The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 1

by Bethany-Kris

  “I’m not sure that fucking her after all of this is going to make him come back, if that’s—”

  Cree made a harsh noise under his breath. “Never understood the appeal of vaginas myself, really.”

  Yep.

  Great.

  This conversation was just perfect, now.

  “Could you not?” Corrado asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Make your point, or just hang up the phone.”

  “Oh, I’m going to do that soon, too.”

  Yeah, he figured.

  “The point is,” Cree added quickly, “sex is like every other physical thing for Alessio. Eating, sleeping, fighting, or working ... it’s something he does because he either has to, he likes it, or it fills a need he has. He only gets emotional with sex when there are emotions attached to it—like with you. For her, he feels nothing. And he feels nothing about the fact you may or may not be having sex with her—that isn’t his problem, is it?”

  Cree wasn’t wrong.

  “No, I don’t think that’s his problem. More ... that I kept her presence and my interest from him. He asks for loyalty, that’s all.”

  “Because loyalty is what is most important to Alessio, and to him, faithfulness doesn’t fall into that category when that’s not what he asked for, right? When sex is just sex to him ... then, you having sex with a woman is just that to him as well. He’s complicated, Corrado, in ways you are not, although that may not be a bad thing.”

  “You know, it’s almost disturbing how you understand people the way you do,” Corrado muttered. “And with very little information to go on, too.”

  “Is it, though? I always thought it was like a gift.”

  “No, it’s disturbing. Definitely fucking disturbing.”

  “To be fair, I have known Alessio since he was ten, and I have a lot to go on in order to make sense of his mess.” Cree made a dismissive sniff. “And it being disturbing to you doesn’t change the fact that I’m right here, and you know it.”

  “Well ...”

  “Hmm?”

  “She’s complicated to me, too,” Corrado murmured. “Like him, but in different ways.”

  “I bet. That sounds like something you should figure out. If Alessio doesn’t call me before he comes back to you, then you’re to let me know he’s safe. If he’s gone for more than a couple of weeks beyond this, I want to know so I can make the choice to bring up the tracker data on his chip implant and let Dare decide what he wants to do.”

  “All right.”

  “Also.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop fucking this up, Corrado. Despite how it used to be amusing to watch you stumble over your feelings and bury your issues so deep that even you can’t find them, it’s no longer funny. It’s time you figured your bullshit out, and fix it. All of it.”

  He blinked.

  And Cree hung up the phone.

  Fuck.

  His frustration at everything—this week, Alessio, feeling like he was walking on eggshells, the conversation with Cree—spilled over as he stared at the blank screen of the phone in his hand. Before he could think better of it, he whipped the phone to the side. It smacked the arm of the chaise in front of the large window, causing the back and battery to pop out of place, and fall onto the floor in three pieces.

  Good.

  Better that than him breaking it entirely.

  Because that’s what he wanted to do.

  A quiet noise at the opposite side of the office had him spinning on the spot. There, he found Ginevra standing with a book in her hands, watching him. A million and one emotions raged through him at the sight of her there.

  Annoyance.

  Concern.

  Amusement.

  Indifference.

  Lust.

  Anger.

  He didn’t know how to deal with it all, but he went to the easiest to handle first, which just happened to be his annoyance. This girl had a bad habit of spying. Being places she shouldn’t and standing there for way too long to listen. Like last week while she watched him with Alessio in this same fucking office.

  “What are you doing?” he snapped.

  Ginevra’s brow knotted, and she glanced down before lifting the book. “I just ... wanted to get another book, that’s all. I thought it would be rude to interrupt.”

  “So, instead you eavesdrop?”

  “It’s not like you were being quiet. I could hear you all the way down in my room, thanks.”

  Corrado sucked in a shaky breath, willing his nerves to calm. He was snappy because of the shit happening around him, and sure, Ginevra didn’t help in a lot of ways, but it wasn’t her fault, either. She didn’t choose to be here, but rather, she had been thrown right in the fucking middle of it.

  This whole blow out between Alessio and him had been years in the making, always one step away from it happening. They hung on together by a thread because of literally everything else in their life except Ginevra.

  Sure, she was a catalyst.

  She pushed them over the edge.

  And it still wasn't her fault ...

  She didn't ask for this, but here she was. It also wasn’t lost on him that there was an almost poetic irony to the fact Corrado had realized all the things he’d done wrong in his relationship, what he wanted with Alessio, and that he was ready to fix it ... at the same time he was looking this woman in the face, and feeling something he couldn’t explain for her.

  He wouldn’t say he was in love with her.

  But it was something.

  The only other time he had felt that for anyone was Alessio, and so, he didn’t know how to correlate this thing he felt to anything else.

  Koi no yokan, he knew.

  Except ... it only made this harder.

  More difficult.

  Compli-fucking-cated.

  Ginevra hadn’t asked for this.

  Neither did Alessio.

  Corrado didn’t know what to do.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “I’m just in a mood lately, is all. It’s not your fault, and I shouldn’t be short with you, Ginny.”

