Page 157 of Alessio

Alessio gave him a look. “Because you never asked.”

Corrado heard Ginevra first. Her soft, tinkling laughter—unmistakable to his ear—seemed to stand out from the feminine laughter of others as it filled the hallway he walked down with Alessio at his side. It did something to his heart, still racing hard and a little too heavy in his chest, but he didn’t wish it away.

A part of him had been wishing too much away.

Right then, he wanted to feel.

Corrado wasn’t pleased with the way Alessio did this, but he stepped back and shut up. He didn’t go to Ginevra after she left, and he hadn’t given her the chance to explain anything.

So, regardless of the heaviness on his shoulders, the tightness in his chest, or the ache in his heart … he would see her, and listen to her explain.

Because Les was right.

As he usually was.

Corrado figured if he admitted that fact a little more often, they wouldn’t have as many of these issues as they did. His pride was a real bitch.

Time to let it go.

A good portion of the main entrance, the first dining room, and one of the sitting rooms inside the mansion became a haunted house for the kids that was now … well, empty of children, anyway. A few adults lingered in the spaces, drinks in hand. Some still dressed in costumes, and others, not. Corrado had no interest in them, though.

Corrado rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, Alessio still at his side, and came to a full stop at the sight of Ginevra in the middle of what his parents used as a ballroom when they held parties. In the middle, a fountain with an embracing nude couple carved from stone with water pouring from their outstretched hands that seemed to reach for each other.

And right in front of it?

Ginevra.

Like him, and Alessio, and most of the other people in the room, she wasn’t dressed up in any costume. Instead, she wore a black dress that hugged her curves with a slit down the middle that showed off all kinds of leg, and black, strappy heels that made his throat tighten again.

She smiled at something his mother said next to her, nodding back at the younger girl standing close to her. Cara leaned in closer to Ginevra, her gaze conspiratorial as she said something in a whisper, pointing to someone across the room.

Ginevra, though, looked happy. Perfectly content in her place, enjoying the party, and not at all bothered by the fact she was in the middle of the room, the center of attention next to his mother where they stood just a few feet away from the rest of his brothers, and father.

Like she was meant to be there.

Because she was.

Corrado had known from the start—sensed it in his heart the very second she looked him in the eyes that day she fell into his car in New York outside of the church. It’d been him and his pride that fucked this up.

The same way it messed with everything.

“Ginny!”

Corrado watched an older girl, although still younger than Ginevra, dart across the ballroom floor, away from a young man who was staring after her like his favorite thing had been ripped out of his hands. Ginevra turned away from his mother, laughing at whatever the older teenager rushed to tell her, while the younger girl who had been beside her the entire time rolled her eyes.

“Her sisters,” Alessio explained next to him. “Greta is the older one—she’ll be eighteen in two months. Giulia, the youngest, is fifteen.”

Right.

Her sisters …

Corrado felt like shit.

That was the best way to describe it. He didn’t have the right words, otherwise. He said it—entirely selfish. So caught up in his own wants, that he never even considered the people around him, or what they needed to handle.

Like Ginevra.

And her sisters.