Page 184 of Alessio

Nope.

He never could.

If Chris didn’t know he was lying right away, then Corrado felt like shit and eventually just spilled the truth to his twin, anyway. Because wasn’t life just fucking grand like that?

Chris cleared his throat when Corrado stayed silent as he reached for his shirt hanging off the ropes of the ring. “Was that supposed to happen?”

“Mind your business.”

“I am—you’re my business.”

Corrado shifted from foot to foot, punching his arms through the shirt before yanking it down over his head. All the while, he avoided his twin’s stare like the plague. “Just … forget about it, Chris.”

“All right, whatever. Papa’s down the hall talking with that Dare guy.”

“What were you doing?”

“Trailing behind you and …” Chris tipped his head in Alessio’s direction, but Corrado refused to look that way. Not when he was still attempting to calm the semi hard-on he sported. “That one there. Did you forget I was here, too, or …?”

“Vaffanculo,” Corrado muttered.

Chris smirked. “No judgement, if you’re doing what you wanna do and all, I’m just saying you’re not usually that obvious about it, you know?”

“Would you fucking knock it off?”

Laughter echoed from his brother.

Chris was enjoying this too much.

Heat flooded Corrado’s face. He didn’t even know it was possible for him to blush, but he was pretty sure his face was red. It wasn’t what he had been doing that embarrassed him, but rather, that someone was there to see it. His twin, for that matter.

Not that Chris ever cared.

A part of Corrado knew his family didn’t give a shit because his twin was a good indicator of how the rest of them would react if he outed the fact he was bi. It wasn’t so much them as it was the people around them that concerned him at the end of the day.

Being the son of a criminal boss meant Corrado had to factor other people into their lives, as well. People who didn’t share their blood or live in their home but would still think they had some right to speak about his sexuality either way. And it was those people who he didn’t care to let in on his business.

Because they wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it. Or, they wouldn’t leave his father alone, or worse, blame him for something that no one could help. Which just pissed Corrado off more because he didn’t need help. He wasn’t sick, and something wasn’t wired differently inside his head.

To them, he would be wrong.

To them, he would be broken.

That’s what they had taught him.

Except he couldn’t be any of those things when he was just born this way. And so, he adopted his simple strategy about it all. If nobody thought to ask, then he didn’t have fuck all to tell them. His family included. They could assume, and he was fine with that, but he wasn’t offering the information up willingly.

“Round two another day, Guzzi?”

Corrado couldn’t even hide the way Alessio’s voice from across the ring affected him as it reached his spot. His back tensed, and all over again, he could feel the man’s mouth coming down on his, and the way his fingers had dug into his chest as those fingerless leather gloves came down against his body. His jaw clenched, and outside the ring, Chris raised an eyebrow again, clearly not missing Corrado’s odd behavior.

“Don’t,” he warned his twin.

His brother just laughed, hit the ropes of the ring with his hand, and stepped back like he was done with the conversation.

“Round two another day,” came a new, deep voice.

Corrado spun around fast to find where the voice had come from. Parts of the gym were shrouded in darkness, the different lines of machines barely visible in the shadows as Alessio had only flicked on two light switches instead of the other fifteen. At the very far right end of the gym, a man leaning against the side of a treadmill watched Corrado.