
He wasn’t prey.
“What did you just say?” Corrado asked.
The guy laughed and tipped his head to the side as he pointed at the knife in Corrado’s hands. “Be careful, we don’t need you cutting yourself because you wouldn’t know what to do with a knife unless you were paying someone else to do it for you. Clear enough?”
Okay.
Yeah.
Corrado wasn’t even going to act like that was a comment he could brush off as though it hadn’t been said at all. This guy wasn’t even trying to be subtle about it; he was outright insulting Corrado, and with a fucking smile at the same time.
“Do I know you
?” he asked.
The guy peeked over his shoulder, looking at something down the hall. “Not yet, but you will.”
That humming sensation was back again. It kind of pissed Corrado off that the guy could be so dismissive and insulting to him, while at the same time, acting like he had better things to do than stand there and have a conversation with him. He remembered his father’s warning about behaving, but he was very close to telling this guy to fuck off right before he busted his mouth for those comments while he was at it.
“How about,” Corrado started to say, “you go find someone else to—”
“Alessio.”
The guy’s gaze drifted back to Corrado, his eyebrow still arched high like he didn’t have a damn to give, as a new voice sounded right outside the doorway of the room. Almost as soon as the voice spoke, a new face came to the doorway, and clapped a hand on the guy’s shoulder. Right behind him stood Corrado’s father.
Gian stayed back a couple of steps, though.
He didn’t intrude.
“Introducing yourself, Alessio?” the man asked.
Alessio.
Corrado decided right then that he hated that name. And the man it belonged to, as well. The problem was, when Alessio turned his gaze back on Corrado, the humming was back. He couldn’t look away from the ocean of blue that stared back at him, or the way that as much as this guy rubbed him wrong ... he wanted to know why.
Or anything about him at all.
“You’re not causing trouble, are you, Corrado?” his father asked out in the hallway.
“Define trouble.” Alessio chuckled. “Is he allowed to play with knives where someone can’t keep an eye on him at the same time?”
The man next to Alessio smacked him in the back of the head, making him glower back at him.
“Fuck off, Dare,” Alessio muttered.
“Play nice, Les.”
He looked back to Corrado again.
“But why, though? This is way more fun.”
Fuck him.
And the fact Corrado found he liked it.
Yeah, fuck that, too.
The other man, Dare, shook his head. “All right, Les, since you’re feeling chatty today, you can take Corrado around and show him the rest of the complex while I talk business with Gian.”
Alessio scowled. “I didn’t volunteer to be some mafia principe’s babysitter for the day.”
Dare smirked. “I’m sorry. Did I preface that with, if you feel up to it and it pleases your spoiled fucking ass to do it? No, so do it.”
“Fine.”
“Did you introduce yourself properly?”
“No,” Alessio said. “Because I didn’t think there was a point.”
Dare sighed and waved between the two boys. “Alessio, you already know Corrado Guzzi ... or you know what I told you about today. Corrado, meet the pain in my ass, also known as Alessio Sorrento.”
“Thanks for that.”
“But not a lie,” Dare replied. “And now my good deed for the day is done. Gian, do you think these two will be fine alone?”
Corrado’s father smiled a bit, amusement playing in his gaze as he nodded. “I think they’ll be fine while we chat.”
“Good, let’s begin.”
Alessio passed Corrado another look as Gian and Dare drifted away from the doorway, disappearing altogether. “Are you going to stand there all day, or what?”
Corrado didn’t move. “I’m not doing anything with you.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to work. Dare said what he said.”
“Fuck him, and you.”
“Oh, he swears, too.”
Corrado’s jaw flexed with his annoyance. “What is your problem?”
Alessio looked him over again, his gaze slow and deliberate. All over again, Corrado felt that same flare of frustration and interest all rolled into one. It warred inside his mind, clashing together and making him want to punch this guy in the mouth just because.
“Do you like what you see, or ...?”
“Why, because I stare?” Alessio asked.
“Because your stare lingers. So, that means you either like what you see, or you’re trying to decide if I’m a threat. I think you know who I am, and you think you know something about me.”
Corrado replaced the knife on the wall, and headed for the door, only stopping directly in front of Alessio. He knew what this guy was doing—trying to size him up, but also make him feel out of place. Screw that noise. He didn’t know his purpose for being here, but he wasn’t going to run because of Alessio.
He leaned in close to Alessio, but the guy didn’t move back an inch. If anything, he stayed firm in his spot, those blue eyes blazing with the same interest Corrado was sure reflected in his own gaze. “Let me be the first to fix that mistake of yours—you don’t know fuck all about me, Alessio.”
