Page 29 of Corrado

Instead of finding Dare in his office, Alessio wandered the halls until he came to the control room. Or, that’s what they liked to refer to it as. Inside, standing in front of a wall of screens, Dare used a sleek, thin remote with a touchscreen pad to separate what was actually one giant screen—that looked broken into several different screens—to bring up specific cameras. Just as quickly, he switched to a separate screen on the wall of moving pictures that brought up something else entirely.

A wall of doors, it looked like.

His thumb raced across the touchscreen, and Alessio watched on the screen as the opened doors in the hallway began to close one by one. Then, just as fast, Corrado was brought into view by the team … close to the tank room, now.

Well, the dark room and the tank room.

They were right across from one another. The walls inside were so thick, one couldn’t even blow them out with dynamite. The floors, a cold cement that constantly seemed to stay wet from one thing or another.

“Did you watch mine, too?” Alessio asked.

His chest ached.

He wasn’t sure why.

Maybe it was the memories racing past his eyes—the idea that a couple of years ago, this had been him. He’d been dragged through those halls, had the shit beat out of him, and was then thrown into hell for a month or more to break him beyond recognition. He’d thought he was ready; he’d watched from afar for other trainings before his time.

He had not been anywhere near ready.

Dare turned slowly, realizing he wasn’t alone as his gaze fell on Alessio in the doorway. “I’m sorry?”

“Did you watch my training, too?”

“I did not.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have … a good answer for that, Les,” Dare murmured.

“Or you don’t want to sound like a coward.”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

“What?”

Dare shrugged, and looked back at the screens. “I said earlier you only thought you could think like Cree does, but I might have been wrong about that.”

It took Alessio a second to understand.

Then, two.

“Because you couldn’t watch me go through the first phase, right?” he asked.

Dare let out a heavy exhale. “If you asked for it to stop even once … and they all ask … I would have dragged you out of there myself. Because I was weak—love does that to you, Alessio, and I want you to remember that. It makes you weak. And so, when something is for the greater good when it comes to someone you love, even if it means hurting them, you have to take a step back and let it happen. Or in my case, be forced to do it.”

“What does that mean?”

Across the room, Dare waved the remote at the screens, saying, “Cree had the team go in on you for phase one, then he locked me in the office and wouldn’t let me out for that first night. It … was not a good moment for me.”

Alessio frowned. “What?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Cree wasn’t in on my—”

“Not for phase one. He was too close to it, too.”

Alessio hadn’t known that, mostly because the team had been very careful not to speak to him during the first phase of his training. Other than a barked word here to there to give him an order, which he knew better than to defy them.