  She didn’t smile.

  She only shrugged.

  “Doesn’t even faze me now,” she replied, “I think it makes sense, actually.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your moods. I thought it was just you before I knew about ... him. But now I think it’s really you without him.”

  Corrado’s throat tightened, a lump forming there.

  Why?

  Because she was right.

  Entirely.

  What made it worse was the pain he could plainly see staring back from this woman as she stood just a few feet away from him, hugging that book close to her chest, and refusing to meet his gaze. Her stance, the aura she was giving off, it all screamed one thing.

  She felt unwanted.

  Discarded.

  Secondary.

  It only left him more torn.

  “Do you think he’ll come back?” she asked suddenly.

  Corrado sighed and tipped his head to the side. “Eventually. It’s a messy thing ... me and him, I mean. We’re not normal. Nothing about our relationship has ever been that, you know? We’ve had an open bedroom for years where women were concerned, but this was different. Things were different this time, and I can’t expect you to understand it.”

  Ginevra nodded. “That’s what you meant by loyalty, right? You weren’t unfaithful. You were disloyal.”

  He stiffened, realizing just how much she had heard in his conversation with Cree.

  She didn’t give him the chance to reply before she added just as fast, “But you’re right, Corrado, I don’t understand because you never thought to tell me. You didn’t give me the chance to try to understand. Instead, I get to be the person in the middle—the one ruining something for someone else. I get it, though, it’s not about me for you, right? I’m not the one you want.”

  Instead of coming into the office to drop off her book, and get a ne
w one, she set it on the stand next to the door. All the while, Corrado’s heart raged because this woman didn’t understand.

  She didn’t know anything at all.

  Not about him.

  Or Les.

  And certainly not how he felt for her.

  She deserved to know.

  30.

  Ginevra

  “You’re wrong,” Corrado said behind her. “You are entirely wrong, but I don’t know how to explain this to you because it barely makes sense to me.”

  The last thing she needed to do was stand there and let that man justify his shitty actions to people he claimed to care about. And yet, something deep inside her soul came to wrap around her heart tightly, keeping her still in the doorway, even if her back was still turned to Corrado.

  “Try, then,” she whispered.

  “Ginevra—”

  “Try, Corrado. That’s all you have to do. Try to explain it to me. You owe me that much, at least. I think you owe someone else a lot more, but he’s not here, so for now ... we can deal with this. Me and you. Try.”

  “There’s never been a you, Ginny.”

  The crown molding on the hallway took her attention as she considered his words. “I don’t understand what that means.”

  “Exactly, and neither do we. But there has never been a you—oh, there’s been women, yeah. Women he and I shared, or women we found separately, but there has never been a you. Someone like you who I felt something for, someone I was interested in beyond taking to bed. The more I tried to ignore it, because I did try, the worse it became.”

  Corrado sighed loudly. “And that makes this complicated thing more fucking complicated than it already is with Alessio and I. That’s not your fault. You didn’t make us complicated or create this mess. We did it. The bigger problem is I don’t think this can be simplified down to who I want here, and that’s what you want me to give you. Isn’t it?”

  Twisting her hands together, she wanted to say no. It would be a lie, though, and Ginevra wasn’t a liar. So, because she couldn’t say no, she chose to say nothing at all. It was just easier, and God knew there was enough about this situation that was hard.

  Her heart felt like ashes.

  It’d been burning down all week.

  In her chest, a constant inferno raged on, searing her from the inside out. She didn’t know how to deal with it because it wasn’t only her pain that was the cause of it. Instead, it was him, too. Corrado, and the things she saw him dealing with.

  His struggle.

  How he didn’t sleep.

  Constantly watching his phone.

  Running himself dead on the treadmill at night.

  Day after day, and night after night. It never ended. He struggled all the time because he was without something he needed and wanted, and she didn’t want to see him in pain. That hurt her. She shouldn’t feel like that at all, though, because he didn’t deserve that.

  Right?

  She should have been pissed that instead of him wanting her, he was obsessing over someone who wasn’t even there. She shouldn’t want to give him anything—not her time, her attention, or even this here.

  Except ... Corrado was right.

  This was complicated.

  Emotions were a tricky thing.

  “It can’t be simplified down to who I want,” Corrado repeated, his voice a hell of a lot closer to her than it had been before, “because that’s not the problem in the first place. I know exactly what I want here, but it’s the rest that makes it a mess for everyone else.”

  She turned around slowly only to find he had come to stand right behind her in the doorway of the office. He was entirely too close to her, really, as she could feel the head of his body drifting to hers and smell that musky scent that he seemed to prefer. It only served to muddle up her mind and emotions more, but she chose to ignore it.

  She was doing that a lot lately.

  “But why?”

  Corrado frowned. “Why, what?”

  “Why can’t it be that simple? Pick the person you want.”

  “And you want me to pick you.”