“I prefer Les.”
Corrado tipped his chin up. “And?”
“And right now I’m wondering what your face might look like if I roughened it up a little. Do you box?”
He blinked.
“What?”
Alessio shrugged. “I didn’t stutter.”
He hadn’t.
“Do you want to get your ass kicked?” Corrado asked. “Because that’s what’ll happen if we spar.”
The man laughed.
And all Corrado could think was that he looked fucking amazing doing it. That smirk on his face? Entirely bad for him given the way his chest tightened at the sight of it.
Oh, yeah.
He was in a lot of trouble here.
It all started and ended with Alessio.
He knew it by the annoyance still trickling through his bloodstream, but also the humming that continued to buzz over his skin. A part of him wanted to tell his guy to fuck off somewhere, and another part wanted to find out all he could about him. He had a feeling the more he learned about Alessio, the less annoyed Corrado would feel, and the more interesting the man would become.
All it took were a few words, and blue eyes. Something about Alessio Sorrento drew Corrado in and made every single one of his nerves turn on in a good and bad way. He wanted to run away as much as he wanted to stay right there and do it all over again.
Was this what the priest meant?
Was this koi no yokan?
Because it felt like something.
It felt like change.
It felt important.
Well, fuck that noise.
Corrado didn’t like it at all.
“Guess we’ll see what you can do, principe,” Alessio said, grinning just enough to show off his white teeth. “Or, I’ll have a lot of fun watching you try.”
3.
Alessio
By the age of ten, Alessio had learned the most important lesson he figured life had to teach him. It wasn’t an easy one, or even nice. Very little about life was easy or nice, though. That lesson was simple, too.
Blood didn’t always make family.
When he was two, his father died from a heart attack. A man he never really remembered, and only vaguely knew from the stories of others. Maximo Sorrento—mafia Don to a Cosa Nostra faction controlling Vegas, who also seemed to have a taste for women who were a fraction of his age. Like Alessio’s mother, Elizabeth.
His father dying wasn’t the memory that stood out to him the most, but rather how everyone else treated his mother, the man’s mistress, after the fact. She’d lived comfortably, Alessio had been told, cared for and kept because she was a favorite of Maximo’s, and she had given him a son, even if the boy was illegitimate.
Then, he was no more.
No, Alessio didn’t remember his father dying, and he didn’t have many feelings about it, but he vividly recalled the years that followed the death. Like how his mother spiraled, her young life wasted with every pill she popped, and every needle she put into her veins. Empty bottles littering the floor and the faint smell of old cigarette smoke accompanied Alessio’s dreams every time he closed his
eyes.
That was how he remembered his mother.
And that he never mattered to her.
Whether it was because she was so entirely heartbroken that she had lost Maximo, despite the fact he was three times her age, or because she had lost her status and importance without him there to give it to her ... she forgot about Alessio in the process.
He was ten when his mother overdosed.
Ten when he buried her.
Yet, it felt like he’d been in the process of burying her for years before that. Life had a funny way of reminding the forgotten and the neglected at the worst of times that they weren’t worth very much to the people who weren’t faced with their struggle every single day. That had never been more apparent to Alessio than after his mother’s death.
That was when Dare came in.
And Cree, another high-ranking member of The League.
Alessio was never sure when they found him after his mother’s death, because the days passed by in a confusing blur that he’d rather not revisit, but they were a saving grace for him if there ever was one. Dare, having known Alessio’s mother before Maximo, took him in.
For all purposes, Dare was his family.
The League, his home.
Here, he struggled more. Here, he learned to be something and someone. Behind these walls, he was given a purpose and stability. He was not the forgotten bastard son of a man who he didn’t remember, or the child of an addict who died not knowing her son would be the one to find her cold on the floor the next morning.
Here, he was better.
At seventeen, almost eighteen now, Alessio spent much of his life feeling as though he didn’t belong to any one person or place. Until Dare, Cree, and The League. He held this place so close to that thing in his chest that people called a heart, no one would ever understand. If someone thought to fuck with it, he was going to rip them apart.
And so, it pissed Alessio off to see some privileged prick like Corrado Guzzi walking around the place with a curious eye like he had any business being there in the first place. Sure, Dare was smart enough to explain to Alessio the week before the Guzzis arrival that Gian would be visiting to check out the new complex, with two of his five sons, but it hadn’t bothered him until he saw one of those sons in that training room.