Page 129 of Alessio

She wanted to thank Marcus first.

He had been kind to her.

Even if he didn’t have to be.

“Thank you for everything,” she said.

Marcus shrugged. “No worries, this is what I was taught to do.”

She looked past him to finish her conversation with Chris, but she found the entryway empty. He already left.

Damn.

Ginevra would have time.

Later.

She would go back to Alessio and Corrado and say what she wanted to say face to face. They would get it from her mouth, and not from someone else’s.

She loved them.

They deserved to hear it from her.

“Take your call,” Marcus said, bringing Ginevra back to reality.

She laughed under her breath, and nodded, pulling the phone up to her ear as she said, “Hello?”

“Are you ready to come back?”

Ginevra stiffened all over. “Andino?”

The man on the other end of the line chuckled darkly. “That would be me, yes.”

“Why are you calling—”

“I am the one who sent you away,” Andino said fast, “and I should have access to call you if I need, even if I am in jail, right?”

He really was an asshole.

And … “What?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re in jail?”

“Semantics, and I have access to a private cell, so my business, like you, is still being handled.”

Ginevra moved onto another topic, then. “What did you mean—about home?”

“Exactly what I said.”

“You mean—”

“I heard you spoke to Siena,” he noted, a slight hum in the background of his call lowering to nothing at all as a door shut on his end. “But what she didn’t tell you was just how close we were to the end the night you called. A few days before you spoke to Siena, Darren got caught in an unfortunate situation—a bomb that did quite a bit of damage.”

Ginevra dragged in a breath, surprising herself when she cared nothing for a man who shared at least half of her blood.

“And a while ago,” Andino added quieter, “they buried Kev—did they tell you?”