  Ginevra blinked. “I didn’t say—”

  “You don’t have to. It’s in everything you do. Everything you say, and the things you don’t say. I see it in your eyes, and in your silence. But you’re good, you know. In your heart, you’re far too good. Better than me, that’s for certain. Because in there,” he said, pointing a finger at the spot over her chest where her heart was beating far too fast, “... in there, Ginny, you don’t want to be selfish, so you say nothing, and you do nothing. That’s who you are, but I can’t say the same.”

  “Or,” she countered, “it’s because I think love is—”

  “Love?” Corrado scoffed, grinning a little too sardonically for her liking. “Let me tell you what I know about love, yeah? I met a man once, and I knew from the start he was going to change everything for me.”

  Her eyes burned, but she refused to blink. Then, the tears that were starting to threaten her calm façade would fall, and he would know just how much this hurt. She didn’t want to do that—didn’t want to give him that.

  “And he did,” Corrado continued, “he changed everything. That’s what I learned about love, but I wouldn’t tell him that. I kept that for me, and it hurt him. And then I met you.”

  Air pulled painfully through her lungs, but still, she stayed quiet.

  What choice did she have?

  Corrado stepped forward, closing the inch or two between them until the soft cotton of her sleepwear dragged against his slacks and button-down shirt with every breath she took. “So, here you are,” he murmured, his head tilting down a bit as she stared up at him, “and I got that feeling again—that same fucking feeling like nothing was ever going to be the same because of you, but this time, I just ignored it altogether. Because that’s what I do, Ginny. I ignore, I pretend ... I just don’t.”

  “Corrado—”

  “I take too much, I want too much, and I demand too much from people who only want to love me. And that’s what you’re standing here asking me to give to you. Do you understand that? You’re asking for me—this mess who is selfish and ruins the people who love him—to give those same things to you.”

  Corrado shook his head, saying softly, “So, when you ask why I can’t choose who I want ... it’s because I don’t deserve what I already have, and I’m sorry that you seem to think you’re the person who doesn’t deserve me. You’re wrong, and I’m so fucking sorry for that. I’m sorry for this, and nothing I do or say is ever going to make this better, but you should know that before anything else. I’m sorry. I’ll say it every single day. Every hour on the fucking hour. It won’t change a thing, though. It won’t change it because I won’t give you what you want. I can’t ... not the way you want me to.”

  “But ...”

  “Hmm?”

  Ginevra stared hard at him, trying to find that lie. Anything to tell her that he was saying things he thought she wanted to hear, and not the truth. Instead, all she found was a stark, harsh reality staring back at her.

  He wasn’t lying.

  It broke her heart more.

  “I think the choice should be easy for you,” she said softly.

  Corrado laughed dryly, tipping his head away from hers as he asked, “And why is that?”

  Wasn’t it obvious?

  “You don’t love me—you love him.”

  She could see it in Corrado’s eyes before the words even left his mouth that he wouldn’t deny what she said—because it was the truth. And like her, this man seemed to make every effort not to lie when he could.

  “But I could,” he murmured.

  Her heart stopped.

  She swore it did.

  “Pardon?”

  “Love you,” he clarified, “I could, and the longer you’re near, the stronger it’s going to be for me. This happened to me already—I did this once, I know how it ends, Ginevra.”

  Ginevra laughed,
but it was far too faint. Hidden in her chest, that traitorous heart of hers pounded like it was going to explode. She liked what he said too much. And the way he was looking at her again?

  Intense, and knowing.

  Like he was so sure.

  And daring her to challenge him.

  She’d felt that, too. From the second she stepped into his vehicle in front of that church, she thought ... everything was going to be different. Maybe then, she’d assumed it was because of her sisters, and everything that was happening around her. The chaos, and the unknown waiting for her.

  But was it?

  Or was it him?

  “You can’t know that about love,” she said, her words slipping out on a breath. “You can’t, Corrado.”

  “Why not? I knew it about him, so why would you be any different? My life wasn’t right before him, and then it was ... but now it’s tilted again, confusing—wrong again. I keep thinking it’s because of you, because nothing else changed except here you are, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Corrado gave her a look, a sad smile curving his lips up at the edges. “Why on earth are you apologizing to me?”

  “Because love shouldn’t be that complicated or painful. It should be everything but those things.”

  “It could be,” he agrees. “I want it to be.”

  “And you want him,” she whispered.

  “I do.”

  “And me. You want me, too.”

  Corrado’s agonized stare landed on her again, causing her heart to clench from the truth she found waiting there. “Don’t you know?”

  “I thought I did, but I think that I don’t know anything at all.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered, chuckling darkly, “I have a way of doing that to things I care about. Fucking up, I mean.”

  “Don’t say that, Corrado.”

  It hurt her heart more.

  For herself.

  For him.

  For a man who wasn’t even here.

  It all hurt.

  “But haven’t I?” he asked, his hand coming up so he could tuck the loose strands of her hair behind her ear with the softest touch. That was all it took, just his skin grazing against hers, and heat shot through her every single one of her nerves, making her air catch hard in her chest, and her heart skip beats all over again. “Haven’t I made this mess?”